LIV Golf reduces number of promotion spots, opens up more places for team recruitment
Only one player will earn a place with the LIV Golf League for the 2025 season at the promotions tournament in December
The race to win the International Series and with it a place on the LIV Golf League took on added significance on Thursday, after the Saudi-backed circuit cut the number of spots up for grabs at its end of season promotions event.
Where Kalle Samooja, Jinichiro Kozuma and Kieran Vincent earned the sport’s equivalent of a golden ticket in Abu Dhabi last year, only one player will do so at December’s tournament at Riyadh Golf Club.
And while officials acknowledged there would be some disappointment, the belief within LIV is that teams should be freer to recruit who they want and be able to base their decisions on performance over the course of a season, not just a four-round shoot-out.
“Looking at how the teams have evolved and how they’re looking to build out a roster, that’s something that we’ve been really buoyed by,” a LIV executive said. “The teams that have come to us, those that have been sort of planning what the rosters might look like into next year, they’ve been much more proactive this year in identifying talent and looking to engage with them early, to try and actually bring them in themselves.
“So, they’ve been very much part of that player recruitment, rather than sort of waiting to see what happens at promotions.”
Of the three players mentioned above, Samooja and Vincent both finished in the drop zone, meaning their time in LIV was over after a year. Andy Ogletree, who finished top of the series rankings last year, ended the season 34th in the standings, meaning he could be released or traded if HyFlyers captain Phil Mickelson so decides.
