LIV Golf announces entry criteria details for Abu Dhabi Amateur event with a $1,500,000 purse 

LIV Golf is adding a bit of qualification to their league. The new Abu Dhabi Amateur event will serve as their own Q school, which is a term for qualification tournaments. These are usually attributed to the PGA Tour and others, but LIV is adding one themselves.

The tournament will be held December 8–10 at Abu Dhabi Golf Club in the United Arab Emirates, with four rounds over three days, including 36 holes on the final tournament day.

One of the drawbacks of LIV Golf, and a big reason why they couldn't get OWGR accreditation, is that there's not much barrier to entry. The league is easier to get into for players than others, and that hurts them.

With this new qualifier, that begins to change. Regardless, they've announced the qualifications to enter the tournament, which has a $1.5 million prize purse and positions in LIV for 2024 at stake:

• Entry criteria for the first round:
• Winners of top amateur events
• Walker and Palmer Cup teams
• Top 15 from WAGR
• 25 players from the top 40 of the International Series on the Asian Tour
• 3 players in the top 5 of the Japan Golf Tour, Korean PGA Tour, Sunshine Tour, and PGA Tour of Australasia
• Tournament winners from the Asian Tour and KFT
• Top 30 players inside the top 300 of the TUGR
• Event invitations decided by LIV Golf
• Entry to round 2:
• Top 2 in WAGR
• Players in positions 2–8 on the International Series OOM
• Top 5 available players from within the top 30 2023 DPWT and KFT OOM
• Winners of PGAT and DPWT-sanctioned events in 2022 and 2023
• Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup participants from 2019–2023
• Winners of Major Championships from 2019–2023
• The leading 15 available players from within the top 150 of the Universal Golf Rankings (TUGR) as of November 20, 2023
• Players relegated or without a contract for the following season from the Final 2023 LIV Golf Individual Standings
• Event invitations as determined by the LIV Golf League

The WAGR is the World Amateur Golf Rankings. The KFT stands for the Korn Ferry Tour, an amateur tour that often feeds into the PGA Tour.

They will be used to field players for this qualifier, which could ultimately convince them to move to LIV Golf rather than the PGA Tour if it came down to it.

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LIV Golf was denied by OWGR, partly due to lack of barrier of entry

Phil Mickelson on LIV Golf

LIV Golf does things very differently than the PGA Tour does. That's both good and bad. It's good because it's what drew players like Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, and others. It's bad because it hurts their chances of getting points.

The OWGR president said:

"This is about, should a tour whose formats are so different and whose qualification criteria are so different, can they be ranked equitably with other tours who conform to the OWGR norm and have more competition to them than perhaps the closed shop that is LIV?”

Part of the different format is the lack of barrier of entry. There's no bar for LIV Golf players, and for the most part, there's not much risk of losing membership. There is a relegation zone, but it's not like the Tour.