Why Kevin Na’s take on LIV Golf winners gaining direct access to majors is wrong

Kevin Na said that anyone who wins a LIV event should then receive an invite to all four majors. Here’s why he’s wrong.

LIV Golf’s Kevin Na wants to guarantee all LIV winners secure a spot in the four major championships, similar to how PGA Tour winners automatically receive invites to Augusta National each year.

Na explained his reasoning in a recent interview with Golf Monthly.

“Winners should be exempt, and I think you take the top 16 players or so. I think if you have a season and you finish inside the top 16, you should be exempt into all four Majors,” Na said.

“A lot of guys who are Major champions and are exempt, they’re going to overlap, so top-10 isn’t enough. I don’t even think top-15 is enough, 16 is a good number. I know The Masters does it so that if you win a golf tournament on the [PGA] Tour, then you get in. I think it should be just the same for LIV.

“If you win a LIV event, there are only 13, then you should be in all the Majors because that’s not easy to do. Plus, you’re going to have multiple winners, so you’ll only get 10 guys who win a tournament in a year. And you know Jon Rahm is going to win one!”

You have to credit Na for sticking up for his tour, but the 41-year-old American is wrong in his assessment. Whoever wins a LIV Golf event should not receive direct access to all four major championships.

For starters, LIV events feature only 54 players each week, a much smaller field size than any other professional golf tournament played around the world. On top of that, LIV has only 54 holes of competition, whereas the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, and the Asian Tour — along with the four majors — feature 72-hole competitions only. Furthermore, LIV employs a shotgun start, where each group of players begin their round on a separate hole instead of having everyone start on the 1st or 10th holes using staggered tee times.

If that’s not enough, the team element LIV also factors in, as some players have said that their strategy changed when the team competition was close. That was a major reason why the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) did not award LIV Golf events OWGR points in the first place: the team play element threatened the integrity of the individual competition.

Now, critics will say, ‘But LIV Golf has so many major champions!’

No doubt they do. But let’s face reality here. Outside of Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann, and Tyrrell Hatton, which LIV player could make a run at winning a major championship? Maybe Sergio Garcia and Louis Oosthuizen? DataGolf currently has all eight of these players ranked among the top 55 in the world, so each of them can still compete at the highest level despite their affiliation with the Saudi-backed circuit. Koepka and DeChambeau have proven that emphatically, winning the 2023 PGA Championship and the 2024 U.S. Open, respectively. They are the only two active LIV players to win a major.

But again, who else could win a major? Sure, a player like Talor Gooch can make a run but his major record is not great. The best finish of his major career came at Augusta in 2022, one month before he joined LIV, when he tied for 14th.

The fact is that LIV remains top-heavy at the moment, with those eight players ranking in a category of their own. Others are either one, well past the prime of their careers, like Dustin Johnson or Phil Mickelson, or two, young and unproven in pro events, like Caleb Surratt or Andy Ogletree.

Nevertheless, the men’s game at the highest level remains in peril. The sport is divided, with major winners competing on both the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, playing together only four times per year, if that. So what’s the solution?

Well, going off of the point Na raised about ‘exemptions,’ the four highest finishers from the LIV Golf season — not otherwise exempt into the four major championships — should receive invitations to The Masters and the PGA Championship, the two events that feature the strongest fields in golf historically. The U.S. Open and The Open are exactly that: open competitions where a player can make it by playing well in qualifiers.

Remember, major champions receive automatic invites to each of the four majors for the subsequent five seasons. Other exemptions exist, too, and they vary depending on the major. However, in the case of simplicity, we can use the five-year rule as an example. For instance, Phil Mickelson won the PGA Championship in 2021, so he can still play in all four majors in 2025. If Mickelson finished among the top four in the final standings, then the next highest finisher not otherwise exempt would receive the nod.

Here’s who would receive this distinction this year if this mechanism was applied: Joaquin Niemann, Sergio Garcia, Tyrrell Hatton, and Louis Oosthuizen.

Rahm finished first in the rankings but will play in majors for years to come, thanks to his wins at the 2021 U.S. Open and the 2023 Masters. Niemann, Garcia, and Hatton finished second, third, and fourth, respectively, thus gaining entry into all four majors. Of those three, only Garcia has won a major, doing so at the 2017 Masters. Koepka finished fifth but has won five majors in his career, so he will not be skipping out on any of them soon. And then Oosthuizen, who won the 2010 Open at St. Andrews, finished sixth so that he would earn the fourth and final spot.

What do you make of this idea? Is it a sufficient compromise to Na’s proclamation? Or should LIV players receive the benefit of the doubt? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Follow him on X @jack_milko.