GOLF
Why isn’t Sergio García playing at the 2024 British Open?
2017 Masters champion García isn’t in the field at Royal Troon Golf Club, missing out on a 100th major appearance.
For the second year in a row, there will be no Sergio García at the British Open when play in the 2024 tournament at Royal Troon gets underway on Thursday (July 17).
The Spaniard has been a fixture at the top end of the world of golf for 25 years, exploding onto the scene with a T2 as a teenager at the 1999 PGA Championship. He has gone on to post 23 top 10 finishes in 99 major starts, the highlight of which was his win at the Masters in 2017.
But he will have to wait a little longer to make his 100th major championship appearance after failing to qualify for The Open 2024, partly as a result of him leaving the PGA Tour to join LIV Golf.
How LIV Golf move cost García his Open spot
There is a whole host of ways in which golfers can qualify to play in the British Open, but the 44-year-old hasn’t managed to achieve any of them, not helped by his switch to the Saudi-backed tour.
Perhaps the most obvious drawback of LIV is that its players are not awarded world ranking points for their achievements in its events. That is principally because they play 54 rather than 72 holes, unlike every other tour. As a result, García is one of a number of LIV players who has tumbled down the rankings, where he now sits in 323rd place.
With the top 50 ranked players qualifying for The Open, the Spanish star missed out on one of the most easily-attainable ways in.
García’s move to LIV in 2022 means he couldn’t realistically take any of the Open spots given to the top performers in the FedEx Cup on the PGA Tour, or the Race To Dubai on the DP World Tour.
A number of events on both tours served as qualifiers for The Open, but as García didn’t play in any of them, that route was also unavailable to him.
Masters exemption expires, García fails to qualify
Winners of the other men’s majors are given Open exemptions for five years, but with the former world No. 2′s triumph at the Masters coming in 2017, that expired in 2022.
To his credit, García did enter final qualifying in a last-ditch attempt to make a 26th appearance in the only British major.
However, he finished shots two out of a potential playoff at West Lancashire on July 2 and will now miss a second Open in succession having previously played in 24 tournaments in a row. He did, however, win his first LIV Golf event at Valderrama on Sunday.