OWGR Biased Against PGA Tour Players

Isn't this part of the reason that some folks want to see a unified world tour? OWGR is a crazy beast.

The thing is, it's pretty tough to compare European Tour players with PGA Tour players when they aren't competing in the same tournament. Many will say the European Tour is much easier, but the reality is you are travelling to a different country most weeks, with completely different courses/culture/food/climate. The proof is in the pudding when some US players go over and can't make the cut or finish poorly. For example the Scottish Open last year, which many go to play the week before the Open. Gary Woodland MC, Brandt Snedeker MC, Ryan Palmer T58, Phil Mickelson T58, Matt Kuchar T10. I'm not saying the European is better than the PGA Tour, because the majority of the worlds best players play on the PGA Tour (where the money is), but it's not a cakewalk either. 

 

The other point with their system is, how do they decide what a player's skill level is? You cannot do that when players play completely different courses each week in different weather. It's not comparing apples with apples.

Interesting article, but it sounds like a couple guys wanted to get their name in the paper, so they came up with their own system that nobody cares about. The minimum points thing is not noticeably unfair to US players --- minimum points on the Japanese, Asian, and Korean Tours are 16, 14, and 6, respectively. 14 is the same as the Nationwide Tour, and a PGA event has a guaranteed minimum of 24, but the only PGA events where the winner actually gets that few points are either Fall Finish, or alternate events played the same week as a WGC. Most regular season PGA events give at least 40 points; even Tiger's 18-man Chevron Challenge, with most of the top ten absent, got 44 points.

 

The Euro Tour regulars all face that, it doesn't make the tournament harder for a euro tour member to win.  The poor performance of top US players is likely because they are not used to the differences and have a harder time acclimating.  That's evidence of an additional challenge facing US players, not greater talent on the euro tour.

 

 

It sounds to me like they take the scores and weight them according to the course difficulty, just like a handicap system.  That sort of analysis seems logical and unbiased to me.

 

The OWGR is not terrible, but it could be improved.  I don`t know what criteria these guys used to determine "course difficulty" but unless it correctly includes weather, condition & firmness of the greens, pin positions, length of rough, etc. then it could have a bias as well.

 

True, every player may face these same difficulties, but if it raises the average score for everyone by 1 stroke, then these guys would say that everyone is less talented (compared to players who play on a tour that does not face these challenges).  I agree that with jet lag, etc it is harder for US players when they first fly over to Europe, but some of the same issues face Euro and Asia based players when they fly over to the US for the Masters, US Open, PGA or WGC events that are help mostly in the States.  

 

 

I see problems with both the minimum points awarded and the strength of field determination of the OWGR, but generally think that the problem with these two tend to work in opposite directions, except with small field tournys like Tiger`s where the rich get richer by getting automatic points no matter where they finish (http://thesandtrap.com/t/54475/chevron-world-challenge-2011-thread/72#post_664686).   

 

I`ve looked at this a bit recently and think that instead of determining the strength of field by some predetermined point value based on a player`s OWGR (i.e. #1 brings 45 strength of field points, #2 34, #3 32, #16-30 11, #101-200 1 and #201+ 0) could be improved upon.   Seems kinda silly to me that the total number of players in a field is not given some weight.  IMO, if it is a small field, it is going to be easier to beat 1 #30 than 10 101 to 110, but the solo #30 brings more points.  I think they should do something based off the collective OWGR "average" points of each player in the field.  The gap between players is not always the same and, if set up properly, this would do a better job of determining the real strength of field without needing to have a point minimum.  If there is a bias against US Tour players, this would help eliminate it over time.   

 

Of course, it would also help if they correctly computed weighted average.  The OWGR are mathematically flawed with how they compute weighted average as they fail to weight adjust the denominator the way they do the numerator.  This leads to a bias against players who played a lot of tournaments towards the end of 2 year look back period.

http://thesandtrap.com/t/46168/2011-players-championship-qualification

http://www.mattelston.com/2011/04/27/world-golf-rankings-mathematically-flawed/

http://thesandtrap.com/t/46946/any-golfers-good-at-math

 

 

I`ve had dinner with Pat Perez and like the guy, but his performance in Majors and the Players hasn`t really set the world on fire.  This leads me to believe that there could be problems with their computation of "skill ranking" if he is one of the best examples that they can come up with.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Perez

 

Tournament	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009
The Masters	DNP	T45	DNP	DNP	DNP	DNP	DNP	CUT
U.S. Open	CUT	DNP	T40	DNP	DNP	CUT	T36	DNP
The Open Championship	DNP	DNP	DNP	T67	DNP	T20	CUT	DNP
PGA Championship	70	DNP	DNP	T6	CUT	T18	T58	CUT

 

In the last 5 Players Championships, he has 3 missed cuts and a high finish of t42 (but did record a t3 in 2006)

 

 

 

 

Yes, but he was ranked in the top 50 for a few weeks in 2009 and has spent about 175 weeks in the top 100 (with an average rank of about 128 since 2003)...I would guess that most guys with those credentials have more than 1 top 10 and 3 top 25 in majors, but maybe I am wrong.  

 

Hard for me to find someone with a similar ranking as Perez, but Thomas Levet of France spent a bit more time in the top 50, but only 115 weeks in the top 100 with an average rank of about 190.  Here is his major record- 2 top 5 and 5 top 25  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Levet  He has won 6 times on the Euro tour compared to 1 PGA tour win for Perez.

 

 

Tournament	1998	1999
The Masters	DNP	DNP
U.S. Open	DNP	DNP
The Open Championship	CUT	T49
PGA Championship	DNP	DNP

Tournament	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009
The Masters	DNP	DNP	DNP	CUT	DNP	T13	CUT	DNP	DNP	DNP
U.S. Open	DNP	DNP	T18	DNP	CUT	T52	DNP	DNP	CUT	T45
The Open Championship	DNP	T66	T2	T22	T5	T34	DNP	DNP	DNP	T38
PGA Championship	DNP	DNP	71	DNP	CUT	CUT	DNP	DNP	DNP	T51

Tournament	2010	2011
The Masters	DNP	DNP
U.S. Open	DNP	CUT
The Open Championship	CUT	DNP
PGA Championship	DNP	DNP

 

The article didn`t explain if they time weighted "skill" similar to how the OWGR are time weighted...this could effect things also.

 

I agree, but the solution is simple. They can just cut the points in half for fields with less than 60 players.


They have already taken steps to correct that by instituting a maximum divisor. But the real problem is that they go back two years, and depreciate the weight of events all the way down to zero. Because of that stupid policy, Phil Mickelson has a lower average now than he would have if he had skipped the 2010 Masters, instead of winning it.

The fix for that is to just go back 18 months, and leave the depreciation scale the same, i.e. the last week before an event doesn't count at all, its weight is about 30%. If they did that, a major win wouldn't lower anyone's average (except Tiger's during his absolute peak, when he had an average of over 30 points).

And as I'm sure you know, the minimum divisor is biased against players who play less frequently, but I agree with that policy, since it encourages more frequent play. I would probably want it lowered to 30 from the current 40, though.

 

 

Well, no, it doesn't, not if the player hasn't played for a while. It gives the absolute average, not the weighted average. You might as well not depreciate for age at all.

To see this, forget about the minimum divisor for a second, and pretend that Phil blew out his knee after the 2010 Masters and hasn't played since, so that's the only event in his WGR window.

So according to your scheme, the weight of the event is .033, his points earned is 3.3, and his divisor is .033, so his official average is 100.

I agree that for a player who plays every week, it would be better than what we have now. But for a player like Tiger, who was out with injury for almost a year, it would be even worse than what we have now for propping up a #1 ranking long after he should have fallen back.
Edited by brocks - 3/29/12 at 11:21pm

With a proper weighted average, I would still advocate a minimum divisor (of around 22.5) so as to avoid the examples you give.  This would lead to a player who hasn`t played for a while to run into a problem with the minimum divisor sooner as his older events start to decay in value, while a player who has played a lot recently can get up above the minimum sooner.

 

I think the whole OWGR is a bit silly.  Look at how they have been bouncing around since Tiger lost the spot.  I guess I just think there is too much stock put into the #1 being "the best player in the world" when I don't think the system really reflects that.  Perhaps its how I view "the best", though. 

Going back to the OP, there was further explanation of the system Broadie and Rendleman used to calculate skill in http://www.golfdigest.com/golf-tours-news/2012-04/gwar-stachura-world-golf-ranking which was briefly discussed in a recent thread http://thesandtrap.com/t/57602/luke-donald-back-to-1#post_706070

 

After reading the Golf Digest article, I have more of an understanding of the methodology used (basically if A beats B by a stroke in Tourny 1 and C beats B by 2 strokes in Tourny 2, then C is 1 stroke better than A).  While this makes more sense than what I originally thought (which was that they basically gave each course a course rating based on distance, etc. and then used that to compare scores between players who didn`t compete against each other), I have a number of questions and see a number of problems:

 

1.  Is there any differentiation made based on tournament finish?  i.e. Say A wins Tourny 1 and beats B by 4 shots.  In Tourny 2 B finishes 20th and beats A by 4 shots.  Are these two players considered equal (same total strokes) or is A considered better because he performed better in a more meaningful situation?

 

2.  How are Playoffs handled?

 

3.  How are Match Play Tournys handled?

 

4.  Some courses may have a tendency to spread out players more than others, Is this considered?

 

5.  How reliant are comparisons between Tours on a limited number of cross over players in a limited number of tournaments?  i.e.  If a Japanese Tour regular happens to have a good showing in the US, does this boost the rankings of other Japanese Tour players by a lot or a little?

 

6.  Are certain tournys given more weight than others?  i.e.  If A beat B in the US Open by 4 shots and then B beat A in a Nationwide event by 4 shots, are they considered equal, or is A considered better based on tourny importance?

 

7.  Does the system use any time weighting like the OWGR?

 

8.  How are MCs, DQs, WDs, etc. handled?

 

I think that Broadie and Rendleman may be right that there could be a bias in favor of certain tours and that there is certainly some politics/arbitrariness in how OWGR Event Points are awarded.  However, without knowing all the facts, I tend to think the system they propose is probably better suited for handicapping or scoring average comparisons rather than as a method for determining world rankings.  I can think of several methods to improve the awarding of event points that can utilize much of the current OWGR framework without introducing a bunch of potential new problems that I see with this system.  

 

 

 

I don`t see that happening even if the peer reviews are favorable.  I had a number of questions above that I still have, but my guess is the biggest problem with their system is it doesn`t give extra weight to majors and some of the other more important tournaments.  I am only guessing, but I imagine that if B beats A by 4 at Memphis with both finishing well back and A wins the US Open beating B by 3, that B would be ranked ahead of A (based on those two results) because he beat him by 1 shot overall.  My guess is the public would like to see the US Open winner (A) ranked higher even if B has a slightly better scoring ave in the same events.  

 

In my mind, their system is similar to the stroke differential against the field stat (but with adjustments to make it relevant across tours and to compensate for strength of field).  Maybe I am wrong about how their system would work and if so, please direct me to the system details that explain how this would not be the case.   

 

FWIW, Tiger is currently ranked #1 in that stat for this year- sure he has had a good season and may still be the most skilled player in the world, but I am sure that he wished one of his wins came in a major