World Golf Rankings

[CalBoomer]

Given how poorly Tiger Woods has played all year, it is hard to believe he remains number one in the Official World Golf Rankings. Those rankings clearly must put too much weight on remote good performances. The sorry chase of Tiger by Phil in these rankings has become a joke. The performances of Woods, Mickelson, Westwood, and Els clearly indicate the rankings are lot of hooey.

[the63master]

its just because tiger was so unbelievably good that he had a huge lead but with the new ranking system things switch up weekly with most golfers. If he keeps shooting 77s he will lose it no doubt

[Tiger Spuds]

Considering Tiger was winning 5/6/7 times almost every year for the entire duration of his career, it seems right that he maintained the number spot for a while, despite not winning.Consider that it's extremely rare for golfers to win more than 2 or 3 times a year.He was simply that far ahead of everyone else.

[sean_miller]

Of course it's flawed. A look at the total points gained shows Westwood with a sizable lead over Mickleson then Woods. The problem for Westwood is his schedule - he isn't selective enough. There are a few guys on there who play every week, even on courses that don't fit their game, and their average points per event suffers because of it. If a guy wants to be on a Ryder cup team, he's gonna play every chance he gets. If he wants to spend time doing "other things" and maintain a high spot on the World Golf Rankings, he should play a reduced schedule.

Tiger had a huge lead. He's lost ground to the pack, but if you took the next 10 guys on the list, who's the clear number one? Of all the guys who've ever been ranked number 1 (since the current ranking system was developed) most of them have been no-brainers. Only Tom Lehman, who was only number one for 1 week (approximately how long Lefty's reign would last) stands out to me as a guy who just barely separated himself from the pack.

[rudygu]

I'm not a huge fan of the OWGR, but they are what they are. They span multiple seasons so it's possible for any one season to not be represented well. Consistently good showings, as well as playing well in big events is rewarded. For the time period it covers, Tiger dominated.

For a snapshot of this season, look at the money list or fedex cup srandings

[iacas]

Of course it's flawed. A look at the total points gained shows Westwood with a sizable lead over Mickleson then Woods. The problem for Westwood is his schedule - he isn't selective enough. There are a few guys on there who play every week, even on courses that don't fit their game, and their average points per event suffers because of it. If a guy wants to be on a Ryder cup team, he's gonna play every chance he gets. If he wants to spend time doing "other things" and maintain a high spot on the World Golf Rankings, he should play a reduced schedule.

That's true to a point, but there's still a minimum divisor, I believe, and that number hurts Tiger (again, IIRC).

If Tiger earns 500 points in 35 events but the minimum divisor is 40 (over two years), that takes his number from 14.29 to 12.5. But in general, I don't have a big problem with the world rankings going back two years. Do you want a guy who has a hot streak to become the #1 player in the world? Everyone knows that when a player gets hot he's the best "right now" - Justin Rose was for awhile, for example - was anyone gonna bet on him for the long term? He was just on a hot streak. People knew that and he got the appropriate credit for being "best right now, but overall, still not in the top five...". The points do trail off quite a bit after six months and one year and 18 months. It's not like points from Tiger's early wins last year still count for much. They've faded quite a bit. The OWGR is tilted a fair amount towards "what have you done for me in the past six months or year?"

[mjtoal]

Look, people, some of you are looking for some kind of existential truth in these rankings. There is none.

The rankings are just a mathematical way of summarising performance, and carry biases and flaws. They have been changed over the years to give more weight to recent performance, but because playing form is not consistent and players often have decent lengths of down time they will always lag behind somewhat. The alternative is a system where this weeks winner is this weeks number 1, and then the guy who wins next week takes over and you get no sense of stability.