10-Year Comparison: Majors & Players Using OWGR SoF Rating

[Frank-0-Sport]

Inspired by posts within the 2018 Players Championship topic on the issue of PGA Championship-VS-Players Championship for Strongest Field, I decided to do some research. I went directly to the Official World Golf Ranking site, and then to the Events Page. Once on "Events" , I chose the filter "ALL", then (individually) the last 10 years (2017 back to 2008). Finally, I toggled "SoF" (Strength of Field) until the ranking order showed the strongest rated event at the top, followed by 2nd strongest, then 3rd strongest, etc.

I then went year-by-year (2017, 2016, 2015, etc down to 2008) obtaining the "SoF' ratings for the "Big Five" events -- Masters, US Open, Open Championship, PGA Championship and Players Championship. Once I had that info, I was able to easily compute ten-year averages for each of the five events. The results are presented in the attached image below.

Although based on OWGR data, this may not be the definitive word on what constitutes the "strongest event". You can draw your own conclusions and express them at leisure.

Incidentally, the OWGR site has given the 2018 Players an SoF rating of 871. Unless otherwise, that's a record high for this particular event. The 2018 Masters had an SoF rating of 794.

Edited May 8, 2018 by Frank-0-Sport

[Moxley]

Interesting - there are different ways you can look at this. 

Masters has more of an elite field, but less depth I assume would lead to lower SoF rating. 

Another way of looking at it is the strength of the average winner. Over the last 5 years The Open has produced the lowest average ranking (8.2) for the winner , which I think shows that it requires an elite player to win it. That said, it also occasionally produces strange winners, or at least unlikely players in the top 5, but I think there's always a chance of that with a links because there's a little bit more scope for luck. 

 

 

[Aguirre]

Does this adjust for field size? Because what I'm seeing looks like a total. I'm just curious, I've no idea.

[Frank-0-Sport]

19 hours ago, Aguirre said:

Does this adjust for field size? Because what I'm seeing looks like a total. I'm just curious, I've no idea.

Could not answer that, as I do not understand all of the aspects of the OWGR system. I can tell you about my decision to use the "SoF" (Strength of Field) stat to do my event comparisons. One of the qualifications for The WGC Bridgestone Invitational is winners of International Federation of Tours events since the previous Bridgestone event. provided that such events have a minimum field strength rating of 115. Unless otherwise, I believe that the "SoF" stat is used for that process. So I adopted "SoF" for my research results here.