Let's Get Rid of the Official World Golf Ranking
The Official World Golf Ranking
Golf would be better without the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR).
Some background: the mission of the OWGR is to provide a standardized ranking of male professional golfers across the globe. Not every golfer plays the same schedule. Golfers play in different tournaments with different field sizes at different times of the year. The OWGR attempts to provide a standardized ranking of all of these players.
Prior to August 2022, the OWGR methodology was biased. By providing points minimums to events across the globe, players on international tours like the DP World Tour and the Asian Tour received too many points on those tours. The bias inflated international players’ rankings relative to PGA Tour players’ rankings.
Note: If you want to understand how the system works, I explained the OWGR in depth on a December episode of The Fried Egg Golf Podcast (Apple, Spotify).
To remove the bias, the OWGR committee implemented a change in August 2022. Leveraging a statistical method called a Fixed Effects Model, points are now distributed purely on field strength without points minimums. The new methodology allocates significantly more points to tournaments with large fields than to tournaments with small fields, which is another change. Essentially, the new methodology reflects that it is harder to beat 119 players than it is to beat 63 of them.
Consequently, players who want to become a top-ranked player in the world must relocate to the PGA Tour, the strongest worldwide tour, as quickly as possible. In addition, it’s in the PGA Tour’s best interest to host tournaments with large fields.
Ok, why does any of this matter?
It matters because the OWGR is a fundamentally important component of the golf ecosystem. For starters, the OWGR provides historical context. Tiger Woods was the top-ranked player in the world for 280(!) consecutive weeks between June 2005 and October 2010. Woods’ ranking represents an incredible reign of dominance, contextualized by an objective measure. The OWGR also provides standardized qualification criteria into the major championships, golf’s biggest tournaments. For example, the top 50 players by OWGR at the end of each calendar year qualify for the Masters.
The OWGR serves a purpose. That being said, golf would be better without it.
This week is the final edition of Dell Match Play, the only match play tournament sanctioned by the PGA Tour. It features the top 64 players by Official World Golf Ranking. The tournament is historic and exciting; it is also a terrible format for a top player to improve his OWGR. The new OWGR methodology rewards large fields, and 64 players is a small field. Moreover, match play is a super high variance format for championship golf. Often a player loses his match despite playing an impressive round. Elite golfers like Scottie Scheffler could play a strong few days of golf this week and still get eliminated from the tournament due to the inherent flukiness of the format. If a top player skipped Dell Match Play and cited “Bad for my OWGR” as his rationale, I wouldn’t blame him!
Match play is arguably the sport’s most compelling and historic format. The OWGR disincentivizes match play from existing. Are those conflicting priorities good for golf?
Beyond facilitating a diversity of formats, getting rid of the OWGR would provide other benefits too.
Imagine trying to convince a company to sponsor a tournament on a lower circuit tour within the current golf ecosystem. “Hi marketing team, we’d love you to enter a long-term agreement to sponsor this tournament. If things go well for the champion, he’ll be on the PGA Tour next year instead of shaking hands with you here.” Tough sell! The OWGR is noble in its goals, but the second order effects are destructive to the sport, especially outside of the PGA Tour.
Ok, Joseph, then what’s the solution?
I’d stop trying to engineer a list that ranks the best players in the world. Abolishing the world ranking shatters the history books, which is not ideal. However, major championships will serve as the battle ground for determining the best player in the world, which is more exciting and easier to interpret than the output of a heavily-engineered formula anyway.
In a post-OWGR world, the major championships would allocate spots to accredited tours proportionally to the strength of that tour. Augusta would determine, “Ah, our data suggests that of our 90 participants, the PGA Tour deserves 72 spots. Send us 72 golfers from your order of merit. The DP World Tour is deserving of six spots, send us six players.”
Imagine pitching a company on sponsoring a tournament under this system. “Hi marketing team, we’re committed to building an amazing tour here in Asia. If you sponsor us and help us build amazing golf tournaments, we’ll foster the growth of talent here together. Once that happens, Augusta will increase the number of spots allocated to our tour, and we’ll retain our talent.”
The best players in the world should not have to move to America to have a chance of competing in major championships. The advantage of my proposal is that it acknowledges that the PGA Tour is not the center of the universe. You could build other tours around the world without having your talent stripped away as soon as a player receives a PGA Tour card and abandons you.
This is a competition-focused system that doesn’t stick its nose up at every tour outside the United States. Each tour can decide its own methodology for calculating an order of merit. Golfers can change tours if they are unhappy with how their tour is run or believe qualifying for majors through another tour is easier. Furthermore, this system liberates tours from considering OWGR implications when building their schedule. Match play could return to a player’s calendar without compromising his chances of ascending the world rankings. Rigid OWGR methodology should not get in the way of configuring the best possible entertainment product.
Someone could say, “Joseph, you’re recommending building an identical system to what exists now. A tour can already build strong tournaments and if talent gravitates away from the PGA Tour to that tour, players will get better world rankings and qualify for majors.”
In practice, that argument falls apart. Suppose two talented players are competing on a non-PGA Tour circuit like the Asian Tour. Each player has success, deeming him eligible for competing on the PGA Tour and leaving his home tour behind. The players face a Prisoner’s Dilemma. It would be better for both Player A and Player B if both players stayed and attracted talent on their home tour, but it is better for each player individually to go to the PGA Tour, therefore both leave.
In a roundabout way, I just described the LIV Golf origin story.
Within the current ecosystem, the only way to build a rival tour is to lure players with inordinate amounts of money to compensate them for exiting the competitive landscape and missing out on major championships.
You’ll notice that my proposed structure allows you to build a rival tour properly because it guarantees major championship spots to tours. If a tour is weak yet offers two spots into the majors, a player can vulture a spot by playing on that tour. Once you’ve built a strong tour, we’ll increase the number of major championship spots allocated to your tour. We’re allowing market forces to take over.
You’ll also notice that this structure allows for the seamless integration of LIV Golf into the professional golf ecosystem. However, we still need to evaluate strengths of fields worldwide (maybe even with a Fixed Effects Model!), so each tour would need to adhere to standards like open qualification. OWGR criteria exists for a reason.
This system is a much healthier way of creating competitive balance than throwing enormous globs of money at players, telling perpetual lies, and hosting pseudo-competitive tournaments on the CW app that nobody watched when they were free on YouTube.
The OWGR has been a useful barometer for evaluating the standing of the best professional golfers in the world; at the same time, it has destabilized worldwide competitive balance by forcing all of the sport’s talent onto one tour and into one region of the world.
If we’re serious about growing the game worldwide, let’s start by getting rid of the Official World Golf Ranking.
Rolling Back the Golf Ball
Last week, the USGA announced that beginning in 2026, golfers will be subject to a reduced-flight golf ball at USGA and R&A sanctioned events. The regulations are expected to reduce driving distance by ~5% for the top professional golfers in the world. Everyday golfers can continue to play juiced golf balls.
Why?
Aided and abetted by modern technology, golfers have hit the ball farther and farther over time, rendering many golf courses obsolete.
Golf courses eager to host elite tournaments must constantly lengthen, which requires land and water. Sometimes the lengthening efforts include some pretty ridiculous golf course setups.
Two of the main counterarguments to rolling back the golf ball:
The sport has never been more popular. Why make a change now?
Golf is the only sport in which fans and professional athletes play the same equipment. Bifurcation removes the best part of the sport.
To the first point, I’d argue that the popularity of golf is an inspiring reason to preserve its future.
And I surveyed Twitter about the second point, which isn’t really true anyway.
Survey says…
I firmly support rolling back the golf ball. Tiger Woods does too. Modern golf has become a driver-wedge contest, and rolling back the golf ball reintroduces shot value into professional golf. The rolled back golf ball will allow talent to identify itself.
If restoring shot value came at the expense of environmental considerations, I might struggle with the USGA’s proposal. Given that rolling back the ball promotes the sustainability of the game and restores shot value, I firmly support the decision.
More Rollback Resources
The Fried Egg Golf Podcast (Apple, Spotify): Esteemed architect Tom Doak, former PGA Tour player Roberto Castro, and I joined Andy Johnson and Garrett Morrison to discuss rollback from each of our perspectives.
D.J. Piehowski wrote a great No Laying Up article on the rollback.
USGA CEO Mike Whan joined No Laying Up to discuss the decision.
Player reactions:
Contact/Feedback
Email: Joseph.LaMagnaGolf@gmail.com
Twitter: @JosephLaMagna
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