New world order: Official World Golf Ranking adds some teeth to more accurately evaluate players

Following a three-year, independent in-depth analysis involving nearly a dozen academics, mathematicians, statisticians and sports analytical experts working with the game’s governing bodies, championships and tours in men’s professional golf, the official world golf ranking (OWGR) added some teeth to its measuring system to more accurately evaluate players.

Chief among the changes announced Wednesday by the OWGR governing body were two critical modifications:

World ranking points will be given to all players making the cut.

For instance, in last week’s World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, Cameron Davis finished 60^th while Si Woo Kim was five strokes back in 65^th; neither received rankings points. Under the OWGR revision, Smith would receive slightly more rankings points than Kim.

And a Field Rating system has been developed where tournament fields will be evaluated based on the skill level of every player in the field, rather than just those in the field among the current top 200 of the OWGR.

The previous version of the system used several assigned values (minimum point levels, for instance), resulting in a bias in the system. By using modern analytic techniques, OWGR can accurately evaluate the Field Rating of all eligible tournaments through mathematically justifiable methods.

The OWGR began in 1986 and covered six tours. Today it covers 23. Since its inception, the system has been modified 17 times.

“Sometimes these modifications have been very minor and sometimes a bit more radical, but they’ve all been directed at catering to this expansion and at increasing the accuracy of the rankings,” Peter Dawson, the chairman of the OWGR governing board, said in a Zoom conference with reporters. “Now, despite all of these well-considered improvements, and believe me, they were well-considered, the OWGR governing board felt that the time may have come for an in-depth review of the rankings.”

The updated OWGR system goes into effect in August 2022.

“What these reviews revealed was that through the use of assigned values in its strength-of-field calculation, which includes tour minimums, flagship tournaments, and the home tour rating, there was some level of bias in the system, which means that there was some level of performances that were either being undervalued or overvalued,” said Billy Schroeder, a member of the OWGR technical committee and vice president of PGA Tour international relations. “What the reviews also revealed is that there’s an opportunity for improvement in the ranking’s ability to differentiate performances, and that sounds like a fancy term, but when you get down into it, and you look at a given week’s ranking, there are quite a number of players out there that, although they have made the cut, they are awarded zero ranking points.”

Added R&A executive director Steve Otto, a member of the OWGR technical committee: “The enhanced accuracy offered by the new field rating calculation enables a higher level of differentiation between performances. This further removes an additional artificial constraint and enables a truer reflection of established golfing norms within ranking systems and the rewarding of players who make the cut in all events.”

The OWGR determines significant portions of the field for major championships, the Players Championship, several World Golf Championships events and many other tournaments. The four major championships will continue to award 100 points to the winner while the Players victor will get 80.

Being inside the top 50, 60 or 100 in the OWGR leads to more playing opportunities for larger purses. As well, many of the game’s players receive bonuses from their sponsors and equipment manufacturers based on their OWGR.

“It is very important to the game of golf and to all of the organizations in it that player pathways clearly exist. We want good players coming through to the very top of the game and finding the route to do so,” Dawson said. “It is not, however, the job of the rankings to provide those pathways. The rankings are there to try to accurately rank players relative to one another, and pathways have to be provided not just through that process but also by the, shall we say, higher level tours and championships, finding ways for players from perhaps lesser events or lesser tours in terms of standard of play to find their way through.”

Ranking points for each player are accumulated over a two-year “rolling” period, with ranking points awarded for each tournament maintained for a 13-week period to place additional emphasis on recent performances. Points are then reduced in equal decrements for the remaining 91 weeks of the two-year ranking period. Each player is then ranked according to their average points per tournament, which is determined by dividing the total number of ranking points by the number of tournaments he has played over that two-year period.

There is a minimum divisor of 40 tournaments over the two-year ranking period, with no more than the most recent 52 tournaments within the two-year period counting towards a player’s rank.

In a given two-year period, there are approximately 2,800 rounds in which 8,600 players post 250,000 scores.

“A huge amount of work has gone into developing this revised system, and we think it’s fit for purpose for many years ahead,” Dawson said. “I have no doubt that things will arise that suggest to the technical committee that one or two changes might be appropriate, but it’s very hard to see at this point what they will be. I think we’re satisfied that a very thorough job has been done.”