Official World Golf Ranking Calculations to Receive an Overhaul Starting in 2022
Pro golf's world ranking system is getting a facelift, with changes geared toward more accurately measuring players' performances worldwide.
The new rankings, announced Wednesday, will take effect Aug. 14, 2022, and will include "Field Rating" and "Stroked Gained World Rating" as new calculations to evaluate performance and more accurately determine the value of the field in which a player is competing.
The announcement caps three years of research and evaluation. In 2018 the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) began to investigate a more precise way to judge performance. Peter Dawson, chairman of the OGWR and former chief executive of the R&A, described the latest updates as “the best way to compare the performances of players competing in far-flung corners of the world, perhaps rarely meeting head-to-head in the same events.”
Over the years, the OWGR has made numerous changes to the world ranking process. The current system uses calculations to determine the value of a field that are not based solely on performance, but add artificial valuations. These two new calculations will eliminate those artificial methods for a more accurate depiction of the field and a more transparent world ranking process.
“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,” Billy Schroder, member of the OWGR Technical Committee said. “Which means that there was some level of performances that were either being undervalued or overvalued.”
Peter Dawson, chairman of the OWGR, announced the latest changes to the ranking system.
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In the new system, all players who make the primary cut will receive world ranking points. In the current system, players can still earn zero points after playing the weekend, just like those who missed cuts.
“Distributing ranking points to all players making the cut provides greater differentiation of performances,” said Steve Otto, a member of the OWGR Technical Committee. “This occurs right from the highest-level events through to those with lower strengths. 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 ran is calculations through historic data and found that once fully implemented, the new system is projected to create minor changes to the World top 10 and a few more in the top 50. The more significant changes will occur further down the list, where thousands of players are listed at the bottom, 1,882nd, with zero ranking points.
“We have a lot of players on zero ranked points,” Otto said. “So, there would be significant movements where we're aiding to give granularity to that structure, but really there were slight changes within the top ranked players.”
The remainder of the world ranking process will stay intact, with the two-year rolling period for points awarded, with points reduced in equal increments over 91 weeks of the two-year period.
The new system will be fully implemented in August 2024, but the effects will be seen much earlier as the new calculations are added.
“I think we were all happy with where we reached,” said Otto of the possibility of additional changes to the calculations. “The number of presentations to the board was very significant. This wasn't a one-and-done. We were asked to go back and reconsider, so a very thorough analysis conducted, I think, and we took our time to get this right.”