The 15-time major champ fell to No. 1,307 in Monday’s latest edition of the OWGR. That marks the lowest spot he’s ever been in his professional career, a fact pointed out by Twitter OWGR guru Nosferatu.

?NEWSFLASH

Tiger Woods drops to the lowest world ranking of his career at #1307.

His previous low rank was #1294 which he reached in Feb 2023. #OWGR

— Nosferatu (@VC606) November 12, 2023

As noted, Woods’ previous low mark came in February of this year. Woods then finished T-45 at the Genesis Invitational, a PGA Tour event he hosts, to move back into the top 1,000. That would be the last full event he would play in the 2022-2023 PGA Tour season.

Woods made the cut at the Masters in April, but withdrew during the third round at Augusta National after reaggravating his plantar fasciitis. He had ankle surgery later that month and has yet to return to competition. In total, Woods has only played in five counting events during the ranking’s two-year window.

Recent videos of Woods caddying for his son, Charlie, have given golf fans hope that he’ll return to action soon—either at the Hero World Challenge, which Woods hosts in the Bahamas, or the PNC Championship, where he’s partnered with Charlie the past three years. Both tournaments are in December.

 

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Woods recently did an interview with the Associated Press in which the 47-year-old gave an update on his health.

“My ankle is fine. Where they fused my ankle, I have absolutely zero issue whatsoever,” Woods said. “That pain is completely gone.

“… But all the surrounding areas is where I had all my problems and I still do,” he said. “So, you fix one, others have to become more hypermobile to get around it, and it can lead to some issues.”

Woods holds the record for most total weeks spent at No. 1 in the OWGR at 683. He also spent a record 281 consecutive weeks in the top spot from June 2005 to October 2010.

Main image: Patrick Smith

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The OWGR board sent LIV Golf officials, including LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman, the notice Tuesday morning. Sources had originally told Golf Digest that the league had faced questions over its “competitive integrity,” and it appears those questions remain. According to GGP, the OWGR cited two broad areas for its decision: The 54-hole, no-cut format of 48-player fields, and both the limited access for players to join LIV and limited relegation for players who underperform.

“The important point is, this is not about the players. LIV players are self-evidently good enough to be ranked; there is no doubt about that,” Peter Dawson, chairman of the OWGR board, told GGP. “This is about, should a tour whose formats are so different and whose qualification criteria are so different, can they be ranked equitably with other tours who conform to the OWGR norm and have more competition to them than perhaps the closed shop that is LIV?”

LIV Golf applied for OWGR accreditation last July following its launch in June of 2022. OWGR accreditation is a one-to-two year process; nevertheless, Norman and LIV members went on the offensive for their case not being expedited, especially as LIV players plummeted down the ranking. When LIV began it boasted nearly two dozen players in the world’s top 100. As of this writing, only two LIV members are in the top 50 and six in the top 100.

Even as the league called the rankings flawed and inaccurate, LIV officials tried to earn their way into the system. Last fall LIV Golf attempted to circumvent the process by partnering with the little-known MENA Tour, believing its association with the mini-circuit would facilitate World Ranking points. However, the OWGR denied the workaround effort, citing insufficient notice and lack of time to review.

As part of the framework agreement between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (the financial backer of LIV), there was a mention of the parties in question cooperating to help LIV secure OWGR consideration. Conversely, because of Norman’s protests, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, DP World Tour CEO Keith Pelley and Keith Waters of the International Federation of PGA Tours had previously recused themselves from the LIV decision.

OWGR accreditation for LIV events was imperative to members who were otherwise not exempt for major championships through past victories. With the decision, LIV Golf members will have to resort to local and sectional qualifying for the US Open and Open Championship, with their avenues to the Masters and PGA Championship fields likely restricted.

In a statement, LIV Golf said the decision shows the OWGR “can no longer deliver” on the objective of ranking the best players in the world.

“Players have historically remained subject to a single world ranking to qualify for major championships, the biggest events, and for corporate sponsor contract value,” the statement read. “A ranking which fails to fairly represent all participants, irrespective of where in the world they play golf, robs fans, players and all of golf’s stakeholders of the objective basis underpinning any accurate recognition of the world’s best player performances. It also robs some traditional tournaments of the best fields possible.

“Professional golf is now without a true or global scoring and ranking system. There is no benefit for fans or players from the lack of trust or clarity as long as the best player performances are not recognized.

“LIV will continue to strive to level set the market so fans, broadcasters, and sponsors have the assurance of an independent and objective ranking system and the pure enjoyment of watching the best golf in the world.”

LIV Golf is playing its 13th event of its 14-tournament schedule this week in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Main image: LIV Golf chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan interacts with Peter Dawson, chairman of the Official World Golf Ranking board, on Day 2 of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at Carnoustie. Richard Heathcote

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Phil Mickelson has accomplished just about all there is to accomplish in professional golf save for two things: 1. Winning a U.S. Open, 2. Being the No. 1 ranked golfer in the world. The former, while seemingly a pipedream at this point, is still attainable. The latter? Not so much.

Not only is Mickelson getting up there in age (he will turn 53 in June), but the LIV Tour’s events do not feature any Official World Golf Ranking points, meaning Mickelson would have to win the Masters and likely another major or two this year to truly improve is OWGR standing. And even then, the No. 1 spot might be out of his reach.  

That’s because Mickelson, who was actually still inside the top 40 this time last year, has dropped to a depressingly low standing that makes you wonder if he’ll ever sniff the top 100 again. He’s currently the No. 318th-ranked golfer in the world, a spot he’s not been in in … wait for it … more than three decades. Tip of the cap to the AP’s Doug Ferguson for pointing this out this past Sunday evening:

Phil Mickelson now out of the top 300 in the world ranking for the first time in his professional career. Last time he was still in college, right before he won Tucson.

— Doug Ferguson (@dougferguson405) February 27, 2023

The “Tuscon” Ferguson is referring to is the Northern Telecom Open, Lefty’s first of 45 career PGA Tour victories. The win came in January of 1991, Mickelson still an amateur at the time. 

Prior to his maiden victory, Mickelson was ranked 462nd in the world, and the win jumped him all the way to 164th. In the 30 years since, Mickelson never dropped outside of the top 300. In 1993, after picking up his third career win and his second that season at The International, he climbed to World No. 65 and remained inside the top 70 all the way up until January of 2020. 

Even after dropping outside the top 100 the following year, he vaulted back into the top 40 with his PGA Championship win at Kiawah Island. It’s been a rather steady decline since, with Mickelson failing to post a single top 10 in 16 starts worldwide since. Even on the LIV Tour, Mickelson had just one top 10 in seven starts in 2022. This combination of poor form and his current circumstances has sent him to depths none of us could have imagined after that incredible PGA Championship win less than two years ago.

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Johnson hasn’t been ranked outside the top 20 in the world since February 15, 2015.

A new OWGR formula began computing the rankings that were released this week. The field strength is now calculated differently, giving events more credit for having more well-rounded fields rather than field with a handful of top-ranked players. Essentially, more advanced metrics are included and players are now measured by a strokes gained/world rating, which is based on actual scores adjusted for relative difficulty for each round played over a rolling two-year window.

Johnson spent most of 2021 in the top spot and ended the year at No. 3. He’s played in 12 events that earn World Ranking points this year and his best finish in a stroke play event was a sixth-place tie at the British Open last month. He made it to the semi-finals of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play earlier in the year.

Of course, Johnson has played in all three LIV Golf series events so far this year — at Centurion outside London, Pumpkin Ridge in Portland, Oregon, and Bedminster, New Jersey. He finished eighth, fourth and third respectively in those events, but they do not earn World Ranking points. He is part of a large group of former PGA Tour stars who moved to LIV Golf and are now suspended by the PGA Tour.

Johnson, winner of 24 PGA Tour events and two majors, held the No. 1 position for a combined 135 weeks, third most all time behind Woods (683 weeks) and Norman (331). His last victory came at the Saudi International in early 2021 and his last victory on US soil was the 2020 Masters in November.

Brooks Koepka. Mike Ehrmann

Here are a few more notable players from the LIV Golf series and where they stand in the OWGR, each hampered by the fact that LIV events don’t receive World Ranking points:

Abraham Ancer tied for 11th place in the British Open. He began the year 17th and is now down to 23rd.

Brooks Koepka began the year 16th and is down to 25th place, a spot he hasn’t seen since he was 33rd in February 2015. The very next week Koepka captured his first PGA Tour victory at the WM Phoenix Open.

Patrick Reed dropped from 46th to 49th this week despite a T-31 finish in the Asian Tour’s International Series event in Singapore, which does earn World Ranking points.

Bryson DeChambeau started the year fifth and is down to 33rd, his worst ranking in over four years.

Louis Oosthuizen has dropped 19 spots (10 to 29) this year, Talor Gooch has dropped 12 spots (32 to 44) and Matt Wolff has dropped 60 spots (30 to 90).

Three of the four notable LIV Golf European players have dropped since the beginning of the year with only Sergio Garcia (45 to 71) and Lee Westwood (37 to 98) remaining inside the top 100. Ian Poulter is down to 108th from 54th to start the year. Henrik Stenson, who won the third LIV Golf event at Trump Bedminster two weeks ago, is up six positions to 176. He started the year 182nd.

Stenson has a first-place tie in the Scandinavian Mixed event although he actually tied for second place. He tied Marc Warren for second place there but they were the highest placing men in the event, won by young Swedish star Linn Grant.

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By Joel Beall
LIV Golf has officially applied for Official World Golf Ranking accreditation.OWGR chairman Peter Dawson confirmed the application in a statement. “Examination of the application will now commence,” Dawson wrote.

Though LIV players have been banned by the PGA and DP World Tours, they remain eligible, currently, to compete in the major championships. However, should the OWGR not grant LIV Golf accreditation, most of its players would eventually be unable to compete in the sport’s four big events. LIV Golf’s attempt to attain OWGR points is seen as a necessary element in the fledgling league’s viability.

“OWGR points should be granted, and if we get the OWGR points, then everything else takes care of itself,” LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman said in a recent TV interview.

To become eligible for LIV Golf nomination, the Saudi-backed group needed to be backed by a current OWGR league. They earned sponsorship through the Asian Tour, which signed a partnership agreement that will see LIV Golf pump billions of dollars into the Asian Tour over the next decade.

The OWGR board is meeting on Wednesday in St Andrews to begin weighing the issue. The OWGR operates out of the DP World Tour offices in London and is run by a governing board consisting of many of the founding tours and major championships. That means that among the board members are Jay Monahan (PGA Tour), Mike Whan (USGA), Seth Waugh (PGA of America), International Federation of PGA Tours official Keith Waters, Martin Slumbers (R&A), Keith Pelley (DP World Tour) and Buzzy Johnson (Augusta National). It is chaired by Dawson, former chief executive of the R&A.

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By Kent Gray
The Asian Tour will stage mixed-gender events for the first time after joining forces with the Ladies European Tour (LET) for a quickfire Thai double-header set to boast a combined $1.5 million in prize money. 

The Asian Mixed Cup and the Asian Mixed Stableford Challenge will be played back-to-back on the Waterside Course at Siam Country Club near Pattaya from April 7-10 and April 13-16 respectively.

Sixty players from each tour, plus 24 sponsor invitees, will make up the 144-strong fields for each of the $750,000 events where the men and women will play for the same prize money and trophy.

Critically, Official World Golf Ranking, Asian Tour Order of Merit and LET Race to Costa del Sol points will be awarded.

The events are to be hosted by Trust Golf, part of the Thai-based technology enterprise TCT Corporation, and are part of the three event Trust Golf Asian Mixed Series to be preceded by the Thai Mixed later this month.

“The Asian Tour is extremely excited to add a new format of play to our tournament schedule,” said Asian Tour CEO and Commissioner Cho Minn Thant in a joint statement.

“We thank Trust Golf for making it possible for the Asian Tour to stage its first mixed events, which will resonate strongly with golf fans in the region. It is also an exciting opportunity to collaborate with the Ladies European Tour for the first time and pay our maiden visit to the highly-regarded Siam Country Club.”

Asian Tour chief Cho Minn Thant

Siam Country Club is one of Asia’s finest clubs and currently the home of Honda LPGA Thailand.

Dr. Prin Singhanart, founder of TCT Corporation and the Trust Golf Tour, is passionate about innovative golf formats. She hopes to drive towards a World Mixed Championship one day.  

“I’m always extremely keen on mixed formats as golf is the only sport allowing people of all ages and genders to play together,” said Dr. Singhanart.

“I would like to provide a pathway for Thai talents, both male and female. If a female golfer wins outright, they will earn membership to the LET, and if a male golfer wins outright, they will earn membership to the Asian Tour. With the Trust Golf Tour affiliated membership programme, it will allow the players to be ranked on both order of merits.

Alexandra Armas, CEO of the LET, said: “We look forward to collaborating with Dr Prin and her vision to nurture the next generation of Thai talent. These new tournaments are important steps in the continued growth of the LET as we offer 33 playing opportunities to our members in 2022 and we look forward to working together with Trust Golf and the Asian Tour at Siam Country Club in April.”

Monday’s announcement comes after The Asian Tour recently announced its new  ‘The International Series’, a collection of 10 new marquee events made possible by a $300 million, decade-long investment by Saudi-backed LIV Golf Investments.

Korean-born American Sihwan Kim won the first of events, The International Series Thailand, at Black Mountain Golf Club on Sunday, ending a string of near misses on the Asian Tour to claim in maiden pro title after 10 years of trying.

The new Asian Mixed events add immediate focus to the 2022-23 Asian Tour schedule which is still a work in progress due to the ongoing challenges of the pandemic. The $500,000 DGC Open at Delhi Golf Club in India is the next event confirmed from March 24-27. 

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By Alex Myers
Jordan Spieth’s bounceback year continued on Monday. And this time, he didn’t even have to play.

The 28-year-old wasn’t in action at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, but that didn’t keep him from continuing to climb (back) up the Official World Golf Ranking. In Monday’s latest edition, Spieth is No. 10, putting him back in the top 10 for the first time in more than three years.

OK, so obviously a golfer who has spent time at No. 1 and who won three majors before turning 24 has loftier goals than this. Still, returning to top-10 status is impressive considering Spieth ended 2020 ranked 82nd.

Despite having last week off, Spieth moved up three spots in the rolling, two-year ranking. The 12-time PGA Tour winner was last ranked this high following the 2018 BMW Championship. The rest of the top 10, including World No. 1 Jon Rahm, remained unchanged.

Spieth began 2021 with a missed cut at the Farmers Insurance Open, but has played the weekend in every tournament since. He finished last season with nine top 10s, including two runner-ups, two thirds, and a win at the Valero Texas Open.

Spieth was a member of the winning U.S. Ryder Cup team in September before finishing T-18 at the CJ Cup last month, his first start of the 2021-22 PGA Tour season.

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After more than a year of behind-the-scenes collaboration, MENA Tour Commissioner David Spencer confirmed on Wednesday the regional developmental circuit is close to finalising a game-changing partnership with the Singapore-based Asian Tour.

The blueprint is to “mould” the MENA and the Asian Development Tours into the “most comprehensive and innovative development tour in men’s professional golf, outside of the United States”.

Just as the second-tier Korn Ferry Tour is the feeder circuit to the PGA Tour, the MENA/Asian DT offshoot will provide a pathway to a re-energised Asian Tour, the details of which are soon be revealed after the circuit was put on ice following the outbreak of COVID-19.

While the PGA Tour’s historic strategic alliance with the European Tour (announced Nov. 27) has been the most significant development in the world of golf since the outbreak of the pandemic, the quiet manoeuvrings of the Asian Tour should not be underestimated.

Sources continue to hint at a link to Golf Saudi and more loosely with the cash-rich, Kingdom-backed Super Golf League, the demise of which appears to have been hastily reported.

The MENA Tour, via the Asian Tour partnership, has decided to back the ambitious Saudi plan to reinvent the professional game. A major powerbroker in the shake-up is young Asian Tour Commissioner and CEO, Cho Minn Thant. He was promoted to the top job in July 2019 after more than a decade working several key roles with the organisation, most recently as Chief Operating Officer.

“I’ve long been keen on seeing golf harness some younger administrators. Cho has clearly articulated his vision for the Asian Tour and I believe in his vision,” Spencer said.

“I’ve always wanted to find the MENA Tour the right home and partner and I believe this is it. And this is just the beginning.”

Paul Lakatos/Asian Tour/Asian Tour via Getty Image
Asian Tour chief Cho Minn Thant tees off in the Pro-Am ahead of the 2019 Panasonic Open India in Gurgaon.

Spencer is convinced just announced changes to how the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) will be calculated from August 2022 will make it harder for players to graduate from the Korn Ferry and Challenge Tours to the PGA and European Tours respectively and could even kill off many smaller development circuits around the globe. The PGA-European Tour alliance is also likely to limit playing opportunties, further narrowing the pathway to the elite level for the game’s next generation. That double-whammy has the Thai-based Australian administrator convinved a combined MENA-Asia Development Tour will be a boon for the region’s best up and coming talent.

“Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make the perfect omelette,” he said.

Golf Digest Middle East understands a schedule of between 12-15 events, including tournaments in the Middle East, is likely in 2021-2022 and could build to a maximum of 25 events over time. The goal, as opposed to a packed schedule, is richer prize purses than previous US$75,000 MENA Tour events, cheaper entry fees and more opportunities at the elite level, firstly on the Asian Tour and, presumably, the Super Golf League if it takes flight.

“To be clear, what we are putting together is not going to be perfect straight away, especially not in what is something of a transitional year as we mould the tours together,” Spencer said. “But as we’ve always strived to do, we’ll eventually get to perfect or as close as we possibly can.”

Wednesday’s announcement comes after two failed attempts to reschedule the five 2020 events postponed when the MENA Tour shut down on March 4 last year, and to play a full 2021 schedule after that. The first plan included a lock-in at the tour’s destination partner, Ayla Resort in Aqaba, Jordan, the second a wider travelling bubble taking in Jordan, Oman and the UAE.

David Spencer

Now it seems likely events as early as December are on the cards as part of a new, more powerful joint tour. What Spencer did guarantee is that all members of the MENA Tour in 2020/21 will be able to renew their membership for 2022 and there will not be a Q-School until later in the 2022 calendar for the 2023 season.

“Cho has been working tirelessly since the commencement of the COVID-19 pandemic to protect his tour and create an even better future for his players. He realises that a tour must demonstrate and invest in a clear pathway to attract players and provide them with a future.

“It is because of this vision and set of beliefs that the MENA Tour and the Asian Development Tour will escalate dialogue to create the most comprehensive and innovative development tour in men’s professional golf, outside of the United States, to inspire the next generation and to be an expanded development pathway to the Asian Tour and beyond.”

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By Shane Ryan
In August 2022, a year from now, the system used to calculate the Official World Golf Ranking will undergo significant changes.

“While the Ranking has served men’s professional golf exceptionally well,” reads an explainer provided to the media from the OWGR governing board this week, “analysis has revealed that by modernising two components of the system, the Ranking could provide significantly greater accuracy while differentiating performances [i.e., rank] of all 5,000 players included in the system.”

To understand the changes, it’s necessary to understand how the system works now … which, for the casual fan, is not a given.

The current form of OWGR can be summarised as follows:

1. The OWGR uses two years, or 104 weeks, worth of results.

2. Each player earns points based on how he finishes in a tournament. He earns more points for a higher finish.

3. If a tournament field is strong, total points rise. If a field is weak, total points fall. This next thought is complicated: There’s a world rating chart (which takes into account the quality of players) and a home rating chart (taking into account the number of quality players from the home tour), and those numbers are combined into a “strength of field” rating. After that, the OWGR has a guide identifying exactly how many points each finisher should get.

4. The points a player earns in a tournament are counted in full for 13 weeks. After that, the value decreases by about 1.09 percent per week for the remaining 91 weeks, diminishing gradually until the 105th week, when it vanishes into the fog of time and is counted no more.

5. Each player’s total points are added, divided by his total events played, and from that, you have a World Ranking list.

What you may have noticed baked into point No. 3 is that the “value” of each tournament depends on where it’s played and who is playing. In other words, your average PGA Tour event has always been more valuable than your average European Tour event, which is more valuable than an average event on any other tour. To give a recent example, from Week 30 in 2021, the winner of the 3M Open in Minnesota received 40 World Ranking points, the winner of the Cazoo Open in Europe received 24, the Korn Ferry Tour winner got 14, the Challenge Tour winner got 12, the Korean winner nine, the Canadian winner six, PGA Tour Latinoamérica six, and so on into the more obscure tours.

The relative strength of top-tier American golf is accounted for. However, there is still a modicum of “protection” for smaller tours based on minimum point variables. Those will be gone, and if you want an overarching headline from the new OWGR changes, it’s this:

Starting next summer, the tournaments with the best players in the world are going to be even more valuable from a World Ranking perspective, relative to the rest, because of the relative value of the players themselves.

How much more valuable? That’s tougher to say, but we can get closer to the truth by laying out the nuts and bolts of how things will actually change:

1. This is the big one: Instead of just OWGR points, which are static and assigned based on pre-set values, players are going to be measured by a second metric called Strokes Gained World Rating (SGWR). This will be based on “actual scores in stroke-play events adjusted for the relative difficulty of each round played over a rolling two-year period.”

2. Also key: The SGWR score will determine the strength of each field, because each player will have “performance points” that he brings into a tournament based on the SGWR. The total performance points in an event will be known as a “field rating.” These points will be up for grabs by the entire field, and those numbers will determine World Ranking.

3. The points available for each finishing position will still be set prior to the event. In other words, you can’t win more points with a 15-shot win vs. a playoff win. (Though this will increase a player’s SGWR, and thus the number of performance points he brings to the next tournament.) To do otherwise would be to simply measure the World Ranking by SGWR, and the powers that be are avoiding that to ensure that a premium is still placed on winning.

Meanwhile, the current two-year system, with diminishing values for old events as time passes, remains in a similar form.

The strokes gained concept developed by Mark Broadie and eventually embraced by the PGA Tour is being adapted to measure World Ranking, and in fact, according to Billy Schroder of the PGA Tour, Broadie has personally been “integral” in the adaptive process.

Drew Hallowell
Dustin Johnson is the current World No. 2.

Today, rankings are determined by pre-set numbers based on assumptions about how a field would look. Under the new system, field rating is relative to recent performance. Where Cam Champ, the winner of this year’s 3M Open, received 40 World Ranking points, the winner in the future could get more or less depending on whom actually shows up.

The advantage here is that you can measure performance in a more dynamic, distilled manner; no longer do you have to limit the measure of skill in a field to a set number of players, and now every player who makes the cut can earn a portion of the performance points available that week. Rather than laying out a baseline assumption that first place is X points better than second place under the old system of assigned values, you can now allot the points precisely based on the field that week. That is unquestionably good, from an accuracy perspective.

The potential disadvantage is creating, or at least exacerbating, a “rich get richer” situation, both in terms of players and tours. The case can be made that good results on an individual level will contribute to higher performance points in each event, which gives the world’s best players more and more points to accumulate, to the point that they exist in a different statistical stratosphere than their counterparts in Europe and Asia. And couldn’t you extrapolate from there that the same will happen on the tour level, with the PGA Tour especially benefiting?

The answer is, “maybe,” but we have no idea how much, or if indeed it will be any different than the disparities we see today (which, you could argue, benefit non-American tours too much as it stands). The OWGR technical committee knows the answer, having run countless simulations, but in a press conference Tuesday they were careful to avoid answering any specific questions about the benefit to larger tours or how, in their simulations, the actual World Ranking of today would be different under the new system. The most we got in a written explainer is that they anticipate that the top 50 would be different by “2-5” players under the new system, while the top 10 would remain unchanged. But in terms of the strokes gained system benefiting the PGA Tour, this language from the explainer is interesting:

“To account for round difficulty—including differences in field, course and scoring conditions—a widely accepted statistical modeling calculation known as fixed effects regression simultaneously uses all scores in a two-year period to standardize all rounds relative to one another, providing the appropriate adjustment value necessary. A round with highly skilled players and challenging scoring conditions played on a difficult course will have scores adjusted down, while a round with lesser skilled players and more benign scoring conditions played on an easier course will have scores adjusted up.”

It’s easy to imagine that the highly skilled players will all cluster in one place, leading to a self-perpetuating upward spiral, perhaps leading to fewer global opportunities in the short term and further depletion of global tours in the long term. Nevertheless, the OWGR committee has anticipated that outcome and stated in its presentation that its analysis “ensured that consistent high-level play resulted in significant improvement in a player’s Ranking, regardless of which Tour he competes.”

Here’s the short answer for those worried about removing the World Ranking crutch that has propped up non-American golf under the existing system: We’ll have to wait and see, but it will probably be fine.

There are nods to tradition here. Majors will still follow a baseline of 100 points awarded to the top finisher, and while “flagship events” are allegedly eliminated, the Players Championship keeps its status as the best of the rest, with 80 points going to the winner. Again, winning is at a premium, so you’re not going to see a series of top-five finishes taking on greater value than more erratic play that results in an occasional win. (i.e., Tony Finau shouldn’t be doing cartwheels right now.) Finally, because this is a rolling two-year system, even after implementation next August, there will be two years before rankings are entirely determined by the new method. There will be plenty of time to adust.

In short, this is a step forward from a mathematical perspective, and the only potential pitfall—which some would not consider a pitfall at all—is that in the noble quest for relativity, the slight bias toward non-PGA Tour golf may be eliminated, with whatever consequences that entails to world golf. We don’t know for sure that this will happen, or how extreme it will be, but it’s hard to imagine that the OWGR would implement any system that (for instance) significantly cut off paths to WGC events for foreign players.

They’ve run the numbers, everything they say makes a lot of sense, and until proven otherwise, the appropriate response here seems to be, sit back and trust the math.

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By Dave Shedloski
Rickie Fowler came to the Memorial Tournament with a mission of avoiding an extra 36 holes of golf the day after its conclusion. No such luck.

Ranked 101st in the world entering the Memorial, Fowler needed to finish first or second at Muirfield Village Golf Club to climb into the top 60 in the Official World Golf Ranking and earn an exemption into the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines near San Diego two weeks hence. But after sitting in seventh place after two rounds, Fowler slipped backwards with a third-round 75. He closed on Sunday with a 70 to end up T-11 at four-under 284.

In order to keep his streak alive of U.S. Open starts, he’ll have to play in the 36-hole final qualifier on Monday at two Columbus-area courses, Brookside G. & C.C. and The Lakes G. & C.C. He has played in the last 10 U.S. Opens, with a T-2 in 2014 at Pinehurst No. 2 his best showing. He finished T-49 last fall at Winged Foot.

“I’ve done this a couple of times now, so I know what I need to do,” Fowler, 32, said Sunday. “It’s happened before. … The two courses are scorable. You don’t have to go out there and play great. It’s about not making many mistakes.”

Fowler has been enduring a slump of sorts for more than a year. Until his T-8 at the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island, he hadn’t finished in the top-10 in a tournament since The American Express in January 2020. He had slipped to 128th in the world before finding a spark at the PGA. Earlier in the year he missed his first Masters—and first major—since 2010.

The popular California native isn’t the only player of note preparing for golf’s longest day. Major champions Padraig Harrington, Keegan Bradley, Jason Dufner and Charl Schwartzel also are vying for a berth in Columbus. Lucas Glover, the 2009 U.S. Open champion, is rushing back from Ohio to play his home course in Jupiter, Fla., The Bear’s Club—another Nicklaus layout. Former World No. 1 Luke Donald also is in the field there, while former Ryder Cup players Ian Poulter and Brandt Snedeker are in the field in Hilton Head, S.C.

This will be Fowler’s fourth spin through the sectionals in Columbus, where he has had mixed success. As an amateur in 2008, when the U.S. Open was first held at Torrey Pines, he lost out in a playoff that involved nine players for seven spots after shooting 66 at Brookside and 73 at Ohio State’s Scarlet Course. He later got into the field as the first alternate. That playoff included Rocco Mediate, the eventual runner-up to Tiger Woods, and Dustin Johnson, who won the 2016 U.S. Open.

In 2009, Fowler again was successful, shooting 70-65—135 at Brookside and The Lakes. The following year he came up well short, however, when he posted 143 at the same two layouts.

Fowler said he sent his caddie, Joe Skovron, to the two qualifying sites early last week for a little extra reconnaissance. The rest is up to him.

“Just go get some good food tonight, get some good sleep, rest up. It will be a long day,” Fowler said of his final preparations. “Hopefully we can dodge some rain and storms in the afternoon. Other than that, it’s about kind of just move forward. I did a pretty good job of that this week. A few mistakes; it’s bound to happen at this place. But tomorrow we’re playing at golf courses that are maybe a little less demanding than a place like Muirfield.

“It’s mainly don’t go out there and trip over your shoelaces,” he added. “We’ll see what we can go do tomorrow. It would be a bonus if we get to go play Torrey Pines.”

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