“No,” I said. “What was it?”

“Something like: ‘Get rid of the World Golf Ranking.’”

I clicked off the call with a full head of steam. What a brilliant idea. Get rid of the Official World Golf Ranking!

Who needs it? It’s a real thing, in as much as it exists. But it’s not a true real thing. You can pretend there’s a systematic way to rank professional golfers playing all over the world in all manner of tournaments on all manner of courses. But in the end it’s a subjective list that is dependent on criteria that have been put into a formula in the first place. Just because a computer spits it out doesn’t make it true.

Oh, in case you don’t know: The World Ranking List was an invention of Mark McCormack and Tony Greer, back in 1986. McCormack was the founder and chairman of IMG. His clients included a stable of international stars, including Greg Norman. “One of his goals was to get more of his international players into more tournaments so they could make more money so he could make more money,” Deane Beman, the former PGA Tour, told me in a telephone interview. “It wasn’t altruistic.”

Deane Beman. Simon M Bruty

Beman, by the way, was a renegade as a commissioner, and he was brilliant at it. As a retired commissioner he is the ultimate company man. He does not think the World Golf Ranking system should be eliminated. He does like the PIP payout system. He does believe that in recent years the PGA Tour’s FedEx points ranking system has been a better measure of excellence over the course of a year than the money list that he came up on as a player. I liked the money list. Or, as it used to be called on the European Tour, “the Order of Merit.” How charming!

Charm, as a quality of professional golf, is dying a slow and painful death. At least we still have Tommy Fleetwood and Francisco Molinari.

I asked Beman whether he ever served on the World Golf Ranking committee (he did not) and about his relationship with McCormack. “Before I became commissioner [in 1974], we were pretty close, but not afterward,” Beman said. “My job was to look out for all the players. He was looking out just for his players.”

It’s funny because it was true.

Beman (below) is a country music fan. I asked him if he had an official world ranking of his favourite country singers. He said he did. First he said Merle Haggard. But then he wanted to get Waylon Jennings way up there. Or should it be Glen Campbell? Or Willie Nelson? And how would you count the Gatlin Brothers, as there are three of them?

So it’s subjective, right?

“No,” Beman said. “I can give you a definitive list. Sixty years of experience.”

We were having some holiday fun.

He said: “It’s like asking,’Who’s the best player of all time?’”

I would say you can have an opinion, but that’s all it is. Is it Nicklaus? Woods? Bobby Jones? Ben Hogan? Mickey Wright? A fun conversation but not a useful one.

To keep the musical theme going here — and pretty soon we’re all going to be tired of Bruce’s version of “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” — Google this: Who are the best guitarists in history? Rolling Stone conveniently provides a top-100 list. Here are the top 10.

• 10. Pete Townshend
• 9. Duane Allman
• 8. Eddie Van Halen
• 7. Chuck Berry
• 6. BB King
• 5. Jeff Beck
• 4. Keith Richards
• 3. Jimmy Page
• 2. Eric Clapton
• 1. Jimi Hendrix

You might reasonably ask: How can Jerry Garcia or Jorma Kaukonen or Springsteen or Andres Segovia (check him out) not crack the top 10?

I called my close personal friend Davis Love III, and I congratulated him on producing an idea that makes sense in this tortured golf year.

Note to self: Do not bore these nice people, on this grandest of American holidays, with your opinion of the complete ridiculousness that is this PIP handout. But:

If you want the rich to become richer, if you want to keep them on the PGA Tour and away from LIV Golf and any other professional golf league, give them outrageous bonuses on the basis of where they finish on the annual money list. The money list is ruthlessly efficient. Tiger Woods has been the leading money winner 10 times. I’ve covered Tiger Woods since he was an amateur. I guarantee you he is embarrassed to be the grand PIP winner for 2022, a year he barely played. Tiger’s whole thing is earn it, earn it, earn it. That’s what made the Tour the Tour. But it’s not like he’s not giving the money back.

(My brother will sometimes say to me, Stay on the main road. Good advice that is hard for me to follow.)

Davis: “Well, maybe not get rid of the World Ranking. But get rid of it as a criteria for the majors.”

Somebody got to him! Somebody got to my close personal friend Davis M Love III!

OK, that’s a cold bucket of water on my head of steam, but even that would be a good start, though it will never happen.

LIV Golf, understandably and I would say fairly, wants its players to earn OWGR points. (The acronym alone is offensively unpoetic.) A player’s OWGR is a primary way to get into golf’s four major events. When Davis played in his first Masters in 1988, the tournament was still basically an invitational. There were a handful of ways to get an invitation, like winning on the PGA Tour or being the US Amateur champion. But the OWGR, even though it already existed, was not a path to an invitation. Being a noteworthy player from overseas was. The lords of Augusta invited players from Japan and Australia and Thailand on that basis. Now, being in the top 50 on the OWGR list at the end of the previous year is one path in.

That’s not good for LIV players, who aren’t earning any World Ranking points playing LIV events. And they are barred from playing PGA Tour events. A fundamental concept of golf, at every imaginable level, is fairness. No matter how you feel about the LIV series, you could make the case that’s not fair. I would. The OWGR list gives the appearance of fairness, but that’s all it does. See Jon Rahm or Andy Ogletree if you want more on that.

Love believes that small-field, 54-hole, no-cut events, the essential formula of LIV Golf, should not get World Ranking points. Beman feels the same. If there was no ranking, there wouldn’t be a problem. If Hudson Swafford wins three LIV events, the people behind the Masters and the other majors can decide if that is worthy of a spot in the field. They’re not going to want to be put in that position, because they don’t want to be in the subjective-analysis business. Easier to rely on a computer with its pretending not to be subjective.

Here’s the “governing board” of the OWGR: Peter Dawson, formerly of the R&A, chairman; Will Jones from Augusta National Golf Club; Keith Pelley from the DP World Tour; Seth Waugh of the PGA of America; Jay Monahan of the PGA Tour; Martin Slumbers of the R&A; Mike Whan of the USGA; Keith Waters of the International Federation of PGA Tours.

That’s more a club than a governing board.

To repeat, a fundamental value of golf, a game that is often cruelly, quote, unfair, is to achieve fairness where possible.

David Fay. Harry How

I’m going to give the last word here to my friend David Fay (above), the retired executive director of the USGA, because he is as insightful about the game at its elite levels as anybody I know. Here he is, proving that you can be literate by text:

“Ahh, the Official World Golf Rankings kerfuffle. If there were no OWGR, what would replace it? Having some kind of printed eligibility list, albeit subjective, is beneficial.

“Let’s face it, we live in a world of subjective lists and rankings. Colleges (academic). Colleges (football playoffs). Restaurants. Doctors and lawyers. Golf courses. Automobiles. EVERYTHING in this world is ranked, subjectively.

“This morning, I looked at the final results from the [DP World Tour Championship] tournament. Many recognisable names. Rory [McIlroy], Jon Rahm. The tourney at Sea Island? Brian Harman was the only name I readily recognised. (You can tell I’ve ceased having much interest in the weekly Tour events.) So I agree with Rahm: There’s a big flaw in the system.

“It seems to me that the leading professional tours, especially the PGA Tour, have far too much of a voice in determining points. This practice goes back to 2008, or thereabouts, when the Tour pushed for a pile of points to be given to Tiger’s 12-player invitation in the Bahamas. I recall saying to Tim Finchem at the time: ‘Tim, what is going on here?’

“And now you toss the LIV Golf tour into the mix.

“At some point soon, I imagine, a top-tier labour mediator, like the late Theodore Keel, will be brought in and get it sorted out, and there’ll be a reconciliation of some kind.

“But I’m meandering. To your question, my recommendation is for OWGR to remain in place, but to consist of just the four bodies that host the majors: the Masters; the PGA of America; the US Open and the Open. No professional tours — zero, none, zilch — would have a seat at the table. The four majors alone will determine eligibility for the majors. And among the Big Four, each of the majors will be entitled to include special exemptions of their own choosing. For example, amateurs in the Masters and the two Opens, club pros in the PGA Championship.

“As for the week-to-week eligibility for the PGA Tour events and the DP World Tour, leave that up to those tours. The four majors should have nothing to do with that decision-making. Sure the tours will howl at not having a seat at the table and a vote. But so what?

“I have every confidence the four bodies would do some horse-trading and work things out without requiring a chair. One can expect the leading tours to engage in some back-room horse-trading and lobbying. That’s fine. But they don’t get a vote. No seat at the table for any professional golf tour.”

Thank you, David. Happy holidays to all, and to all a good night.

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The post Is it time to abolish the World Ranking? appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The list of players that follows are that group, those who never made World No. 1 but, at the very least, seem like they should have. This excludes players like Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer whose primes came much earlier than the OWGR era. The World Ranking has been awash in controversy lately as LIV Golf seeks to secure rankings points for its players. But the players below were not excluded or banned — they simply never quite made that last ascent up the long mountain top and have never officially been considered the very best golfer in the world.

Honorable Mention: Tom Watson

OK, we get it — Watson’s prime was a little earlier. But unlike Nicklaus, who seems to belong in spirit to an earlier generation, Watson still feels relevant in the mid-to-late 1980s. This is a guy who was winning PGA Tour events until 1998 and captured five majors in three years not long before the OWGR began. Between 1979 and 1983, he was absolutely the best player in the world, but somehow he never even cracked the top 10 in the OWGR era. When you look at the results, it’s not that strange, but somehow it doesn’t feel right. Hence, an honorable mention.

T-10: Sergio Garcia and Henrik Stenson

You’ll have to allow us one tie here, because their stories follow the same lines. Sergio is 42, Stenson is 46. Sergio won a major, spent 453 weeks in the top 10, and was No. 2 in the world for 18 weeks. Stenson won a major, spent 338 weeks in the top 10, and had 24 weeks at No. 2. Both were close … but both also existed in the Tiger Woods/Phil Mickelson era, and if you weren’t at all familiar with the OWGR and someone asked you if either had been ranked No. 1, you’d probably say no. They easily could have been top dogs in the world, but it doesn’t exactly blow your mind that they didn’t get there.

9: Steve Stricker

Would you believe that Stricker spent 12 weeks as the No. 2 player in the world, and 254 weeks in the top 10? Sure, he had his slumps, but his 2009-2011 seasons were scintillating, and came on the heels of Tiger’s 2009 Thanksgiving ‘mishap’. In that span, he won seven tournaments, including a playoff event. The truth is, though, that even in Stricker’s weeks at No. 2, Tiger Woods was comfortably ahead. You’re going to hear this a lot on this list: In a world without Tiger, Stricker would have been there. In real life, he probably needed at least two majors to have a prayer of catching up, and the surprise with Stricker is that in that same 2009-2011 period, he only produced one top-10 in the majors.

8: Davis Love III

Here we start to get into the guys who are actually more surprising. Love had 24 OWGR wins in his career, spent five weeks at No. 2 and has an astounding 466 weeks in the top 10. In fact, in 1992, he won three tournaments in four weeks, starting with the Players Championship … and went from 12th in the world to eighth. The OWGR was far less responsive to recent form then, and clearly it hurt Love. By the time he reached No. 2 in 1998, we were firmly in the Tiger Woods era, but Love actually came close — he was just a point behind Woods for a month that year.

7: Mark O’Meara

This one’s easy — there are two men in the OWGR era who have won two majors in the same calendar year and still failed to reach the No. 1 mark. O’Meara is one, and the other’s coming later. The crowning achievement of O’Meara’s career came in 1998, when he won both the Masters and the Open Championship. Late that year, he got to within 1.5 points of the World No. 1, and you will absolutely, positively, never in your life guess who stood in his way. Never. Don’t even try.

6: Collin Morikawa

Admittedly, this is a weird one. Morikawa is 25 years old and has all the time in the world to reach No. 1. I would bet a large sum that he will get there before he’s 30. Still — still! — it’s a little bit wild that he hasn’t done it already. He’s already spent 24 weeks at No. 2, which is more than all but three people in the history of the rankings, and he’s come into plenty of tournaments already in the “win and you’re No. 1” position. It’s reminiscent of Justin Thomas before him, who had some similar close calls before he broke through. Unlike some of the others on this list, Morikawa didn’t have the Tiger juggernaut to overcome — he was as close as 0.3 points to Jon Rahm as recently as March. Then Scottie Scheffler turned into a human meteor, and Morikawa was forced to wait his turn.

5: Jim Furyk

Furyk holds the honour of having been in second place for the second-most weeks of the players on our list — a consummate runner-up. He was the bridesmaid for 39 weeks total, and part of the problem, of course, is that by the time he won his one major at the 2003 US Open, he was deep in the heart of Tiger dominance — and also not at his own OWGR peak. Furyk’s consistency across his career has been wildly impressive, as well as his win total (20 counting for OWGR), but a solid career with PGA Tour wins and a solitary major just doesn’t get it done when Tiger is walking the same courses. Furyk broke into the top 10 in 2000, when Woods was having arguably the greatest year in golf history, and climbed to No. 2 in 2006, the year he won the Vardon Trophy for low scoring average while Woods won every other award. When he won the Canadian Open to get to No. 2 for the first time, by a slim margin over Mickelson, Fuyrk’s points average was 8.90. Tiger’s was 22.8. As you might imagine, that race never tightened up. Furyk stuck around the top three through 2007 and made a run back into the top five in 2010, but there was just no room to dream of No. 1 in Tiger’s shadow.

4: Padraig Harrington

How do you win three majors in two years and never even get to No. 2 on the OWGR? It’s baffling, and if you had asked me before compiling this list if he ever hit No. 1, unlike many others I would have said yes, surely he had it for at least a week in 2008. But no — the 2008 Open Championship rocketed him from 13th to third, but winning the PGA Championship a few weeks later did absolutely nothing for him. Again, I’d be extremely curious to see how the modern system would be different, and I think he would have benefited far more, but in that late summer of 2008, he couldn’t even get within two points of Mickelson. And Tiger? Well, Tiger …

This is Padraig Harrington in the OWGR after winning two majors win a month in '08. Bonkers. pic.twitter.com/RVOZrdyiWT

— Shane Ryan (@ShaneRyanHere) October 13, 2022

3: Jose Maria Olazabal

Olazabal is third all-time in weeks spent at No. 2 — 35 total — and had 29 OWGR wins to his name. Like Love, Olazabal was hurt by a more static World Ranking system, and looking back, you can see some baffling trends, like the time he won the Masters as the No. 10 player in the world, and only rose to No. 7, and then rose just one more spot when he won again a few weeks later. For almost all of 1991, he was just behind No. 1 Nick Faldo and, then, Ian Woosnam, often achingly close. And when Olazabal finally overcame them in early 1992, it happened to be at the exact moment when Fred Couples briefly became a god, winning three tournaments in six weeks, with the last at the Masters. I mean, look how close he got:

Jose Maria Olazabal's close calls with no. 1 OWGR pic.twitter.com/SLAGOOrkh5

— Shane Ryan (@ShaneRyanHere) October 13, 2022

If you’re looking for an OWGR tragic figure, Olazabal is your guy. (Well, until we get to No. 1.)

2: Colin Montgomerie

Monty actually had fewer weeks at No. 2 — just 24, a total Morikawa has already equaled — but more than 400 weeks in the top 10. And despite the fact that he never won a major, he was otherwise a winning machine; he captured 37 OWGR wins, which is second most of anyone who never reached the top spot. Considering that he hit his prime in 1996, just before Tiger, it’s a stumper that he never made it. The culprit in his case was Greg Norman, whose mid-1990s resurgence included a bunch of wins on various tours and seven major top-10s in two years. The margin was inside one point for a period in the middle of 1996, but Monty couldn’t get any closer. A year later, Tiger was on the scene, Monty hit his mid-30s, and though he had plenty of very good golf left on the European Tour, that was the end of his chance to seize the top spot. Like others on this list, he needed a major at the right time and just couldn’t ever get it.

1: Phil Mickelson

This is my favorite stat from the entire OWGR universe: Jim Furyk has spent 39 weeks at No. 2, which is second all-time. Phil Mickelson is first on that list. His total weeks at No. 2? 270. Two hundred and seventy! That’s more than five cumulative years! He first reached No. 2 in 2001 when he won the Buick Invitational, and clearly, he sat in that spot for years and years and years. What else can you say? This is what happens when a generational talent like Phil has the misfortune of hitting his prime after the emergence of the greatest winner in the history of individual sports. All that said, Phil had his chance, and it came late in the day, in the months following his 2010 Masters win. He came within a point of Tiger that May, and nearly got within a half point by late June. Finally, by August, he was just a half point away, and by the end of the month the margin was less than 0.3. This, of course, was one of Woods’ worst seasons, when he didn’t win a single event, changed swing coaches, and was still recovering from the Thanksgiving 2009 debacle. By late October, Woods was ready to fall out of the No. 1 spot. And here’s what happened when he did:

Phil's best chance, arguably, to be no. 1—when Tiger finally fell out of the top spot in late 2010. Faded at the wrong moment. pic.twitter.com/LTycTCjW62

— Shane Ryan (@ShaneRyanHere) October 14, 2022

Certain things just aren’t meant to be.

Players who have been World No. 1
Tiger Woods (683), Greg Norman (331), Dustin Johnson (135), Rory McIlroy (106), Nick Faldo (97), Seve Ballesteros (61), Luke Donald (56), Jason Day (51), Ian Woosnam (50), Brooks Koepka (47), Nick Price (44), Jon Rahm (43), Vijay Singh (32), Scottie Scheffler (29*), Jordan Spieth (26), Lee Westwood (22), Fred Couples (16), David Duval (15), Justin Rose (13), Adam Scott (11), Ernie Els (9), Martin Kaymer (8), Justin Thomas (5), Bernhard Langer (3), Tom Lehman (1)
*Current World No. 1

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Last Friday, the entire roster of LIV golfers wrote a letter addressed to Peter Dawson, chairman of the OWGR board, calling for him to immediately award OWGR points to LIV events as well as award points retroactively for the five tournaments that have been played since the series began in June. There is nothing in the OWGR procedures, however, that would allow for this to happen, and there are several criteria required for accreditation that the LIV Golf series does not seem to comply with.

****

The LIV Golf Invitational Series undeniably has been building a head of steam, incorporating new players (many with major-championship credentials), generating publicity and, seemingly, gaining traction in its bid for legitimacy.

But as gold rains down on the select few who populate the LIV Golf roster, a cloud of uncertainty continues to hover over the enterprise run by Greg Norman.

Without being able to offer Official World Golf Ranking points, the LIV Golf Series will remain a relative outlier on the global golf stage, one that can provide its players a future of financial wealth in exchange for, at first glance, what would appear to be dwindling opportunities in the game’s major events.

Not surprisingly, then, the circuit sent an application on July 6 for accreditation to the OWGR board, submitted via sponsorship from the Asian Tour. Peter Dawson, OWGR chairman, acknowledged receiving it after the board met during the Open Championship at St Andrews, stating “an examination of the application will commence”.

However, it would appear in its current form, LIV Golf doesn’t possess the necessary organisational components to be approved. Golf Digest has obtained information that identifies various parameters that need to be met for approval, several of which LIV Golf seems to fall short on if its application to the OWGR reflects its current rules and governance.

The following compulsory elements would appear to be lacking:
1. An embrace of inclusion and promoting non-discriminatory practices.
2. Competitions contested over 72 holes, except for developmental tours (like the Abema TV Tour, the Alps Golf Tour, or the EuroPro Tour, among others), which are permitted to be 54-hole events.
3. An open annual qualifying school held before the start of each season.
4. A field size on average of 75 players over the course of a season.
5. A 36-hole cut, whether playing 54 or 72 holes.
6. A clear opportunity to progress to a full member tour, that is, to one of the six members of the International Federation of PGA Tours.
7. Reasonable access for local and regional players (i.e. Monday qualifiers) at each of its tournaments.

Additionally, LIV Golf does not meet the requirement of a 10-event minimum schedule, though it should next year with its plan for 14 tournaments. This bit of short-sightedness at its outset is significant because a prospective tour must adhere to the OWGR guidelines for at least one year immediately prior to inclusion. So even if it somehow were to be fast-tracked for approval, OWGR guidelines suggest the earliest date that points could be distributed wouldn’t begin until 2024.

Routinely, the process for OWGR approval can take upwards of one to two years. The application is first reviewed by the 10-person OWGR technical committee, which would work with the applicant to resolve points of contention. Then consideration is taken up by the seven-member governing board that is comprised of representatives from the four major championships, the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and a representative of the Federation Tours (Asian Tour, Australasian Tour, Japan Golf Tour, Sunshine Tour). Norman has spoken out suggesting that representatives from the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and other organisations represented on the board that have voiced reservations about LIV Golf should recuse themselves from voting.

LIV Golf does meet — or will meet — some of the requirements, including playing by the Rules of Golf, offering an average minimum purse of $30,000 (yeah, it’s got that covered), having a players’ committee as well as tournament eligibility criteria, and fulfilling various administrative necessities such as timely reporting of accurate player data.

LIV Golf officials could well respond to its list of shortcomings by citing a few exceptions that exist in the PGA Tour schedule. The PGA Tour stages five no-cut tournaments, two of which — the Sentry Tournament of Champions and the Tour Championship — fall far short of 75 players. But the tour has 37 full-field tournaments with a cut, and those tournaments feed into the no-cut events.

Then there’s the 20-player Hero World Challenge, hosted by Tiger Woods, which also awards OWGR points, but didn’t do so until it changed its field eligibility system.

LIV Golf players have discussed the possibility they might seek to supplement their World Ranking points by playing Asian Tour events, but the idea has considerably less merit now that a reconfiguration of the OWGR points distribution metric kicks in starting with next week’s FedEx St Jude Championship.

The new system, which has been several years in the making, no longer will award the minimum first-place points to tournaments with weak fields. Each event stands on its own. Thus, the Asian Tour’s minimum of 14 points for the winner disappears, and its events won’t be as lucrative on the OWGR scale. The addition of LIV players who are moving down the rankings during a drawn-out application process won’t improve field strength appreciably.

Should LIV Golf make the necessary alterations, what would follow is a probation period of at least three years, according to OWGR procedures. And in that time, LIV Golf could not revert to its original scheme once accepted or it would lose OWGR accreditation.

The bottom line is that LIV Golf will have to change its organisational model significantly if it hopes to get the good housekeeping seal of approval of OWGR inclusion.

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The post LIV Golf’s application for World Ranking points is in. But the hurdles to earn approval remain numerous appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Feinstein
On Sunday afternoon, while most Americans were watching football, an American golfer was pulling off a stunning feat. The golfer, though, wasn’t Bryson DeChambeau or Phil Mickelson or Tiger Woods.

It was John Catlin, someone who even golf geeks know almost nothing about. Playing in the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open, Catlin birdied three of his final four holes to shoot a final-round 64. A spectacular 3-wood on the par-5 18th from 268 yards set up the final two-putt birdie that allowed him to beat Englishman Aaron Rai by two shots.

Catlin, who turns 30 in November, has now won twice this month on the European Tour. On Labor Day weekend he won at Valderrama in Spain, arguably the most famous course on the European continent, and Sunday he won a tournament whose previous champions include names like Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer, Sergio Garcia, Ian Woosnam, Colin Montgomerie and—more recently—Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm.

Catlin became just the third American (and the first in 43 years) to win the title. Ben Crenshaw won it in 1976 and Hubert Green won it a year later, the same year he won the U.S. Open and finished third in the Open Championship.

Because Catlin’s win came on a late September Sunday, a lot more people were focused on how their local NFL team was doing or even on the last day of the Major League Baseball truncated regular season. Heck, even U.S. golf fans were more aware of Hudson Swafford’s one-stroke win at the Corales Puntacana Resort and Club Championship than Catlin’s victory.

Golf is a sport that is off the radar of many, if not most, general sports fans except when the game’s biggest events, most notably the four majors and the Ryder Cup, are taking place. The shame of this is that wonderful stories often go unnoticed or are glossed over, even by those of us who cover golf. No one is more guilty of pushing the importance of the major championships than I am. I’ve often said that winning one major is worth winning 10 regular tour events—at least. And the only players I know who disagree with that assessment are those who have won regular tour events but have never won a major.

That does not mean, however, that great stories don’t occur at non-majors. In fact, some of the most poignant stories happen on weeks when only we geeks are paying attention.

There was no better example of that than two Sundays ago when Stewart Cink won the Safeway Open. In 2009, at the age of 36, Cink won the Open Championship—the culmination of a career that had included five tour victories and four Ryder Cup appearances. Instead of becoming known to most of the public as a major champion, Cink became the guy who had beaten Tom Watson—denying him the chance to win a sixth claret jug at age 59.

Sean M. Haffey
Stewart Cink celebrates with the trophy and his son Reagan after winning the Safeway Open.

Cink handled it all with grace and humility, saying if he’d been watching the four-hole playoff from home, he would have been pulling for Watson. Until two weeks ago, he hadn’t won in more than 11 years since that day at Turnberry, a period of time in which he had endured the torture of watching his wife, Lisa, be diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer in March 2016.

Lisa Cink is cancer-free now and her husband shot 65-65 on the weekend in the Napa Valley to hold a trophy for the first time since his win over Watson. Son Reagan was on the bag for Cink, and the family’s quiet victory celebration was about as poignant as you are likely to see anywhere in sports in this strange pandemic-dominated year.

But because the NFL season started that weekend and because the rescheduled U.S. Open was up next on the golf schedule, Cink’s victory was little noted beyond the golf websites. It wasn’t on network TV and there’s no doubt a lot more people were watching Tom Brady’s debut as a Tampa Bay Buccaneer than Cink’s two-shot win over Harry Higgs.

The thing is, Cink’s story might not have been nearly as glamorous, but it was one far more people should have been able to relate to than the golden boy making his debut in another uniform. Truth be told, Cink played a lot better than Brady that day.

Because golf is built around the four majors and the Ryder Cup, a lot of non-major stories are missed—certainly by the mainstream media.

Earlier this summer, Daniel Summerhays announced before the start of the Korn Ferry Tour’s Utah Classic that he was going to retire at week’s end to coach golf at the high school he graduated from 28 years earlier. Summerhays never won on the PGA Tour, but he twice finished in the top 10 in majors (T-8 at the 2017 U.S. Open after getting in as fourth alternate and third at that year’s PGA). He won once on what was then the Nationwide Tour—as an amateur—and had a solid, though decidedly un-glamorous, career.

Matthew Stockman
Daniel Summerhays nearly won the Utah Championship in his home after announcing he was retiring to become a high school golf coach.

He decided to retire at a tournament near home, even though there wouldn’t be spectators at the event. Then, he almost wrote the script for a Disney movie, shooting 62 the last day to get into a playoff with Kyle Jones and Paul Haley II. Someone botched the ending, though, when Jones won the playoff. Even so, one could almost picture the freeze-frame-ending on that final green as Summerhays walked into the sunset.

Every year there are terrific stories that never make it out of golf’s insular world. Early in 2019, 31-year-old Adam Long arrived at what was then the Desert Classic with four PGA Tour starts to his credit—one cut made in those four starts. He somehow played his way into Sunday’s last group along with Adam Hadwin and Phil Mickelson, the tournament’s “host” and a darling of golf crowds everywhere, no more so than in the Coachella Valley.

With 80 percent of the crowd cheering lustily for Mickelson and the rest for Hadwin (fellow Canadians snow-birding in the desert), Long hung in all day. Finally, on the 18th hole, he drilled a 20-foot birdie putt to win, stunning Mickelson, Hadwin and almost every fan in attendance.

Keyur Khamar
Adam Long pumps his fist and celebrates his one stroke victory after making a winning birdie putt on the 18th hole green during the final round of the 2019 Desert Classic.

The win was life-changing for Long, who just missed the Tour Championship this year—finishing 31st on the points list—and had a two-shot lead Sunday at Puntacana, before a final-round 75 dropped him to fifth place.

There’s also the too-tough-to-believe-even-for-Disney story of Nate Lashley, who had very little status going into last year’s inaugural Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit. Lashley tried to Monday qualify for the tournament and just missed, finishing as the third alternate. He got into the field on Wednesday and then, at the age of 36, WON going from limited tour status to an exemption through the end of the 2020-’21 season. That’s not to mention the slightly more than $1.3 million he won to go with the silly-looking trophy someone handed him.

Catlin is just the latest example of a story worthy of our attention that will be largely overlooked. He was a three-time academic All-American at New Mexico and has taken the arduous journey in the direction of the PGA Tour that those who come out of college without star credentials often have to take.

Since turning pro in 2013, he has played on the PGA Tour Canada and then on the Asian Developmental Tour for two years. His breakthrough came in 2018 when he won three times on the Asian Tour to gain status to the European Tour. His post-COVID return to golf didn’t start very well this summer when he and his caddie, Nathan Mulrooney, went to a restaurant outside the tour’s bubble just prior to the start of the UK Swing in August.

Catlin, who had only limited status on the European Tour, was banned from the tournament, apologized and then came back to win at Valderrama a month later. His victory in Ireland moved him to 14th place in the Road to Dubai standings and 84th in the Official World Golf Rankings.

If Catlin can stay hot and reach the top 50, he will suddenly be eligible for the majors and for World Golf Championship events. Someone named Brooks Koepka followed a similar path six years ago. If Catlin can continue in those footsteps, he might get noticed someday. Maybe.

The post There are stirring golf triumphs to celebrate, even when they fly under the radar appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Joel Beall
Last fall, Brooks Koepka dismissed any notion of a budding rivalry between he and Rory McIlroy. “I’m not looking at anybody behind me,” Koepka said at the CJ Cup. “I’m No. 1 in the world. I’ve got open road in front of me … I’m not looking in the rearview mirror, so I don’t see it as a rivalry.”

Someone needs to tell the big fella to refresh OWGR.com.

Although neither was in action this week, the Ulsterman will overtake Koepka for the top spot in the World Rankings when they come out officially on Monday. Koepka’s reign ends at 38 weeks, holding the No. 1 ranking since winning the 2019 PGA Championship at Bethpage Black in May.

This is McIlroy’s eighth time with the OWGR crown, but first since Sept. 19, 2015. Scheduled to play in this week’s Genesis Invitational at Riviera, McIlroy has finished fourth place or better in his last four starts, highlighted by a win at the WGC-HSBC Champions.

With the No. 1 ranking, along with the PGA Tour Player of the Year in tow, perhaps there is something of a competition between the two bruisers. Of course, we’d be remiss if failing to include the second part of Koepka’s McIlroy remarks.

“I’ve been out here for, what, five years,” Koepka explained. “Rory hasn’t won a major since I’ve been on the PGA Tour.”

Touche. Which reminds us, the Masters begins in 59 days.

The post Rory McIlroy set to overtake Brooks Koepka as No. 1 in the World Rankings appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Luke Kerr-Dineen

It’s been a busy week atop the Official World Golf Rankings. With his runaway Players Championship win, Webb Simpson cracked the top 20 for the first time since early 2014, but that was minor news compared to what happened at the top. Justin Thomas finally managed to dislodge Dustin Johnson as World No. 1, albeit in a somewhat anti-climatic fashion.

In all, there were 10 changes to the OWGR’s Top 20 after the Players. With such a heavy shake-up, now seems like the perfect time for a quick breakdown of the players residing at the very top of the game.

To be more specific, it’s not really who is in the OWGR Top 20 that’s got My fancy. Rather, how did those players win their points. The chart below is my attempt to answer that question.

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On one axis is the number of events players play that count towards their OWGR (their divisor). The other is players’ average number of points won during those tournaments.

As you might be able to spot, there are four clusters that quickly emerge.

Cluster 1: Plays Often
The first group—consisting of Webb Simpson, Alex Noren, Marc Leishman, Patrick Reed and Tommy Fleetwood—is nestled in the top left corner of the graph. These players don’t always play incredibly well relative to their top-20 peers, but they play a lot. They win their points either by playing consistently over a high volume at tournaments (think Leishman, who has five top-25 finishes and 11 made cuts in 13 starts this season), or by putting together streaks good enough to negate their inconsistent patches (like Reed, who had four MCs and no top-10s in eight official events before putting together six straight top-10s, including a Masters win).

Cluster 2: Plays Less
Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson, Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson, Paul Casey and Hideki Matsuyama are in the next group. This cluster plays similarly to the first, but they don’t play as often. It’s a dangerous strategy in that you’re the margin for error when they do play is small. Perhaps it’s no surprise, than, that five of these players are ranked between 12th and 20th in the OWGR.

Cluster 3: Plays Less, But Better
This is the real estate where Cluster 2 ideally wants to live. Brooks Koepka, Rory McIlroy, Jason Day and Justin Rose all don’t play as much relative to others in the OWGR’s Top 20, but they rarely disappoint when they do. Day and Rose are the best examples. Together they’ve combined for only 19 PGA Tour starts this season, but have three wins, 15 top-25s between them and neither has missed a cut.

Cluster 4: Plays More, Plays Well
The fourth and final category is the best of both worlds: Players who play often and maintain a consistently elite level. Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth, Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson are all in this group, but as you can see, Justin Thomas is the stand-out. He doesn’t just play often, he also boasts the highest average points won (9.1842) whenever he does play. It’s nothing short of the hallowed ground, and it’s not hard to see why he’s the new World No. 1.

The post How golf’s best players earn their World Ranking points (and why Justin Thomas deserves being No. 1) appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.