“PGT: How to fix the Official World Golf Ranking” plus 1 more |
| PGT: How to fix the Official World Golf Ranking Posted: 11 Feb 2011 08:34 AM PST The crusade against the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) is, well, officially on now. Fresh off of the USGA announcing that it would invite the top 50 in the OWGR to the US Open in lieu of using varying money lists around the world, we here did a small series of posts on why the ranking formula is deeply flawed and biased against American players. After exploring the flaws in the system, the next step is to provide realistic critiques and tweaks to the system that would improve the ranking. But, first, PGA Tour winner (at Pebble Beach, no less) Arron Oberholser came out true to his outspoken nature in opposition of the growing reliance on the ranking ladder for entry into golf's biggest tournaments. He spoke with Golf Channel's Rex Hoggard to air his grievances – which just happen to be mine. Oberholser did it so succinctly that the quote is well worth mentioning. "Get rid of the 'home tour' bonus, get rid of appearance fees, get rid of the two-year rotation, up the purses in Europe and see where the guys want to play. If you want a legitimate ranking, that's what you would have to do," he told Hoggard. What Oberholser said is a great starting point for my suggestions to improve the Official World Golf Ranking. Let's begin, shall we? Eliminate Home Tour bonus points: As Arron suggested, Home Tour ranking points are distorting fields are the world, granting them a larger pool of points to go out to more players. In a 21st century permutation, the OWGR awards extra points to a tournament on top of their initial allotment for each player in the top 30 on the host tour's money list. This allows fields to have their ratings increased by as much as 75% over what they otherwise would be. No matter how good the players actually are, the points are added. This means Asian Tour events can offer bonus points to foreign players by attracting their best players – which isn't a problem as most are loyal/have no other options – and still provide appearance fees. A great example is the Singapore Open, sponsored by Barclays, which lures in Phil Mickelson because of their relationship. The top 30 show up, bump up the field's ranking. Phil shows to improve it more. If Phil doesn't win, some lucky guy get a lot of extra points for the ranking that they simply didn't deserve. Reduce points for events that offer appearance fees (explicit or not): Appearance fees are fine. Guys should be able to make their money if a tournament feels they are worth the boost to their bottom line. But their paid appearance in an event should drastically reduce or completely eliminate their impact on a field. Tiger Woods presence in Australia each of the last two years has dramatically increased the value of the JBWere Masters as far as the OWGR is concerned. The tournament, owned by his manager IMG, was able to provide more points to more players, as well as help some of their clientele on the back of Woods' $3 million motivated appearance. The world No. 3′s appearance may have provided a dramatic economic boost to the area, but as far as the Official World Golf Ranking goes, it shouldn't count with the same boost to the tournament's ranking points. Slash the points added to a field by a paid player in half. They can make a choice – take the cash or play a tougher schedule – kind of like a mid-major does in NCAA men's basketball. As European Tour announcer Jay Townsend also has pointed out to Oberholser and I, the PGA Tour is not without appearance fees in some form. Tiger Woods played in Buick events for years when sponsored by the company, including the one in Michigan when he would otherwise skip it were it sponsored by, say, Kia. He boosts a field on the back of a sponsor relationship – kind of like what Mickelson does in Singapore. It is less explicit, which poses a problem with this suggested fix, because it can be masked on the American tour. Might sound crazy, but if a player shows up to a US tour event that is sponsored in some fashion by a logo they wear, then they should get the same treatment as a player receiving an explicit appearance fee. Of course, this point has to imply a total fix, not just a change to points. For many events, appearance fees are how they draw attention, create buzz and self-sustain. The Asian and Australasian tours, as well as several Euro Tour events would have to be able to increase their purses to be able to still attract good enough fields to maintain the event. In the absence of being able to do that, it is hard to justify this change. A different points scale for small field, no-cut events: There are several self-reinforcing aspects of the OWGR as it stands now. One is Home Tour bonus points, but another is the minimalist requirements for awarding points – particularly when it comes to field size. Events like the Nedbank Challenge and Chevron World Challenge, featuring fields of 20 or less, can award OWGR points. They are events with elite, hand-picked fields (though there is some form of qualification). A small field like that can give big points to a field, giving them a big boost. Graeme McDowell's incredible run in 2010 began in 2009 with a late entry into the Chevron due to Tiger's withdraw. That allowed him to get high enough in the OWGR to start a run in the majors, leading to a US Open win. Not to demean that at all – he had an amazing year – but it started because of a silly season event. Likewise, events like the Hyundai Tournament of Champions or the Tour Championship host fields without the threat of a cut, and they are official events with very small fields. The challenge with events like these (and, arguably, ones like Chevron) are that players do, in fact, play their way in. They also can't play their way out. It's a question worth exploring, but unfortunately, I don't have a good suggestion for how to deal with small field, no cut events short of offering no points for silly season events. Reduce the evaluation period to 16 months: 24 months is simply too long to evaluate who the best players in the world are. Golf changes much more dramatically now in a shorter period. Were a peer vote to be cast today for the world's best right now, Martin Kaymer would win going away. A few weeks ago, it would have been Graeme McDowell. At some point last fall, Miguel Angel Jimenez would have factored into the discussion. The point? The notion of golf rankings are much more fluid now than they ever have been. It is a testament to the depth of the sport, and the level of talents in the game should be rewarded with the capacity to move up the rankings even faster – and shed struggling players sooner. Make the evaluation period a rolling 16 months. Consider this: European Tour players benefit greatly from a string of events with their tour's best while the elite of the PGA Tour sit on the sidelines for most of Autumn. The US tour goes through stretches in which their events significantly overshadow the value of what's happening elsewhere, but European Tour players can still compete elsewhere. PGA Tour loyalists have a good 45 days in which they cannot have a great field to match what Europe presents. The result is that Europeans have an advantage entering the new year for gaining admission to events like the WGC Match Play and the Masters because their current points are inflated with better events. By reducing the ranking period to 16 months (basically, 70 weeks), that advantage is nullified. Sitting in December, the rankings go back to the prior August – eliminating the majors from two years ago out of the rankings. It helps Americans, who have deeper events for most of the calendar year, but allows Europeans to have the benefit of the recency effect in their late-season charge. Change how points are devalued over the evaluation period: In the current format of a rolling, 104-week evaluation period, players hold onto the full value of points earned for the last 13 weeks. At the start of the 14th week, points earned are reduced in value by 1/91st until they expire at the two-year mark from when they were earned. Scratch that. The devaluation is far too slow for the rapid pace of golf today. Points should count in full for eight weeks after they are earned. For the next 60 weeks, the points a devalued at an equal rate of 2% per week. That leaves 12 weeks in which the points are worthless. It sounds unfair, right? The idea behind having weeks where tournaments count, but points don't, will allow for me to get rid of a rather unfair part of the existing quotient. End the minimum divisor: Using a simple change to how the OWGR is currently calculated, Tiger Woods would still be the top ranked player in the world. Were it not for the "minimum divisor" rule, Woods might be sitting prettier than he is. The OWGR quotient is formed by the points earned over the 104-week period at their current value, divided by the number of tournaments played. That is, unless a player starts fewer than 40 times. In that case, the OWGR automatically makes that player's divisor 40 – regardless of injury, player strife or preference to take on a limited schedule. That has negatively impacted Tiger Woods' world ranking for years, making it seem like there is less of a gap between he and the world than there was. By reducing the evaluation period and introducing a stretch where points don't count, this allows the minimum divisor to be done with as it stands. The minimum divisor should be inherent – the number of tournaments a player's home tour dictates they compete in the ranking period. It should not be up to the OWGR to impose a higher standard than both the PGA and European Tours. Scale the points doled out by tournaments to dramatically favor winners: How on Earth is it possible that the top player in the world, Lee Westwood, has just one win in the last 22 months? And that win, at that, was gifted to him by Robert Garrigus in Memphis. It is inconceivable that playing "well enough" consistently is sufficient to earn the top spot in the world. In golf's historical view, winning matters. Career top 10 finishes is a statistic no one cares about when judging the best. A winner should get 80% of the points offered at an event, then dole out remaining points based upon the payment structure of the tournament – or a similarly weighted distribution. An old fashion T-shirt from No Fear (that I owned) said, "Second place is first loser." That should be the case for the OWGR. That pretty much sums it up – an easy guide to changing the Official World Golf Ranking to be more fair across global tours, for top and lower ranked players and to legitimately show who truly is the best in the world. Now, I should admit a few things. This system I am proposing clearly has a short-term bias. The goal with it is to create volatility, particularly at the margins – the very top and at the points where the ranking is most meaningful, which are the cutoff points for entry into invitationals, majors and the like. Additionally, my reluctance to reward consistency short of consistently winning comes from how golf is viewed historically. The sport's greats are viewed through the lens of winning. Jack Nicklaus would never hear whispers of Tiger Woods being the greatest ever if Nicklaus' 37 second and third place finishes in majors were considered, including 19 runner-ups. Winning matters looking back, it should matter just as much going forward. These ideas are a starting point for what can be a fun and enlightening discussion. Let's get it started. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php | ||||||||
| 9th Annual BHS Golf Booster Club Golf Tournament Posted: 11 Feb 2011 11:57 AM PST |
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