Five things to know about the new Official World Golf Ranking

Golf’s global growth has countless benefits. But it can also present challenges, especially if you’re trying to compare players competing on all corners of the globe.

Three years ago, the Official World Golf Ranking began an analysis to answer one question: What is the best way to compare performances from players who compete around the world but may never face each other?

That was an easier task when the OWGR was unveiled in 1986 and included just six tours. More than 20 tours are now included in the ranking.

This growth was one reason for the changes to the world ranking that were announced Wednesday. This new system was created to provide a more accurate ranking, one that eliminates biases that existed because of arbitrary values that had been used in the ranking’s calculation.

Here’s 5 Things to Know about the new world ranking:

1. WHAT’S NEW: This isn’t the first update to the Official World Golf Ranking. In its 35 years, the system has been adjusted at least 17 times, according to Peter Dawson, the chairman of the OWGR’s Governing Board.

Under the new world ranking, a field will be evaluated based on the skill of all players in the field. The old system focused primarily on players ranked in the top 200 of the world, with little regard for the skill level of the remainder of the field.

Each player will now have a Strokes Gained World Rating based on his scores in stroke-play events over the past two years. A player’s SG World Rating will determine how many Performance Points he contributes to the field.

The sum of Performance Points determines the tournament’s Field Rating, which determines the number of Ranking Points that will be distributed. Ranking points will be awarded to all players who make the cut in a similar distribution to the prize purse, i.e. 18% to the winner, 11% to second place, etc. The old system did not guarantee points to all players who made the cut, but the new one does.

Other features of the world ranking, such as its two-year weighted average, and minimum and maximum divisors for individual players remain intact.

2. OUT WITH THE OLD: The Field Rating replaces the Strength of Field measurement, which focused primarily on the number of top-200 players in a field. Also gone are the arbitrary values that are used in the current iteration of the world ranking, like the minimum values that tournaments on each tour can award. The new world ranking is agnostic to tour affiliations and concerned only with the skill of the players in the field.

“We're using all players coming into a field to determine the strength of an event rather than a smaller subset,” said Steve Otto, the R&A’s Technical Director and member of the OWGR Technical Committee. “This … will eliminate the requirement to have artificial constraints on the field rating with a more transparent and robust system.”

For example, events on the PGA TOUR and European Tour can award no fewer than 24 points to the winner, regardless of the quality of the field. Those minimum values are not part of the new system.

There are no longer flagship events – a designation given to the highest profile event on a specific tour -- which also had a floor on the minimum number of points they could award. The only exceptions are the four majors, which will continue to award 100 points to their winners, and THE PLAYERS Championship, whose champion will earn 80 points.

3. GAINING ON THEM: So, what is a player’s Strokes Gained World Rating? If it sounds like something Mark Broadie would create, it should, as he was instrumental in its development.

Described most simply, a player’s SG World Rating is based on his actual scores in stroke-play events, which are then adjusted for the strength of field. Things get a little more complex when you consider it’s a statistical modelling calculation known as fixed effects regression that enables the scores to be standardized.

With either description, SG World Rating allows for comparison of players across a myriad of tours, enabling a 67 shot in the first round of THE PLAYERS to be compared to a 64 shot on the final day of a Challenge Tour event in Kazakhstan.

Each player’s SG World Rating will fluctuate according to his two-year record, with more recent scores receiving more emphasis.

SG World Ratings are an excellent evaluator of skill and would have strong predictive ability, said Billy Schroder, the PGA TOUR’s Vice President, International Relations and member of the OWGR Technical Committee, but the world ranking believes a ranking should reflect “established golfing norms,” including recognizing the majors as the pinnacle of the sport, putting a premium on winning and awarding points to all players who make the cut.

4. WHEN: The new system will not take effect for another year, beginning with the ranking for the week that ends August 14, 2022. From that date forward, tournaments will award points based on the new system (no retroactive changes will be made to past points awarded). Because the Official World Golf Ranking is calculated over a two-year window, the OWGR will not entirely reflect the new system until August 2024.

5. THE IMPACT: The OWGR predicts that the top 10 in the world ranking will likely remain the same under this new system and the top 50, which fluctuates weekly, would feature just 2-5 new players. The fact that these players compete regularly against each other is the reason for the minimal impact.