Tiger Woods becomes latest PGA Tour star to criticize Official World Golf Ranking: ‘It’s a flawed system’
Jon Rahm has an ally, and it’s a very important ally. Rahm spoke out against the Official World Golf Ranking two weeks ago, and on Tuesday at the Hero World Challenge, Tiger Woods agreed with his view.
Rahm’s argument, in its most basic form, is that OWGR should not reward the winner of the RSM Classic with 37 points and the winner of the DP World Tour Championship with just 22 points when the latter must beat the top seven players. 25 worlds and had not beaten anyone before. OWGR, on the other hand, has structured its points system to reward beating larger courses rather than smaller ones (DP World Tour Championship has only 50 players while RSM has 156).
“OWGR, it’s a flawed system,” Woods said. “That’s something we all here realize. The pitch in Dubai has fewer points than Sea Island and many of the top players there in Dubai, so obviously there is a flawed system.
“How do you fix it? You know, those are the meetings that we’re going to have to hold. We’re going to have to have it with the World Golf committee and also… related to it. Somehow come up with a better system than the current one.”
The point here is that OWGR is capable of always would be a flawed system. It represents a zero-sum game (there can only be a 1 and a 2, etc.), which means someone will almost always be upset about how the scores are calculated.
World No 1 Rory McIlroy disagrees with Rahm (and now Woods) about the current system.
“So when you look at two different sectors, you have a field of 50 people here versus a field of 144 people there. [actually 156]”, he said. “So in terms of how the power of the pitch is calculated, they have an extra 90 players to contribute to the strength of the pitch. So the reason that this had 21 points [actually 22] and RSM had 39 [actually 37] to be the winner of RSM must beat 139 other people [actually 155]. You only have to beat 49 other guys here. It’s a much fairer system. I think it rewards everyone — those are pure numbers. The strength of this field did not hurt people’s feelings.
“Does that upset people? Yes, because people are used to receiving a certain amount [OWGR] point in an event and now it has been removed. But I’d say those events are happening more than they should. I think it’s the fairest system you can think of right now. And a lot of work has been done, 5 years of algorithms, analysis and work has been put into the system, so it cannot be changed overnight. A lot of things went into it. That’s the best we can think of right now and I think it’s going to take some time. It will take another 18 months for it to work because everyone has two years in the rotation system.
“It’s a bit — when it’s implemented, it’s a little bit different, but after we go through two years and have the minimum divisor and all the facts. I think you’ll see a fair reflection. more about where people rank in the qualifying world.”
Woods doesn’t call OWGR funny as Rahm didbut certainly members of the OWGR — including the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, Augusta National Golf Club, PGA of America, R&A, USGA and the International Federation of PGA Tours — will take Woods’ words to account for an overhaul. The new system team was deployed in August.
“I remember in my career, when I was at the top of my career, I didn’t have to play a tournament next year and I would still be number one,” Woods said. “Then we changed that system. So it’s been changed in the past and I’m sure this will be changed soon.”
Of course, all of these have special nuances, and as Data Golf pointed outOWGR actually rewards the bottom half of smaller schools than the bottom half of larger schools.
There are also very few cases where small pitches have good players on top tours. It’s a problem that I’m not positive is big enough to deserve a solution. Regardless, this will be discussed in the future, especially given the demand from LIV – which also has small fields with some good players – for OWGR scores in the near future.
Woods has had a record 683 weeks at the top of the Official World Golf Rankings. Greg Norman is second with 331.
