Way Too Much Weight Is Placed on the World Golf Rankings

It has occurred slowly over the past decade, so unless you have been paying very close attention to the World Golf rankings you may not have even realized that anything different was occurring.  

But, the face of the Word Golf rankings has drastically changed over the past decade, and particularly within the last five years.

If you had had a look at the World Golf rankings list back in 1998, you would see a sea of ‘USA’ next to most names. Fifty-five of the top-100 players in the World hailed from the United States with just 18 coming from Europe.

By the end of the 2008 season, the number of European born players within the top-100 in the World Golf rankings had increased by 40 percent while the number of Americans within the top-100 had decreased by 77 percent.

Currently there are just 14 American players ranked within the top-50 in the World Golf ranking, compared to 17 from Europe.   

There is absolutely no question about it, the level of talent coming from Europe has vastly increased over the past decade.

This can be seen clear as day in the way Europe has won eight of the last twelve Ryder Cup matches.

But, with the rise of the European golfers in the Wolrd Golf rankings over the past decade, it is somewhat surprising how few Europeans have managed to win a major championship.

Obviously Harrington has won three majors in the past two years.  But aside from Harrington, just two other Europeans, Paul Lawrie and Jose Maria Olazabal, have won major championships in the past decade.

So, the question is, why have so many more European names begun appearing near the top of the World Golf rankings yet aside from Harrington, only two have managed to win a major?

There could be thousands of reasons for this, however, there is one that immediately come to mind.  

The World Golf ranking systems has become severely flawed.

At this very moment, Robert Karlsson is ranked 7th in the world which is higher than Camilo Villegas, Kenny Perry and Steve Stricker.

Karlsson certainly had a strong year in 2008, with top-10 finishes at three out of the four majors and a win at the European Tour’s Mercedes-Benz Championship.

However, Karlsson played just seven PGA Tour events in 2008, six of which were the either a major or World Golf Championship event.

Now, I’m not trying to degrade the level of talent on the European Tour one bit, the level of play on the European tour has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years and I could very well see the Race to Dubai directly competing with the FedEx Cup in coming years.

But, let’s face it, despite a vast increase in the level of play on the European Tour, the strength of the fields are still significantly lower in most European Tour events  when compared to the PGA Tour.

Kenny Perry has won four times on the PGA Tour in the past eight months.  Villegas won the final two FedEx Cup events last year including The Tour Championship and Stricker’s name seems to appear near the top of every PGA Tour leaderboard in recent months.

Robert Karlsson is an outstanding player, there is no question about that, but let’s be realistic here, Perry, Villegas and Stricker have all performed a lot better in events with significantly stronger fields over the past year yet they are ranked lower in the World Golf rankings than Karlsson.

I’ve written about this before and I’ll probably write about it again.  But, this is yet another clear example of a severely flawed World Golf ranking system.

This would not be a big deal whatsoever if the World Golf rankings were not used to gain players entry into majors and WGC events.

Ross Fisher of Great Britain is currently ranked 32nd in the world, which gains him an invitation to the Masters next week.

In 2008, Fisher did win the European Open, which is a big European Tour event.  But, he missed the cut at both the US Open and PGA Championship and finished no higher than 34th in any of the six PGA Tour events he played in.

So far in 2009, Fisher had a strong finish at the at WGC Accenture Match Play Championship, but he has followed that strong finish with a tie for 46th at the WGC-CA Championship and a missed cut at the Arnold Palmer Invitational after carding a 76 and 79 in his first two rounds.

Is Ross Fisher really more deserving of a Masters’ invitation than players such as Davis Love III, Boo Weekly or J.B. Holmes who all won PGA Tour events last year and each finished with the top-50 on the 2008 PGA Tour Money list?

Now, it is quite obvious that the number of highly talented golfers coming from every corner of the world has been vastly increasing over the past decade, to the point where almost all of the up-and-coming superstars are coming from outside of the United States.

I also envision some form of ‘World Golf Tour’ being formed within the next 20 years to all but replace the current PGA Tour.

However, that time has not yet come.

To put it plain and simple, the World Golf ranking system places for far too much weight on players performance in European and Asian Tour events which contain fields that are drastically weaker than that of even your run-of-the-mill PGA Tour event.

It may not be ‘politically correct’ and it may vastly reduce the European and Asian’s tours ability to retain their top talent, but, until the proper weight is given to player’s performance based on the true strength of the fields they are competing against, the World Golf rankings will be flawed and will continue to rob players of invitations to the majors and the World Golf Championships.