As Money Talks Loudest in Golf, the Official World Golf Ranking’s Voice Is Muted
Sixteen years after it was christened by the last PGA Tour commissioner as a work in progress, the FedEx Cup playoffs remain chained to a life of baby steps, not all of them in the right direction. In no other sport is a postseason defined solely by the financial reward that comes with it—a garish emphasis on money that seems to portray pro golf in all the wrong ways these days. It’s the price you pay in a game of individual competition where warring factions have proposed to unite, or at least coexist, if only on the grounds of fiscal incentive.
The dollar is a good reason to do a lot of things, if not a reason to do good things. For all the slobber CBS left on the first playoff event in Memphis, which featured a strong redemptive story line and enough cause to push back 60 Minutes another 60 minutes, the Tour is facing some very rough terrain over the next several months. A conciliatory agreement with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia is sure to impose considerable effect on the game’s own theory of relativity, and with that, spark a voice of discontent much louder than the backlash from the June 6 announcement.
How do two leagues so different in style and substance form an alliance that suits both parties? Will LIV Golf even exist in 2024? If not, the readmittance of those who defected from the Tour is a headache no bottle of aspirin can resolve, given the legal, compensatory and competitive elements necessary to make things fair for everyone.
At the heart of it all sits the Official World Golf Ranking, generally recognized as the standard for measuring overall player performance since 1986. What started as an IMG marketing tool has become an indispensable commodity in terms of determining eligibility status at each of the four major championships. The Tour relies heavily on the OWGR, using it throughout the season to compile fields at big events, its preoccupation with FedEx Cup points notwithstanding.
It’s all about the top 50. Those guys have it made in the shade, getting into every tournament that matters by virtue of their OWGR credit. And while complaints over the ranking’s mathematical formula were fairly common in the 1990s, the system was adjusted on numerous occasions. When the Tour became more involved in that process and golf’s other governing bodies embraced it as a means of qualification, the OWGR received a boost in credibility that brought the griping to a halt.
In these turbulent times, however, with so much prize money at stake and the Tour’s aggressive modifications to separate the top tier from its rank and file, the OWGR has become dated, if not fallible or even inaccurate. Will Zalatoris withdrew from the Masters and underwent season-ending back surgery, so he hasn’t played in four months. Since winning in Memphis last August, his lone top 10 came at the Genesis Invitational in February (solo fourth).
We’re talking about a very good player who finished 2022 ranked seventh in the world, but the two-year sliding scale still used by the OWGR to calculate its standings allowed Zalatoris to remain inside the top 20 until this week, when the 67.2 points he earned for the victory at last year’s postseason opener decreased in value. Even with that reduction, he fell just two spots, from 19th to 21st. That solo fourth at Riviera came in awfully handy. Zalatoris didn’t fall out of the top 10 until mid-June.
All you need to know about the OWGR is that Zalatoris, who hasn’t teed it up in months, is still ranked inside the top 25.
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In the OWGR formula, it isn’t unusual to see players get rewarded for missing time due to injury. Zalatoris has 32 total starts in the current two-year window, 19 fewer than the guy right behind him (Sam Burns) and 15 fewer than the guy one spot ahead (Collin Morikawa). That amounts to an entire season of activity. Only Cameron Smith and Brooks Koepka—both of whom left the Tour for LIV last summer, both of whom have recent major titles on their ledger—remain in the top 20 with fewer accredited starts than Zalatoris.
Time to cue the conflict button. By refusing to acknowledge LIV Golf as a legitimate circuit worthy of OWGR inclusion, the eight big shots who compose the ranking’s governing board have turned this can of worms into an industrial drum. Despite anyone’s disapproval over the Saudi connection and its endless source of revenue, the league’s 54-hole, no-cut competitive structure or the mere paucity of those 48-man fields, it’s still professional golf. A lot stronger than any number of tours the OWGR does recognize.
A year has passed since the snub became public knowledge, characterized at first as a form of bureaucratic slow play by the highest-ranking officers in the game. Now it just looks petty. Childish and needlessly defensive, especially in the wake of this proposed alliance. If there are two dozen players in the rival league who would rank among the top 100 golfers on the planet, doesn’t that damage the OWGR’s credibility? Doesn’t it have far-reaching effects on the game’s top tier—the same collection of premium talent that has Tour commissioner Jay Monahan bending over backward to placate and promote?
How do you work those guys back into the big picture without making them start over? How do you impose sanctions on the defectors without causing more trouble than it’s worth? If the Tour and LIV remain separate competitive entities after a resolution is reached, will the players in the 54-hole club still be treated like second-class citizens? Who gets to play in the U.S. Open? Is a T3 at the Hit & Giggle Classic worth the same as a T3 at the WM Phoenix Open?
Will Zalatoris is not among the top 100 in the Sports Illustrated World Golf Rankings, which debuted at about the same time he was posting that solo fourth in Los Angeles. The SI system is as clearheaded as it is new, based on 12 months of performance instead of 24 and wholly nondiscriminatory toward LIV Golf, which has six players in the top 30. When math and science merge with common sense, the results don’t consider who you play for or who signs your paycheck. All that matters is what you shot and where you finished.
The numbers do all the talking. At least until the big shots enter the room.