SI World Golf Rankings: Kurt Kitayama Soars to Career High in New Top-100 List

Kurt Kitayama fended off a pack of challengers that included Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler on Sunday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. As a result, his ranking has soared in our latest top-100 list.

Jeff Ritter | Mar 6, 2023

SI World Golf Rankings: Kurt Kitayama Soars to Career High in New Top-100 List /

Welcome to another edition of the SI World Golf Rankings. On Sunday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Kurt Kitayama fended off a loaded field to snag his first career PGA Tour title by one shot.

This week, he’s cracked the top 10 in our weekly rankings.

See the latest top 100 in the SI World Golf Rankings here.

The Arnold Palmer Invitational was another one of the PGA Tour’s “designated events,” and the stacked field helped Kitayama earn more rankings points than an average event. He surged in our list from 44th to 10th.

Why so high? Kitayama also has a few runner-up finishes in big events that score points for our list. He's clearly a player on the rise, and our rankings reflect it. (As a refresher, here's how we calculate our list.)

Here are some other big movers for the week of March 6.

3 SI World Golf Rankings Risers

Kurt Kitayama

Previous rank: 44

This week: 10

Skinny: Won the Arnold Palmer Invitational for his first career PGA Tour title. Was runner-up at the CJ Cup last October, the Genesis Scottish Open in July and the Mexico Open in May, which had him inside our top 50 before his victory.

Harris English

Last week: 112

This week: 32

Skinny: Quietly finished T12 at the Genesis before a T2 at the API.

Trey Mullinax

Last week: 87

This week: 64

Skinny: T8 at the API for his second top 10 of the season. Won the Barbasol Championship last July and added a T5 in August at the FedEx St. Jude.

3 SI World Golf Rankings Fallers

Sam Burns

Last week: 14

This week: 20

Skinny: Missed cuts at API and Genesis take wind out of sails. Had three top-25s in four events before the current stumble.

Talor Gooch

Last week: 58

This week: 68

Skinny: No LIV event this week, so no opportunity for those players to earn points. Gooch was T7 at the 2022 API, a result that fell out of his rankings calculations this week, as the SIWGR only uses 12 months of results.

Taylor Pendrith

Last week: 63

This week: 76

Skinny: MC at the API. Also lost a top-50 finish in last year’s API from his current calculation.

Published Mar 6, 2023

JEFF RITTER

Jeff Ritter is the managing director of SI Golf. He has more than 20 years of sports media experience, and previously was the general manager at the Morning Read, where he led that business's growth and joined SI as part of an acquisition in 2022. Earlier in his career he spent more than a decade at SI and Golf Magazine, and his journalism awards include a MIN Magazine Award and an Edward R. Murrow Award for sports reporting. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and a master's from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.