OWGR - Week#30

Congratulations to Sean O'Hair, Alex Noren and Kim Kyung-Tae for their wins this week!
Sean moving back up to #60, Noren to #70 and Kim K-T to a carreer high of #23.
Ishikawa back in top 50, but Robert Rock kept once again outside top 100...
And great to see John Daly with a top 10 finish after a very, very long time.
Good enough for a leap of around 230 places to somewhere around #590.

Here is how OWGR should look like after week #30:

1 Luke Donald
2 Lee Westwood
3 Martin Kaymer
4 Rory McIlroy
5 Steve Stricker
6 Phil Mickelson
7 Dustin Johnson
8 Jason Day
9 Carl Schwartzel
10 Matt Kuchar
11 Nick Watney
12 Graeme McDowell
13 Bubba Watson
14 K.J. Choi
15 Paul Casey
16 Ian Poulter
17 Adam Scott
18 Robert Karlsson
19 Hunter Mahan
20 Retief Goosen
21 Tiger Woods
22 Francesco Molinari
23 Kim Kyung-Tae
24 Jim Furyk
25 Ernie Els
26 Alvaro Quiros
27 David Toms
28 Martin Laird
29 Miguel Jimenez
30 Matteo Manassero
31 Darren Clarke
32 Zach Johnson
33 Justin Rose
34 Louis Oosthuizen
35 Bo Van Pelt
36 Y.E. Yang
37 Tim Clark
38 Geoff Ogilvy
39 Ryan Moore
40 Gary Woodland
41 Edoardo Molinari
42 Peter Hanson
43 Anders Hansen
44 Robert Allenby
45 Rickie Fowler
46 Brandt Snedeker
47 Bill Haas
48 Sergio Garcia
49 Ryo Ishikawa
50 Jonathan Byrd
------------------------------
51 Rory Sabbatini
52 Ryan Palmer
53 Webb Simpson
54 Aaron Baddeley
55 Lucas Glover
56 Ben Crane
57 Mark Wilson
58 Fredrik Jacobsen
59 Jeff Overton
60 Sean O'Hair
61 Thomas Bjorn
62 Anthony Kim
63 Ross Fisher
64 Padraig Harrington
65 J.B. Holmes
66 Charley Hoffman
67 Simon Dyson
68 Vijay Singh
69 Stephen Marino
70 Alexander Noren
71 Raphael Jacquelin
72 Brendan Jones
73 Hiroyuki Fujita
74 Nicolas Colsaerts
75 Jason Dufner
76 Kevin Na
77 Robert Garrigus
78 Yuta Ikeda
79 Chris Kirk
80 Camilo Villegas
81 Spencer Levin
82 Richard Green
83 Fredrik A. Hed
84 Stewart Cink
85 Angel Cabrera
86 Charles Howell III
87 Gregory Bourdy
88 Scot Verplank
89 Thomas Aiken
90 David Horsey
91 Tommy Gainey
92 Davis Love III
93 Rickie Barnes
94 Pablo Larazabal
95 John Senden
96 Tetsuji Hiratsuka
97 Johan Edfors
98 Jamie Donaldson
99 Brian Davis
100 Noh Seung-Yul
....

No surprises for Monday morning's Bridgestone owgr top fifty cut-off.

Disappointing for Ryan Palmer though after his success at the tournament last year.

Palmer, Simpson, Crane, AKim, Holmes, Dyson, Singh, Marino the only golfers in the top 70 not currently in the Bridgestone.

Good to see sergio back in top 50, although no doubt I am a week late on picking up this news. It seems with a slightly better weekend glover would also have been in the top 50, although he gets the compensation of playing banff springs in a skins game. I have always had a bit of a romantic image of banff springs and think it would be a wonderful setting to play golf.

I am a little surprised to see martin laird in the top 30 as he seems to have been of form for quite some time now?

Mac, there's a few players in the with far worse form than Laird.

True SR, but when was the last time he threatened the top 30 or even 40?

Banff is a great place to go for anything and everything, including golf. Just spectacular, and the further north you go from there, the more spectacular it gets.

True Mac, Martin Laird has only made one PGA Tour cut since a good finish two months ago in Fort Worth.

Travelling on a short holiday trip around the S...W of Ireland with the final target being Killarney and the Irish Open. Not sure what day I'll end up there, probably Fri or Sat...

Martin Laird is been benefiting lately of a gradual reduction in his divisor, ant that basically can cancel to a good extent the weekly point amortisation. I don't expect him to go down signifficantly till the WGC and USPGA, but then he'll need to start collecting some points there or otherwise nothing else could stop him from falling down the ranks in future... Talking about ranking slumps, just stick around for the end of this week and you'll see a clearer example of a more dramatic slump that can happen when a player goes through a lengthy period without playing/scoring. Who could that be, I wonder...?

I wonder.

We'll know in the next day or so whether there'll be a newsworthy "commitment" to the Bridgestone.
And: If there's a newsworthy commitment, there could well be a caddying announcement to go with it.

Cheers kwini. I won't have time to browse too much the news sites, so I'll be rellying on 606v2 for the latest news/info when I'm logged on...

Wow Padraig's ranking really is plummeting my optimism is beginning to dwindle now time to start playing well again and moving up in the rankings!

Ross and Padraig are currently packed together at #63&64 in the rankings, but exactly a year ago they were packed together at the top of the Irish Open leaderboard. In fact here is how the OWGR looked like on Aug 1st, 2010 after Ross's win here:
....
12 Anthony Kim
13 Martin Kaymer
14 Robert Allenby
15 Padraig Harrington
16 Louis Oosthuizen
17 Retief Goosen
18 Edoardo Molinari
19 Justin Rose
20 Ross Fisher
21 Zach Johnson
22 Sean O'Hair
23 Tim Clark
24 Henrik Stenson
25 Camilo Villegas
....

The only comfort they can get looking at those tables is that others have fared even worse, e.g. Kim, Villegas, O'Hair, Stenson... Comparing the rankings after a year can be a good way to assess in what direction someone's carreer is going. And as I look at this page with the rankings from exactly a year ago, there's a good example of how two carreers can move in totally opposite directions. The two aussies, Jason Day and M. Sim were standing side by side at #64&65 last year, today they're standing 234 places apart, at #8 and #242, respectively!! But it's not always that kind of comparisson would tell you the full story: take Sergio's example who was at #46 last year and is at #48 now. A steady carreer over the last year? It was nothing like that, as we all know...

At a first glance, despite the presence of all the new major winners, the Irish Open owgr strength looks to be declining, should be around 28 points compared to 32 last year. The Greenbrier on the other hand should be similar like last year ayt ~32 points (O'Hair, Cabrerra are out).

So I take it there hasn't been yet any announcement about an imminent statement of a possible 'newsworthy' commitment or otherwise, etc... I wonder, since it's already Tuesday pm, does that mean He is saying PASS to Bridgestone (at least)?

No sign of anything "newsworthy" yet; Wednesday perhaps?

Shame about the Sweden and Ireland events; the European Tour players would be doing themselves a favour by supporting their own tournaments.

In my head yesterday I was thinking that Bridgestone is this week, and I only had a couple of beers last night... So obviously he still has time for announcements.

But getting back to what I was saying earlier about what will happen to Tiger's owgr ths week.. I had a look this morning (with a clear head) and I can tell you that after this week Woods will drop no less than 7 (seven) places from #21 to #28!!! It is certainly the biggest weekly drop I remember seeing for any top 100 golfer since I've been keeping an eye on the rankings. DC and Garry Woodland are the only guys I can see right now who could make that TW slump even worse (to#30) if Darren finishes top 2 in Killarney and Woodland wins the Greenbrier...

'Morning pd,
Usually TW reports early in the week before a tournament if he's planning to attend, so I would have expected something on "Bridgestone" Tuesday or, at the latest, today.
(Wouldn't say slides of seven or eight places in the owgr top 100 are that uncommon, though they certainly are in the top 50. Ikeda dropped this week from 70 to 78 . . . . )

The Greenbrier golfers are suggesting the course will be much more demanding than for Appleby's 59 last year; 200 yards in added length and what Tom Watson describes as "links" firm greens.

I recall last year this week they were going crazy with low scores both in US and in Killarney (Ross had a course record 61 and a good chance to push for a 59).

You're right about Ikeda, but I was referring mainly to players in Tiger's situation who don't play. Usually it's harder to have a slump when you're not playing in a particular week then when you are playing but you fail to score points (Ikeda's case last week). And it's true, of course, the futher away you are from the top, the larger the drop/gain of places possible... The other thing to stress out is that it doesn't mean that Tiger will now drop every week as much as this, but as I said before, on average it will become more and more noticeable if he doesn't start playing and earning again points...

I'm not in Killarney yet but getting closer every day... weather in the area today is so-and-so, but I believe it's expected to get better over the next days...

Rory possibly just managed to throw away his #4 owgr spot as he finished at 3-under and he's now T35. He needed a T32 at least to make sure he stays ahead of Stricker...