OWGR - Week #1

Here we go... 2012 started with a rather awkward piece of scheduling on behalf of TimF and his PGA Tour with this Monday finish and as far as I'm concerned I hope it will just go down as an unsuccessful experiment. Not sure what was the thinking behind that, but I'd say that the whole thing will need some bolder and more inovative ideas than that in the future in order to bring the Hyundai TOC from this year's low (at least OWGR-wise) back to its glory days...

But aside from that, looking for the positives, it's been a good start of the year at least from one OWGR point of view, as the two top ranked players in the two fields (Africa and Hyundai) ended up as winners! So, congratulations to Steve Stricker and Louis Oosthuizen! Also, it's good to see strong performances at the start of the season from other top players like Laird, Goosen, Simpson, Byrd and KJ.

Stricker is back to #5 in the world and King Louis jumps up 14 places to #26, while Laird also enjoys a 14-place climb to #33. Goosen just about makes the top 50 and Van Der Walt moves up 111 places to #236 after his runner-up finish in Souh Africa.

Otherwise, the ranking has been 'shaken' somewhat, hopefully for the last time, by the last maximum divisor adjustment, now down to 52. And as I said already, the one who comes out by far the worst out of this is Ernie Els, now down to an almost unthinkable #68 in the world! He really needs a fast and furious start to his season (no doubt, he'll be pretty furious when he sees the OWGR this morning)...

So, the OWGR table for Week #1 of 2012 should look like this:


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

Thanks pd,
Not that many top players competing this week, but Stricker and Simpson will be back at "work" in Hawaii, and Charl Schwartzel in South Africa.
Very uneven quality to the Hawaii field, one or three top players but dozens of rookies.
A chance for Ryo to bounce back from some terrible results last year, though, and I kinda like KJ Choi to win Snoy again.

Ross Fisher just hanging on in there. He's really dropped off the face of the earth lately. Mannasero dropping like a stone too.

The Sony field suffers just as much as Hyundai this year, first look at the field suggests 38-40 pts to the winner, down from 48 last year. Joburg maybe same as last year, around 22 pts.

Matteo is back next week in South Africa and I'm still hopeful and optimistic that he will recover this year, but have no idea what's happening to Ross Fisher these days, can't see him in any of the fields for the next couple of weeks, so looks like he'll be well outside the top 100 when he will play next...

PD, A friend of mine is good mates with Mannasero's old caddy, by all accounts Mannasero is suffering with big head syndrome, not surprising perhaps as a young man constantly having smoke blown up his backside, although there may be a bit of bitterness due to being sacked.

Probably a bit of truth in both.

PD,

Im hoping Big Darren can hang on for the Matchplay. Dropping like a stone...................

Good stuff as usual, pd. It's difficult to get a good sense of the rankings during this lull period. Imagine things will start cooking at the Abu Dhabi later in the month. No longer a coincidence that the first tourney with the greatest rankings impact in the early season is on the European Tour. The Torrey Pines affair is sharing the same date on the calendar and it is suddenly a "B" rater in comparison.

Field for Volvo Tournament of Champions ultimately a bit disappointing, with only:
Schwartzel
Oosthuizen
Bjorn
Dyson
F'dez Castano
Jimenez
Goosen
from the Top 50 unless I've missed someone (which is very probable). Although I'm not sure how (or if) the field fills up.

Cheers guys.
kwini, I agree about Volvo, could have been better, but in fairness it's probably stronger in players from the 50-100 range rather than the top 50. Mind you, Casey still appears in that field, so makes you wonder how much you can rely on what it says...

Just watched Chubby's interview on GC and he mentioned among other things that he managed to 'persuade' DC to play in the Volvo as he wasn't too keen to go. Actually I thought it was interesting to hear his views on the Kapalua field, the world tour idea and others and I tend to agree with a lot of what he said. If you didn't see it, you can watch it on the GC website...

Thanks prince,
Just pulled up the Chubster. Very good interview; I had seen he was on but can only take so much of the Golf Channel's chat-chit, glad you highlighted it.
Difficult to disagree about anything, though thought he was a bit flippant about DC's trip to South Africa. Alright to think it I suppose, . . . . . .
Totally agree about the World Tour, nice little rivalry right now, wouldn't be prudent to spoil that!

I don't understand why the European Tour shows so many alternates for the Volvo TOC; is it just in case they win this week? Bizarre.

Some early projections for this week...

The top 3 are safe again, but Stricker is the only one who could pass Kaymer with a win or runner-up finish. A Robert Rock win will propel him into the low 80s, while a surprising (or not) Bud Cauley win will almost certainly see him making the top 100!

... forgot to mention those projections are based on an elevated final count of 42 pts for the Sony winner (forgot to include David Toms when I did the count first time!), but still quite a bit down from the 48 last year. Joburg is to get 22 pts as I said before...

Field posted for Abu Dhabi:
120 points to the winner!

kwinigolfer wrote:Field posted for Abu Dhabi:
120 points to the winner!

...and a free 'ambush' with KellyT!

We'll have a look...

kwinigolfer wrote:Field posted for Abu Dhabi:
120 points to the winner!

A quick guesstimate based on current ranks would actually suggest only half of that (~60 pts) and at least based on the earlier hype, that's at the lower end of expectations I had... Among the big names that I didn't see on that entry list are Oosty, Els, Goosen, Rose, Poults, Casey, Yang, etc... The only top Korean is KJ, only top Aussie is Day and only top American is Tiger...

But having said all that, it's an outstanding field no doubt... bring it on!

Agreed pd,
But a most attractive field regardless; a little surprised Rory is playing, had quite expected him to be holding Wozza's hand in Melbourne.

I haven't heard yet of any Americans travelling to the Gulf this year, apart from Woods. Surprised King Louis isn't playing though, perhaps he'll be in Qatar and Dubai.

Loyts of guys had a problem getting your memo this week, pd.

Charl, of course, but opportunity missed by Coetzee not to mention poor efforts from Goosen and Aiken.
Not very good by Webb Simpson. Stricker looks to be piling up the points though, Chuckie Howell too.

Amazing (Branden) Grace, says the ET website! Some achievement for the 23 year old South African, his 1st European victory (CT or ET) just a few weeks after coming through the Q-school! I'll have the exact positions after the Sony conclusion, but roughly this should lift His Grace up almost 100 places into the 160s.
And indeed, a missed opportunity, not only for Schwartzel, but for all the other more established South Africans. Inspite of getting a couple of points for his troubles, Goose will actually drop out from the top 50, with the trio of Coetzee, Van Zyl and Aiken stuck close together (in that order) somewhere around the 80th spot...

Grace has always looked like he has the game, but very impressed at the way he closed it out. I remember seeing him at these SA events last year, and whenever he got near the top he seemed to suffer extreme vertigo and his game would fall to pieces. So to finish with all pars on the back nine to win by one is some effort.

Worth noting that we're two events in, and so far one winner and both runners-up are Q-school grads! Something similar Stateside would put the cat amongst the pigeons regarding their Q-school/Nationwide revamps.

Didn't Branden grace The Open with a good round or two recently?

He's just a year older than Rory and judging by #3's last tweet they seem to have met each other a few years back...

@bgrace58 great win big guy!! Remember playing Q school stage 1 together at Oxfordshire in 2007!? See you in Abu Dhabi! #winning