OWGR - End of Year 2014

Former PGATour winner Arjun Atwal wins the Dubai Open, the Asian Tour finale, and the final OWGR rated tournament of 2014.  He goes from ranked in the 1100's to somewhere around #430.

Tommy Fleetwood misses an invite to the 2014 Masters by less than 1 OWGR point (gross).  Every shot counts!! Of course, Fleetwood has an excellent opportunity to crash the top 50 by playing well in the early events of 2015.  He probably needs a couple top 10s in the Middle East to secure a spot in the Cadillac.

Here is the projected top 100 going into 2015.  Players ranked below 50 and already in the Masters are bolded.

1 Rory McIlroy 11.04
2 Henrik Stenson 8.13
3 Adam Scott 7.71
4 Bubba Watson 7.27
5 Sergio Garcia 6.70
6 Justin Rose 6.69
7 Jim Furyk 6.62
8 Jason Day 5.81
9 Jordan Spieth 5.75
10 Rickie Fowler 5.47
11 Matt Kuchar 5.11
12 Martin Kaymer 4.86
13 Billy Horschel 4.48
14 Phil Mickelson 4.45
15 Graeme McDowell 4.16
16 Hideki Matsuyama 4.12
17 Victor Dubuisson 4.02
18 Zach Johnson 3.83
19 Dustin Johnson 3.78
20 Chris Kirk 3.76
21 Jimmy Walker 3.72
22 Hunter Mahan 3.61
23 Patrick Reed 3.51
24 Jamie Donaldson 3.44
25 Kevin Na 3.31
26 Lee Westwood 3.28
27 Ian Poulter 3.23
28 Keegan Bradley 3.16
29 Joost Luiten 3.16
30 Ryan Moore 3.08
31 Charl Schwartzel 3.02
32 Tiger Woods 3.01
33 Luke Donald 2.99
34 Brooks Koepka 2.97
35 Stephen Gallacher 2.91
36 Thomas Bjorn 2.86
37 Thongchai Jaidee 2.83
38 Jason Dufner 2.82
39 Bill Haas 2.81
40 Miguel A Jimenez 2.81
41 Steve Stricker 2.74
42 Ryan Palmer 2.74
43 Webb Simpson 2.71
44 Shane Lowry 2.66
45 Louis Oosthuizen 2.64
46 Marc Leishman 2.60
47 Mikko Ilonen 2.60
48 Gary Woodland 2.56
49 John Senden 2.48
50 Danny Willett 2.47
=====
51 Tommy Fleetwood 2.45
52 Kevin  Streelman 2.44
53 Alexander Levy 2.44
54 Brendon Todd 2.40
55 Francesco Molinari 2.35
56 Koumei Oda 2.34
57 Graham Delaet 2.30
58 Brandt Snedeker 2.30
59 Jonas Blixt 2.29
60 Russell Henley 2.24
61 Marcel Siem 2.23
62 Tim Clark 2.22
63 Ernie Els 2.21
64 Anirban Lahiri 2.08
65 Ben Martin 2.06
66 J.B. Holmes 2.02
67 Hiroshi Iwata 2.02
68 Ross Fisher 2.02
69 Marc Warren 2.01
70 Kevin Stadler 1.97
71 Pablo Larrazabal 1.96
72 Bernd Wiesberger 1.92
73 Angel  Cabrera 1.91
74 Charley Hoffman 1.87
75 Paul Casey 1.85
76 Matt Every 1.85
77 Harris English 1.81
78 Matt Jones 1.81
79 Shingo Katayama 1.81
80 Thorbjorn Olesen 1.78
81 George Coetzee 1.78
82 Branden Grace 1.75
83 Brendon de Jonge 1.73
84 Bae Sang-moon 1.73
85 Cameron Tringale 1.71
86 Brian Harman 1.65
87 Richard Sterne 1.61
88 Hideto Tanihara 1.61
89 Steven Bowditch 1.60
90 Tomohiro Kondo 1.60
91 Robert Streb 1.59
92 Richie Ramsay 1.57
93 Rafael Cabrera Bello 1.56
94 Geoff Ogilvy 1.54
95 Erik Compton 1.52
96 Scott Hend 1.52
97 Romain Wattel 1.51
98 Robert Karlsson 1.51
99 Fabrizio Zanotti 1.50
100 Russell Knox 1.50
===============
101 Hennie Otto 1.50
102 Ryo Ishikawa 1.48
103 Edoardo Molinari 1.47
104 Gonzalo Fdez-Castano 1.47


Rory enters the year with nearly a 3 point lead over Stenson. For perspective, Woods had a 2.1 lead over Scott in 2013 and Rory had a 4.6 lead on Luke in 2012, and Luke had a 2.0 lead over Westwood in 2011.

It doesn't look like Rory's #1 ranking is going to be in jeopardy until at least the Masters.

GPB...

Danny Willett is certainly happy about being in the top 50 at year end

https://twitter.com/willett1987/status/546750295968346113

Happy New Year for Koepka, Lowry and Willett - I think they are the only ones in the Top Fifty who will be Masters rookies. Something for Fleetwood and Levy to aspire to.

Thanks GPB . . . . .

Some American S's are destined to join their Ryder Cup compadre Sneds outside the Top 50 shortly: Simpson & Stricker sliding inexorably south. Like Snedeker, Stricker is not qualified for The Cadillac, tho' he's in The Masters (not quite sure why).

And, in a curiosity which shows up some occasional vagaries in the owgr's, a well-known restaurateur has lost more than 30% more points than he's gained yet only dropped one place in the rankings - the luck of the Nor'n Irish.
While the 6-month vacationer only drops 3 spots despite losing 50%+ more points than he gained.
Both will fall quickly if they don't have some strong results early in 2015, but why should they care? Still both securely entrenched in the Top 50.

In the case of GMac and DJohnson, both lost tournaments in their divisor which mitigated their attrition losses.

Stricker technically just qualified for the Masters because he is in the top 50 at year end.  That is only qualication...thus far.

There are not many players qualified for the Cadillac at this point.  14th ranked Phil Mickelson is technically not qualified yet.  Only the FEX top 30, RtD top 20, and few other Int'l Tour players are qualified.  About 46 total at this point.

Not as much turnover in the OWGR top-50 this year as last... 12 different players in the top-50 that weren't there at the start of the year... and another 5 who came in and out sometime during the year... for 67 total different players ranked top-50 sometime during the year. (compared to 12 and 75 in 2013 IIRC)

robopz wrote:Not as much turnover in the OWGR top-50 this year as last...  12 different players in the top-50 that weren't there at the start of the year... and another 5 who came in and out sometime during the year... for 67 total different players ranked top-50 sometime during the year.  (compared to 12 and 75 in 2013 IIRC)

{emphasis mine}

So there was 12 player turnover in 2013 and a 12 player turnover in 2014.  Yet there was not as much turnover?   Are you practicing Papi-Math now?

============

I suspect the numbers would be noticeably higher if the top 60 was analyzed rather than the top 50.  Seems like there were a lot of players who won a tournament (or several good finishes) to get into the top 60, yet could not jump over the top 50 hurdle.  It was like there was a virtual door that prevented players like Stadler (52nd), Cabrera  (52nd), Oda (53rd), Fleetwood (51st), Larrazabal (53), Wiesberger (58th), Holmes (60th)

GPB wrote:

robopz wrote:Not as much turnover in the OWGR top-50 this year as last...  12 different players in the top-50 that weren't there at the start of the year... and another 5 who came in and out sometime during the year... for 67 total different players ranked top-50 sometime during the year.  (compared to 12 and 75 in 2013 IIRC)

{emphasis mine}

So there was 12 player turnover in 2013 and a 12 player turnover in 2014.  Yet there was not as much turnover?   Are you practicing Papi-Math now?

There were 75 players total who occupied a spot in the top-50 at one time or another during 2013... compared to 67 in 2014.  On the basis of that I believe it fair to say... "Not as much turnover in the OWGR top-50 this year as last...  ".  So that's what I said... now wouldn't you agree?

I consider Turnover to be point to point.

Guess it is semantics.....

And BTW....Notice how your trolls have found me on the other site?  That is who you are dealing with and why I ask you (and Davey) to leave me....and comments that I may have said previously out of that site.

GPB wrote:I consider Turnover to be point to point.

Guess it is semantics.....

And BTW....Notice how your trolls have found me on the other site?  That is who you are dealing with and why I ask you (and Davey) to leave me....and comments that I may have said previously out of that site.

Sure... semantics... whatever. See your PM's

Been working on getting a rough idea of OWGR rankings if they were around during the Nicklaus era.  Got some information I was able to apply a lot of current OWGR rules to the contenders for the #1 ranking in the Nicklaus era.

Some of things that will bias the data  

Only used PGATournaments including Open Championships, and Jack's Aussie Opens

Do not have the data for Strength of Field Rating for tournaments, so I used SoF60 for all regular tournaments, SoF100 for Majors, and SoF80 for the TPC.  SoF32 for the Aussie Open.

Ties:  If a player finished T3...I had no way to determine how many were Tied for third.  I used a two way tie for Top 5 finish, a three way tie for T6, T7, T8, T9, and T10.  And a 4 way tie for any other tie.

Based on these assumptions, I calculated an OWGR average for Nicklaus, Palmer, Casper, Trevino, Miller, and Watson from 1963-1980.  I didn't do Gary Player, because I don't think there was a time where he would have got to #1 based on his limited PGATour schedule.

Here are some Highlights from the theoretical OWGR:

Weeks at #1.

Nicklaus  691 weeks, First week as #1 Apr 22 1963 ---- Last week Oct 15 1978
Watson 119 weeks, First week as #1 Sept 24, 1978 ---- Last 115 weeks of the analysis.
Casper 55 weeks, First week as #1 Jan 13, 1969 ---- Last week Feb 22 1971
Palmer 62 weeks, First 16 weeks of 1962 ----Last week July 10 1967
Miller 10 weeks, first 1/12/1975 --- Last week 4/6/1975
Trevino, 3 weeks. 11/7/1971 - 11/21/1971

Palmer/Nicklaus flipflopped the #1 ranking from April 1963 through June 1964...and early 1967

Casper/Nicklaus flipflopped the #1 ranking from Jan 69 to Feb 1971.

Trevino took #1 from NIcklaus in Nov-71 , but Nicklaus took it back with a 3rd place finish at Heritage 3 weeks later.

Miller took the #1 spot with his hot start in 1975, Nicklaus took it back at the Masters.

It wasn't until late 1978 before Watson got the #1 spot after he won the Anheuser-Busch.  Nicklaus got it back for one week (7th place in World Series), which turned out to be the last week Nicklaus was #1 in this analysis.

Palmer's Average really fell in 1968-69.  Down to 4.69 before he won two tournaments late in 1969.

Nicklaus OWGR average was below 10.0 for only 61 weeks from Jan 1963-Feb 1979

===================

Amazing work from robo and GPB . . . . .

We talked about the strong field for Abu Dhabi, and there's another decent turnout for Qatar, with Stenson, Rose and Sergio leading the way and another half dozen top fifty-ish players also. Dubai also looking good.

Tiger slips two more ranking spots to #34 and will likely take a more significant tumble after this week's action.

Finally, Happy 51st Birthday to #39

I think Tiger will lose at least two more spots this week and he should lose more 5-6 during the week of Abu Dhabi and Sony.

Tiger is losing 0.12-0.13 pts off his average every week while the players ranked from #35-60 are losing about half that per week.

Its not question if Tiger will lose spots, it is how many.  He fell to #58 a few years ago and unless he has a good finish sometime in the next two months, he will not qualify for the Cadillac.

He really needs to add tournaments in the next two months to give him a reasonable chance at stemming the loss and qualifying for the Cadillac.

I wonder if Lindsey Vonn's Skiing schedule will factor into his scheduling.

When is the cutoff for the new look Matchplay and what are Woods' chances of qualifying?

NedB-H wrote:When is the cutoff for the new look Matchplay and what are Woods' chances of qualifying?

The WGC Matchplay is a long way off, The rankings after Harbour Town should be the cutoff.  But projecting ahead

Based on last year's rankings on April 20th, a 2.1 ranking will be needed, which is 84 net points for 40 tournaments.  

Attrition will take Tiger's current net points of 114.9 to under 60 points.  He probably needs to earn at least 30 points to be safely in the Match Play field.

46 pts to the TOC winner - same as Zach earned last year.

GPB wrote:Been working on getting a rough idea of OWGR rankings if they were around during the Nicklaus era.  Got some information from Robo and I was able to apply a lot of current OWGR rules to the contenders for the #1 ranking in the Nicklaus era.

Some of things that will bias the data  

Only used PGATournaments including Open Championships, and Jack's Aussie Opens

Do not have the data for Strength of Field Rating for tournaments, so I used SoF60 for all regular tournaments, SoF100 for Majors, and SoF80 for the TPC.  SoF32 for the Aussie Open.

Ties:  If a player finished T3...I had no way to determine how many were Tied for third.  I used a two way tie for Top 5 finish, a three way tie for T6, T7, T8, T9, and T10.  And a 4 way tie for any other tie.

Based on these assumptions, I calculated an OWGR average for Nicklaus, Palmer, Casper, Trevino, Miller, and Watson from 1963-1980.  I didn't do Gary Player, because I don't think there was a time where he would have got to #1 based on his limited PGATour schedule.

Here are some Highlights from the theoretical OWGR:

Weeks at #1.

Nicklaus  691 weeks, First week as #1 Apr 22 1963 ---- Last week Oct 15 1978
Watson 119 weeks, First week as #1 Sept 24, 1978 ---- Last 115 weeks of the analysis.
Casper 55 weeks, First week as #1 Jan 13, 1969 ---- Last week Feb 22 1971
Palmer 62 weeks, First 16 weeks of 1962 ----Last week July 10 1967
Miller 10 weeks, first 1/12/1975 --- Last week 4/6/1975
Trevino, 3 weeks. 11/7/1971 - 11/21/1971

Palmer/Nicklaus flipflopped the #1 ranking from April 1963 through June 1964...and early 1967

Casper/Nicklaus flipflopped the #1 ranking from Jan 69 to Feb 1971.

Trevino took #1 from NIcklaus in Nov-71 , but Nicklaus took it back with a 3rd place finish at Heritage 3 weeks later.

Miller took the #1 spot with his hot start in 1975, Nicklaus took it back at the Masters.

It wasn't until late 1978 before Watson got the #1 spot after he won the Anheuser-Busch.  Nicklaus got it back for one week (7th place in World Series), which turned out to be the last week Nicklaus was #1 in this analysis.

Palmer's Average really fell in 1968-69.  Down to 4.69 before he won two tournaments late in 1969.

Nicklaus OWGR average was below 10.0 for only 61 weeks from Jan 1963-Feb 1979

===================

This is surely worthy of its own thread?

That is some great work and I hope we get the chance to discuss this information in full.

Mac...I got some other scenarios to investigate.  This was preliminary data.  

I would not mind some commentary and some other ideas to investigate.

From Doug Ferguson's weekly column, he thinks Tiger is going to be at Doral.

Not so fast Dougie!!

True enough, Trump's syrupo' will fly off if Tiger doesn't make it. He'll demand sponsors exemption rights!

Nicklaus #1 for 691 weeks.
Woods #1 for 683.

D'ya think there might be an incentive there for ETW?

kwinigolfer wrote:
D'ya think there might be an incentive there for ETW?

Why don't you contact Tiger to discuss? Am sure the trip down to Jupiter would be fun!

Is there anything to be had be inserting the modern era number 1's into the list?

Nicklaus 691 weeks at #1
Tiger 683
Norman 331
Watson 119
Faldo 97
Casper 55
Palmer 62
Mcilroy 62
Seve 61
Donald 56
Woosnam 50
Price 44
VJ 32
.
.
.
Miller 10
Trevino, 3


One thing it highlights for me is how good McIlroy has been so far when bench marked against the greats of the past and present.

Secondly that neither Tiger or Jack had any real competition for the top spot during their peaks.

mclaren wrote:Secondly that neither Tiger or Jack had any real competition for the top spot during their peaks.

Surely Mickelson, Els, Goosen, Singh etc could be considered real competition?

edit: I guess in terms of competition for the #1 spot you are right, as Woods routinely had double the OWGR points of the next best player whilst at his best.

inco

Watson, player, palmer, casper, VJ, els, Mickleson etc are all great players but relative to the great player of their generation (Tiger or Jack) they clearly offered no competition in something like the OWGR which is measured over a longer period of time.

Mcilfuzz/Fuzzilroy has had 62 weeks at #1 already?

Wow. Time does fly. Didn't realise that.

GPB's work on Jack's possible OWGR shows us a couple of things... of course it illustrates just how good Jack was, as if we didn't really know...  but IMO it also gives strong evidence that the OWGR works VERY well and it's 2 year ranking period makes it better, not worse.

Throughout most of the last century of golf (at least in America), we've had ANNUAL measures to show us who's best within a given set, never changing 52-week period. Those are GREAT measure , and it's good that during Jack's era guys like Palmer, Casper, Trevino & Miller were rightly POY's (and Player might have been a "world" POY in there somewhere too if we had the data on his rest of the world play to factor in).   But lets face it, once the "big dog" Jack had time to establish his place by '63... there was no doubt who the best player was for that entire era and an OWGR like calculation shows it.  (sans about 2 year's in the late 60s when Casper and Jack were about equal and playing tag with #1)

TW's reign pretty much mirrors the same except for the main difference being where Jack had to displace a "King" who was still playing very well... whereas the best players pre-Tiger (like Seve, Norman, Price & Faldo) played great right up to the time Tiger arrived... but didn't stay around to challenge as they mostly immediately fell off the cliff of age or average play once TW arrived.

Only thing I regret... Phil Mickelson, who's clearly the 2nd best player of this generation never had his moment as a #1, while far lesser players did. Just a case of bad timing.  

It appears as though the other great players of Jack's generation would have had their moments at #1, even though some of them were when Jack was "kind of" down.  Casper & Trevino caught Jack for some periods when Jack was down. And Miller had a "Duval like" incredible but relatively short run, that got him up there against Jack shortly against some pretty good play from Jack.  (And Player "might" have a chance to stick his nose in there somewhere if we had the full data on his playing outside the states... he won a LOT in S.A and Aus... Europe too... )

But Mickelson never had that HUGE Miller, Duval or Singh like streak, or the luck of Tiger being down when he was at his best.... or if he did, there was always someone like Vijay with that incredible mid-2000's run to prevent Phil from ever getting to the top.

But consider Phil up against more recent #1's such as Kaymer, Westwood, Donald & Adam Scott, who I don't necessarily consider "pretenders" at #1, but more a case of "well it has to be somebody so it might as well be them" types of #1's    (I'm leaving Rory out of this because IMO he's a full blown legitimate #1 who's had his average up over 13.0)...

Phil has more weeks at OWGR #2 (270) than either Donald or Kaymer have in the top-10 (219 & 107 respectively).  

Phil has 785 weeks (or over 15 years) inside the top-10... compared to Westwood (352) and Scott (350) at less than half that.  (granted Scott can get a lot more... Westwood, I dunno)

Phil has 82 weeks over 10.0 in his OWGR average... compared to 28 for Luke, 1 for Westwood & Scott and zero for Kaymer (in fact Kaymer's highest average ever was 8.36 and Phil has 380+ weeks over that mark)

Phil has 1,069 total weeks (over 20-1/2 years) inside the top-25... (current running streak of 1,006 weeks top-25 or better)

Lots of interesting stuff there robo, GPB.

The role of tournaments outside the USA during this time is fascinating - the main difference between then and now in your comparisons.

Would say that Vijay was obsessed with being Number One, perhaps Tiger and some others are as well, whereas I seriously doubt that Phil looks a second's sleep over it. Vijay went to extraordinary lengths to keep playing tournaments in his quest to capitalise on one of Woods's "slumps", and pretty much peaked when he got there, mostly downhill from then on. Phil mostly maintained his normal schedule, tried to win golf tournaments but certainly never varied very much from his West Coast and Majors routine.

But you're spot on that no-one else had a Duval or Rory run in the Tiger era.

Not sure I agree with you on Phil not being obsessed with #1, especially when he started winning majors and the thought of taking #1 was no longer "unthinkable". And IMO he not only wanted it, he wanted it bad. So much in fact when he had the chance it more worked to "paralyze" him instead of motivating him. Granted, he wouldn't reveal just how much directly, but his comments during the Spring and Summer of 2010 when he was "right there" indicated just how focused on #1 he was. But it all fell apart for him after the U.S. Open that year. GPB and I (along with much of the golf world) were doing a #1 watch back through that time and it went month after month of "if Phil can win this week, or get X finish this week" he can be #1... and he got so close as TW was dropping so fast, but it seems the closer he got... the worse he played.

Very true robo; I guess I was thinking more about the pot-hunting run that Veej went on. Looking at the tournaments Phil played in 2010, there aren't any that he would have changed his schedule to play in; he just needed to play better in the events he would have played anyway.

A few notes.  I only did the calculations for the Jack Nicklaus era.  1980 is the last year of the analysis.  Tom Watson would have many more weeks at number, perhaps coming close to Norman's total.  He would have been battling Seve for the #1.  Norman might have had a couple more weeks at the top spot.  But not many.

The problem with the early 80's is that more Europeans were becoming World Class Players.  And data from the Euro Tour is not available to me.

Also Palmer would have had been close to the Shark if I extended the analysis to the beginning of his career.

The real OWGR started in the mid 80's, but those formulas have changed a lot in the last 30 years.

One other thing:
I applied 2015 OWGR rules to the Nicklaus era.  If I had applied 2005 OWGR rules to the Nicklaus era, I think his total would have been well over 700 weeks.

The difference, the 52 week maximum divisor was not in effect in 2005, there was no max divisor.  Casper and Trevino were playing about 30 tournaments per year and I am positive that Trevino would have never become #1 and Casper's total would probably be about half of his total.

And if 2015 rules were applied to the entire Woods era, Singh would have had the #1 ranking for few more weeks, maybe as many as a dozen weeks.  When Singh/Woods were battling for the #1 spots...Singh was playing 30 tournaments per year.  Els might have had more weeks too.

============

Re Mickelson and the #1 watch.

Remember, the summer of 2010 is when he was diagnosed with Psoriatic Arthritis.

Kwini... Individual sports are so much different than team sports, IMO it fosters and entirely different mindset among it's best players.  I can't imagine a top player who wouldn't want to be considered the best in his sport.  Granted, with something like an OWGR ranking system, it's possible for a guy like Tiger to get so far out front it becomes somewhat "out of sight out of mind", but when ANY of them get into position to seriously challenge for it, I think they do.

Now that said, golfers are pragmatic about their approach.  They set overall long term goals for their career or any given year... but they know that the way to reach those goals are the old sound bite that really is true... one shot at a time.  So that's the way it is with them... they think this shot, this hole, this round, this tournament... then they reset and do the whole thing over again next week.  But we see what happens to "most" of them in any given week when the title is on the line on the back nine, and while they'd LIKE to think one shot at a time, it becomes almost impossible to not think about the final outcome.  It derails somebody, or a bunch of somebodies every week.

Now as for Singh...  while I agree he wanted #1 badly, I'm not sure he added events to get it. I think they all understand it's quality of play and not quantity.  VJ played a fairly normal schedule in 2004 right up until he got hot (which probably would have been 30-31 events for the year anyway)... so sure he probably added one or two late in the year to get to 32 events, after he had already gotten to #1, but I think that was as much because he's an iron-man anyway and he knew he was on a roll and wanted to keep it going.  But I think he would have done the same thing if he led the OWGR by 10 points or was behind by 5 at the time.  Also consider in the period from 1998-2007... he played 30+ events  8 out of the 10 years.  And the only reason he slowed down was some injury problems starting in 2008.

GPB.. I hear what you are saying about Phil's Psoriatic Arthritis... but Phil says it didn't affect him in the actual playing of the U.S. Open in which he finished T4, but I'm guessing it sure could have affected his preparation for that week.  And from his statements it could have affected him at the OPEN (he was under treatment for the suspected condition, but it had yet to be confirmed).  But after the WGC Bridgestone when he revealed the condition, he said he'd been to the Mayo Clinic after the Open and said the situation was completely controlled and he was 100%.  And I believe him there too.  

I've brought this up before, but i have a close family member who was taking Enbrel for a Psoriatic, but non-arthritic condition.  I realize every situation is different so this may or may not apply to Phil as well...  but she was just fine for the first 6-8 months on the meds too... 100%. But THEN it started to affect her.... producing kind of a "malaise" or "dullness" as she put it.  In her case they started switching her between Humira and Enbrel, and that took care of most of her issues.  Based only on that, I'd bet there's a good chance similar side effects of Enbrel has been affecting Phil too starting maybe the beginning of 2011.  And for a professional golfer, seems to me it wouldn't take much to take just enough of the edge off to significantly affect performance.  I think Phil's downturn is mostly due to age, but I'd bet it's been happening at an accelerated pace than it would have due to the side effects of the treatment. Again... NO Dr. here, and no way to know if Phil has been affect the same or not, or even at all. I'm just sharing my "impressions" based on some direct experiences from someone else under the same treatment...

My guess... if the Psoriatic Arthritis had anything to do with his performance in events immediately after the 2010 Open... it was probably due more to him trying to be a vegetarian than the condition or direct treatment itself... I mean come on... Phil???  a vegetarian???.... no 5-guys???... certainly enough to make him a basket case the rest of the year....   :-)

kwinigolfer wrote:True enough, Trump's syrupo' will fly off if Tiger doesn't make it. He'll demand sponsors exemption rights!

Nicklaus #1 for 691 weeks.
Woods #1 for 683.

D'ya think there might be an incentive there for ETW?

 
Unless he (or one of his entourage) is reading this forum...or another blog where the data has been presented, Tiger has no idea that Jack number of weeks in a theoretical OWGR rankings from the 1960's and 1970's.

But I do think Tiger has been looking at his tumbling ranking.  Twitter is buzzing about him playing Phoenix, which I thought would happen after his last place at the HWC last month.

GPB wrote:Unless he (or one of his entourage) is reading this forum...or another blog where the data has been presented, Tiger has no idea that Jack number of weeks in a theoretical OWGR rankings from the 1960's and 1970's.

But I do think Tiger has been looking at his tumbling ranking.  Twitter is buzzing about him playing Phoenix, which I thought would happen after his last place at the HWC last month.

Agree... First extremely unlikely more than a couple of hundred people are aware of this on a couple of forums, and it's all theoretical anyway... We can play the what if game with all kinds of ranking scenarios, including 3-year, like the OWGR started, or various divisors and come out with different numbers.  According to another poster... the old McCormack rankings (on which the Sony and OWGR rankings were loosely based in the beginning), had Nicklaus #1 all the way from the time he took it from Palmer... until he surrendered it to Watson...  so who knows.

But bottom line... I'm very comfortable with the work that's been done to believe that like so many other measures of their career being so similar,  both of them probably had very similar time as being #1...  and regardless of how the assumptions or calculations might be changed... a couple handfuls of weeks difference one way or the other doesn't change that assessment a bit.  

And as for Phoenix... My best guess all along has been TW was going to add Phoenix... ATT Pebble would normally have been my first choice, but that's the 2nd week of Vonn's World Cup finals, and I don't think he wants to miss both weeks (he'll already miss the first week playing the Farmers).  But Rosy laid a teaser out there about Tiger possibly playing Dubai (same week as Phoenix) instead...  I don't know if he thinks he knows something, and all he mentioned is something about maybe TW and Trump going to be together around that time in Dubai anyway. And it kinda makes sense... TW's had some good results in Dubai... and it could be that situation would favor him more than a potential birdie fest at Phoenix (not being sure how the course changes might have made TPC Scottsdale that much harder or not)

Re:  Medication strong medication

Yes I can't imagine starting a regiment of a strong medication that relieves pain from a debilitating disease like arthritis having any side effects that might affect a pro athlete from performing at his/her best.

Nope, I can't imagine that happening at all.


 

GPB wrote:Re:  Medication strong medication

Yes I can't imagine starting a regiment of a strong medication that relieves pain from a debilitating disease like arthritis having any side effects that might affect a pro athlete from performing at his/her best.

Nope, I can't imagine that happening at all.


 

If you knew anything about the medication or Psoriatic conditions... you could easily imagine. He ain't taking chemo... it's really nothing more than a targeted TNF suppressant...  and for Phil's condition acts more like Advil but for his specific types of Psoriatic inflammation.  The potential serious side effects for this drug are not many and long term, not immediate.  And the "malaise" or other side effects generally associated with these types of drugs after extended use are usually overcome by rotation or changing to similar medications... or different types all together.

What if the gave a National Championship and nobody cared...  Well... that's almost the case for the South African Open once again...  Decent representation from the South Africans in Els, Schwartzel, Coetzee, Grace et al...  but only 3 top-200 ranked non Saffers participating and 13 total top-200 guys.  (only another 15 players ranked 201-300 participating) OWGR hasn't posted it, but I have it with 28 world ERV's... and thus only getting 75% of that for home points for a total of 49.  "Off the sheet" this would be a 16 level event, but being the SA Open it gets a minimum of 32.  

Now I'm not gonna bitch [much] the 32 points it gets... hey, it is the SA Open...  but if we want to talk "issues" with the OWGR, I think the winner (and rest of the top-20) of this event getting double the points it rates at, is more of an "affront" to fairness in the OWGR than some bottom feeder at the Hyundai ToC with 33 players #150 or better + 1 at #207, getting some guaranteed last place minimum OWGR points.  

On the face of it, I actually support the concept of "flagship" events getting more points due to their importance, but IMO there should be a scale of some sort that prevents them from getting double what they're worth...  Maybe set S.A, Japan & Aus. Opens at the PGAT and ET minimums of 24 with maybe a max of 8 points above their "earned" level.   (I have less of a problem with the Japan Open which also got 32, because it would have rated a 24 on its own and the Australian Open exceeded it's 32 minimum at 34... so I have no problem with that one.)

Re: Subsidized Events on Minor Tours

Anyone familiar with the OWGR ranking system knows that Minor Tour minimums, Home Tour Points and Flagship events are a form of subsidies

Is it the chicken or the egg?

Since the OWGR only takes the top 200...there is little chance that players from a minor tour is ever going to crash 200.  Case in point:  Do you expect any player that is playing the Latino America and Canadian Tour and PGA-China tour to ever crack the top 200?  If they don't crack the top 200, these tour events will have any EVR points.

The OWGR has to give subsidies to the minor tours in order to give Asian Tour, and One-Asia and Sunshine Tour players a chance to be ranked.

The SAF has 115 players that are ranked in the top 1000. 

I guarantee that I would take my chances on the 100th best player in the SAOpen field against the 36th player in the Hyundai field.  Heck I would take my chances on beating the 36th player in Hyundai field.  Because there is no 36th best player in Hyundai field.

Until the OWGR SoF formulas starts taking into account the entire field rather than only the top 200 ranked players, they have to subsidize these event.

and IMO, the presence of a handful of highly ranked players has too much impact on the SOF on events on these minor tours.

We discussed this before....but if some multi-billionaire decided he wanted  higher rankings for Japanese Tour Players he theoretically could pay Rory to play the Japanese tour in 2015.  All those OWGR-16 subsidized events would turn into OWGR-24.  At year end 2015, how many more JPGA players would there be in the OWGR than the 14-15 at year end 2014.

My educated guess would be 30-35 players ranked in the top 200 and 5 more in the  top 50.  It wouldn't be on account of the players being better, it would just be the presence of Rory in the SoF calculations.  Adding 79 points to the SoF everytime he plays.  

That tells me the SoF formulas are too dependent on the higher ranked players.

GPB... I agree with your points regarding the depth (or lack thereof) of the OWGR strength of field ratings... but that's not what my post was about..

And I've always agreed with your points on top-heaviness of the OWGR (although maybe not to the same extent)... but that wasn't the issue broached either.

And I made no mention of Tour minimums in my post (except for flagships)... I understand the need for regular tour minimums under the current setup, even though i don't necessarily believe they are properly allocated in all cases.

My point was about flagships... and specifically the S.A. Open...   On the face of it, I'm not against Flagships getting a premium of points... but any such boosts should be within reason. I don't believe the S.A. Open is.  

This year on an earned basis...

The Players got a 4 point boost from 76 to 80  (5%) reasonable IMO
The BMW PGA got a 12 point boost from 52  to 64 (23%) reasonable
The Japan Open got 8 point boost from 24 to 32 (33%) somewhat reasonable
The Australian Open go ZERO boost as it rated 34, 2 above it's minimum - they got no bonus or basically screwed
The S.A Open got a 16 point boost from 16 to 32  or double.... WAY Too many IMO.

"Technically" the SA Open was boosted from 19 to 32.  

As a co-sanctioned event between the Sunshine and Euro Tour, it would have got an OWGR rating of 32.  an OWGR rating of 19 (Reason: Brain aneurysm)

Since you 'somewhat' agree with the top heaviness of the OWGR, then events from the minor tours are 'bottom light".  These flagship events somewhat mitigate the top heavyness.


On a GROSS POINTS per basis, the SA Open gets a lesser bump than a Major.


Assuming no ties for 19th place, the SA Open gets a boost of 95 OWGR points...total.  From 68 gross pts to 163 gross pts. 

typically majors are bumped from level 80 to Level 100.  That is a boost of 120 pts gross points.  from 460 pts to 580 pts.

GPB wrote:"Technically" the SA Open was boosted from 19 to 32.  

Huh?  The S.A. Open has 49 ERV's (28w +21h) which would be a 16 level... no?  I mean I get that a SS/ET co-sanction is a minimum 19... but it's still 49 ERV's.

GPB wrote:As a co-sanctioned event between the Sunshine and Euro Tour, it would have got an OWGR rating of 32.

Not sure I understand what you are saying... as I alluded to above... a SS and ET co-sanction is worth a minimum of 19 points now... half way between the SS minimum of 14 and the ET minimum of 24... not sure how it would have gotten an OWGR 32.

GPB wrote:Since you 'somewhat' agree with the top heaviness of the OWGR, then events from the minor tours are 'bottom light".  These flagship events somewhat mitigate the top heavyness.


On a GROSS POINTS per basis, the SA Open gets a lesser bump than a Major.


Assuming no ties for 19th place, the SA Open gets a boost of 95 OWGR points...total.  From 68 gross pts to 163 gross pts. 

typically majors are bumped from level 80 to Level 100.  That is a boost of 120 pts gross points.  from 460 pts to 580 pts.

I agree that Flagship events (and minimum events) somewhat mitigate the OWGR top heaviness or bottom lightness... regardless of how you want to phrase it.  But IMO the S.A. Open goes WAY too far in that regard.  It's not GROSS points... it's PERCENTAGE points...   And I have NO problems with Majors, which at most get a 35% bump in points over SOF, because... well.. they're MAJORS... the biggest most important events in the world.   But come on... you really think an event like the SA Open should get near a 100 point boost compared to 120 for a REAL Major... ?  

Now I realize the S.A. Open might be the biggest thing in South Africa... but the SA Open getting a 100% subsidy when the majors get about 25%, the PGAT Flagship gets 5%, Euro Flagship gets abt 23%, the Japan Flagship gets 33% and the Australian Open & Asian Tour Flagships get ZERO subsidy...   is just way out of kilter.  (despite it's 100+ top-1000 players... which by the way... all it takes to get ranked top-1000 OWGR playing out of the SA Tour is 39 missed cuts, then a 6th place finish in your most recent MINIMUM level Sunshine Tour event)

I had a typo in the first part of post (corrected).  Yes I meant the SA Open would have been level 19, if it were not the Flagship event.  

Yes, the rating is SoF-16...but being co-sanctioned with the Euroout...it would have got 19.

So IMO, the Flagship bump was from SoF-19 to SoF-32.

And I still don't have a problem with.  Japanese tour players  rarely impact the upper echelons of the OWGR, and they have a full schedule of Level 16 tournaments.

About half of the Sunshine Tour events are rated SoF 4-7 so their players are never going to impact the upper echelons.  I don't have a problem with giving the better players a chance to play ONE event rated at the John Deere-esque Level tournament.

Lets say a decent Full time Sunshine Tour player wins the SA Open.  Someone like Jared Harvey, ranked 439th.  If he should win a SoF 19 event....he is still persona non grata in the OWGR...ranked about 220th.

SoF-24 and barely cracks top 200 and becomes relevant in the in the OWGR.  Gets well into the Top 200 at SoF 32 and will at least stay there for a couple months.

==================

I wonder if the SA Open was only SoF-24, how many of the top ranked South Africans play?  Does Ernie, Charl, Sterne, Grace still play.  Oosty is already not playing.

Charl will climb to as high as #22 depending on results in Maui.

Henley could climb as high as #30.

=============

Prince Dracula says that Tiger is dropping at least 4 spots this week to #38.  Several people in Hyundai could pass him as well.  Henley, Senden, Streelman, Todd, Clark, Holmes with wins.

Senden and Streelman can do it with a runnerup.

=======

Tiger's average will be about 2.49 going into Phoenix, which should be about 48th (+/- 2 spots).

GPB wrote:I had a typo in the first part of post (corrected).

And I still don't have a problem with.  Japanese tour players  rarely impact the upper echelons of the OWGR, and they have a full schedule of Level 16 tournaments.

About half of the Sunshine Tour events are rated SoF 4-7 so their players are never going to impact the upper echelons.  I don't have a problem with giving the better players a chance to play ONE event rated at the John Deere-esque Level tournament.

Lets say a decent Full time Sunshine Tour player wins the SA Open.  Someone like Jared Harvey, ranked 439th.  If he should win a SoF 19 event....he is still persona non grata in the OWGR...ranked about 220th.

Good points... where I might dispute is because of co-sanctioning the South African Tour winners aren't persona non grata, the reason is ACCESS.   Winning some Japan Tour or Austraila Tour event get's you nothing but a trophy and a boost on some money list/OoM., but winning one of the 6 SA co-sanction events gets you exempt access to the Euro Tour.

And by the way... interesting factoid... it appears as though the S.A. Open is LOWEST purse of all the Co-sanctioned events in S.A. Joburg, Af.Open & Tshwane are all 14,500,000 ZAR while SA Open is 14mil even. Alfred Dunhill converts to around 20 mil... and Nedbank converts to a bazillion or sumpin like that...   :-)

Wasn't expecting Schwartzel to blow a five shot lead.  But good win for Englishman Andy Sullivan, he should climb to the low 80s in the OWGR.

What a log jam in Maui at the top of leaderboard.  

According to PrinceDracula, Zach/Walker can get to #13, Henley to #30, and Bae to #46.

Bae is trending to a spot on the Prez Cup team.  That should get interesting considering his immigration status.

Projected OWGR SoF Ratings for this week

Abu Dhabi- Weakish 50 
Sony OPen - Solid 46

I got Abu Dhabi at SoF 321 before Hyundai results are tabulated.  It could go down a couple spots after Hyundai is posted.

The SoF needs to be 316 or higher to be a OWGR rated 50, so the Abu Dhabi's rating is vulnerable to a couple of Withdrawals.


Interesting to note that Richard Sterne is entered in both Abu Dhabi and Sony (he is the 7th alternate in Sony)

Top 10 Implications:

Bubba passes Stenson and Scott to get to #2 with a win.  
Bubba passes Scott to #3 with a two way T3 or better.

#9 Day needs 8th or better to pass Spieth #8.

============

With a win later today for other contenders

Hideki can get as high as  #11
Walker ...#13
Reed ... #14
Bae ... #47
Todd ... #27
Henley ... #31

Disparity between PGA and Euro Tour's Grows...

I saw a report recently dealing with the disparity of OWGR points available between the PGA and Euro Tours... It dealt with one year... and I thought I'd look at a comparison between 2012 and 2014. The comparisons are based on SEASONS not calendar years.

The results surprised me... I somewhat expected the moderate increase in OWGR average event value for the PGA Tour over the two year period... but was really surprised at the drastic decrease on the Euro Tour during the same time.

The quick conclusion is that despite an increase of 5 events for the Euro Tour from 2012 to 2014, the additions were on average very low OWGR value events. In 2012 the ET had a total of 13 events rated in the 20's and below (winners share), but by 2014 that number had increased to 21. The number of ET events in the 30's also fell from 14 to 9. The number of ET 40 and above rated events remained at 10.

One other factor of note... The weakness of the ET event fields might be even greater than displayed in the point data below. Based on real OWGR Event Rating Values (ERV's), in 2012 the PGA Tour was receiving a Tour or Flagship subsidy in 7 of their events compared to 10 for the Euro Tour. By 2014, and the institution of the PGAT's wrap around season, the PGAT subsidized events had fallen to 4, but the number of subsidized events increased to 16 on the Euro Tour. To be fair, the 2014 PGAT subsidized number is reduced by 1 or 2 due to moving Mayakoba and Sanderson Farms later into the year or "next season"... but it's still a reduction for the PGAT of subsidy events... and a BIG increase in ET subsidy events.

Here's the numbers... Again... these are the 2012 vs 2014 PGAT and ET SEASONS... and not necessarily calendar years.


'12 PGAT....'12 ET
47................45 - Total events
52.26.......43.69 - OWGR winners point average all events
45.18.......38.20 - OWGR winners point average all events without Majors/WGCs
1762.........1272 - Total OWGR winners points for non major events

7.....10 - Events that needed subsidy to meet Tour or Flagship minimum

0......2 - Events in the 10's (non major/WGC)
8....11 - Events in the 20's (non major/WGC)
8....14 - Events in the 30's (non major/WGC)
7......6 - Events in the 40's (non major/WGC)
9......3 - Events in the 50's (non major/WGC)
3......1 - Events in the 60's (non major/WGC)
4......0 - Events in the 70+ (non major/WGC)


'14 PGAT....'14 ET
45...............50 - Total events
54.09......40.67 - OWGR winners point average all events
47.14......31.73 - OWGR winners point average all events without Majors/WGCs
1744........1301 - Total OWGR winners points for non major events

4.....16 - Events that needed subsidy to meet Tour or Flagship minimum

0.......3 - Events in the 10's (non major/WGC)
4.....18 - Events in the 20's (non major/WGC)
6.......9 - Events in the 30's (non major/WGC)
11.....7 - Events in the 40's (non major/WGC)
10.....2 - Events in the 50's (non major/WGC)
3.......1 - Events in the 60's (non major/WGC)
3.......0 - Events in the 70+ (non major/WGC)

1.96 = Increase in PGAT regular event OWGR average from 2012 to 2014
6.47 = Decrease in ET regular event OWGR average fro 2012 to 2014

08.57 = Difference in PGAT to ET regular event averages in 2012 (15.5%)
15.41 = Difference in PGAT to ET regular event averages in 2014 (32.7%)

But what does it all mean to the PGAT based player vs the Dual-tour or full time Euro Tour based player? My guess is not much to some players... but maybe a lot to others. Looking at players by classes:

TOP TIER - (players that would be top-50 OWGR and qualified for majors, including dual tour PGAT/ET players) I haven't studied it in detail, but I doubt the Dual Tour guys would be affected negatively much by this disparity, because they're playing the big point co-sanctioned events, plus they get the luxury of filling out their schedules with better point "regular" events on both tours. The full time ET guys who aren't dual touring, would be affected a bit more, but still not a lot because they're generally playing the "cream" of the ET schedule in addition to the big co-sanctions (+ the Players), and thus not having to play in a lot of the ultra-low point events. (more on the Saffers later who are affected more)

SECOND TIER - (ET Players that might be OWGR #51-100, NON dual touring and maybe qualify for one of the biggies here and there, but not all of them. These guys start to feel the crunch more because they're forced into lower point events after playing the cream events on the ET schedule.

THIRD TIER - (say ET non-dual tour OWGR #200 and above). These guys feel it a lot, especially the ones lower in ET priority that can't qualify for the bigger ET events like the upcoming M.E. Swing. Another thing hurting these guys is the lower point events are not only lower points for each finisher who earn points, but they award points to less places. A 50 level event for example awards points to 51 places... a 24 point event only 27 places.

MITIGATING FACTOR - One thing that might mitigate the point deficit somewhat for the 2nd and 3rd tier guys is the theory that because the competition is far less in lower rated events, it's easier to secure higher places.... and thus as many points as if they were in a higher point event. I'm not sure that's true in the PGAT lower rated events, or even a good number of the ET lower rated events... but I do think it likely to be true with the ET co-sanction events with lesser tours. For instance... Charl Schwartzel fell to 2nd place this week, but still got 19+ points for his finish. The theory is, if there were enough good players added to the field to bring it up to say a 50 level event like maybe Dubai, he and Sullivan might have finished behind better players and been T3 or lower instead of in a playoff for the win... Solo 3rd in a 50 point event is "about" the same points as he earned for 2nd in the SA Open.

Another example of the "easier to win points in lesser events" theory might again be with Schwartzel. Setting aside his Masters win and 2nd at the 2010 WGC-CA... the bulk of the rest of his "high point" event earnings in his career are from relatively low point events, some of them subsidized up to ET or co-sanction with lesser tour minimums. His next highest win after the Masters is in a 36 point event, and all the rest of his wins are in events rated in the 20's. Now you never know, he dominated some of those small point events, so it could be playing the way he did, he still might have won against major like "chalk" field in those given weeks. However, he's had lots and lots of opportunities against better competition... but outside of his Masters win which was worth 100 points, his next high point event is 44.4 in a WGC... and all the rest of his best point finishes in his career are 36 or lower.

Anyway... food for thought... I hope the columns line up above... :-)

Robo:  I am not surprised at all that the delta between the PGAT and ET is growing.  

And the reason, IMO, is the FEX Cup.  Until very recently, the ET always had elite (or near elite) that were not members of the PGATour.  Monty, Westwood, Kaymer.

Now the highest ranked ET player that is not a PGATour member is #29 Joost Luiten.  Not exactly an "Elite" World Class player.

I have complained over the years the OWGR is not dynamic, it takes month and months to see a shift.  But it will change. And what you saw in 2014 vs 2012 is the result of Westwood, Kaymer, Rory not playing in as many ET events because they are dual tour players now.


BTW....what Tier do players ranked from 101-199 fall into?  Tier 2.5?