The Trials & Tribulations Of "World No. 1" Status

With Stacy Lewis's win in Singapore, she's moving in on top ranked Yani Tseng, who lamented the "No. 1" pressure in an unbylined wire story.

"It's tough and it's very lonely," she said. "No one knows how do you feel. Everybody wants to be in your shoes, but no one knows how tough is that."

"The first year, when I was world No. 1, I feel good. But every month, everybody keeps building the expectations on me and that's lots of pressure."

And...

"World No. 1, I know it's good and people like it, but I want to care about myself more," she said. "If I lose (it), I'll get back one day, too."

Meanwhile Joe Posnanski writes about the "crippling" pressure created by a pesky algorithm putting a "1" next to your name.

These guys are pros, of course, and they train themselves to not think about any of this, to keep their thoughts positive and their visualizations clear … but it isn’t easy. And then, suddenly, a player is No. 1. And it all explodes. Every putt is world news. Reporters are everywhere. Everything you say is a headline, every opinion you offer (about golf or not) is analyzed and scrutinized. Expectations are insane – a bad round leads newscasts around the world. Whispers surround you. People invest hopes in you. It’s a lot to deal with. It’s hard to keep your bearings.

Call the Red Cross!

Anyway, this was fascinating...

Jack Nicklaus – who handled the No. 1 spot in the world better than anyone in golf history – said it best.

Today's trivia question readers, how many weeks did Jack Nicklaus spend in the World No. 1 spot?

Really, why do people take the golf rankings so seriously? I understand players wanting to get in the top 50 Club because of the perks that go along with it, but this is not tennis. Does the Official World Golf Ranking even come close to consistently telling us who is playing best in the world?

Update on Monday, March 4, 2013 at 08:00 AM by Geoff

**Mercifully, Holly Sonders on Golf Channel Morning Drive brought some sanity to this discussion during the, uh, "Wolf" segment (don't ask):

"I've never heard of Roger Federer complaining or lamenting about being world No. 1. In golf I think we need to take a page from other sports' books, so to speak, and get that competitive fire back. What are we doing?"

Entire Golf Digest 100 Greatest Now Posted

...with capsules and photo(s) for each course.

Golf Digest's 2013 "100 Greatest" Ranking...

...arrives a little early! I'm not sure why the change, but what normally comes out three months from now is on newstands or on tablet editions for subscribers (or single issue downloaders).

Pictured is No. 15, The Alotian Club where they appear to have replicated the Great Wall only as a cart parth embankment.

That said, here is the top 20 for online readers where Pine Valley moves back ahead of Augusta National in the top spot.

Olesen In The OWGR Top 50 Club

Sean Martin explains how Thorbjorn Olesen's inactivity helped him crack the top 50 in the year's final Official World Golf Ranking and therefore earning his first Masters bid.

Geoff Ogilvy just missed the coveted top 50 ranking and all of the perks that come with it.

How did Olesen pass Ogilvy? Players are ranked in the OWGR based on average points earned per tournament in the past two years. Points earned for a specific finish decrease as time passes from that tournament; that loss in points is the reason for Ogilvy's fall in the rankings.

Martin lists the other beneficiaries of the top 50 club status.

Golf Digest's 50 Most Fun Courses

I don't usually get too excited about a new list but Golf Digest's 50 Most Fun is one that could actually have a positive impact on the game. It never hurts given I've only been associated with two courses that were created and built from scratch working with Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, to see Rustic Canyon (#30) and The Horse Course at Prairie Club (#10!) making the 50 Most Fun publics.

Peter Finch explains the thought process for the 50 Most Fun in the September Golf Digest, and there is a slideshow of the diverse group of courses selected. (As an aside for architecture geeks, there is also a recent Joann Dost aerial shot of Cypress Point showing the restored fairway bunkers on the 17th hole.)

The 50 Most Fun Privates, the 50 Most Fun Publics, and the most fun of Great Britain and Ireland.

How To Win More World Ranking Points For Inconsequential Events Than Losing In A Masters Playoff...And Other OWGR Horror Stories

You may have heard Jim Nantz mention the Official World Golf Ranking in less than flattering fashion during Saturday's Zurich Classic telecast and I'm guessing the normally diplomatic CBS anchor must have read last week's must see Golf World story by Mike Stachura.

In a nutshell, two Ivy League professors are preparing to show the world how the ranking is fundamentally and illogically biased. The incredibly influential ranking, which determins major championship fields and the 2016 Olympic Games field, is even worse than we thought. But based on some eye-opening quotes from PGA Tour VP Ty Votaw, Camp Ponte Vedra is all ears.

Just two of the hilarious-if-they-weren't-true findings.

* Francesco Molinari won the 2010 WGC-HSBC Champions event and earned 68 points for his victory. The tournament is an otherwise inconsequential, though high-prize-money event held well after the conclusion of the major championships at an undistinguished course in China. The problem: Molinari's point total was worth more than losing the playoff for this year's Masters.

* K.T. Kim is a rising Korean player with an admirable local record in Asian events but a pair of missed cuts and a T-59 in his last three major championships. He earned 32 points when he won the Japan Open in 2010, more than what he would have earned for finishing fourth in the PGA Championship. But he didn't finish fourth, he finished T-59.

And the PGA Tour's position...

The PGA Tour's Ty Votaw, executive vice president of communications and international affairs, says the PGA Tour is looking at the Broadie/Rendleman study. "We feel the insights Dr. Broadie and Dr. Rendleman presented are very interesting and worth further study, and based on the results of the peer review of the professors' work, we will share that paper with the OWGR Technical Committee for analysis," he wrote in an email to Golf World.

"The Official World Golf Rankings are significantly biased against members of the PGA Tour."

John Paul Newport went to the World Scientific Congress of Golf last week in Phoenix and reports on many things, including Columbia's Mark Broadie and Dartmouth's Dick Rendleman's findings about the OWGR. Thanks to reader Chris for this.

At their presentation in Phoenix, summarizing research for a paper to be finished soon, they compared the world ranking of the top 200 players to a ranking of those same players' skill levels calculated using a statistical model they also devised, which simultaneously takes into account players' adjusted tournament scores and the difficulty of the courses. In every two-year period going back to 2003, the bias was stark. "For every given skill ranking, the official world golf ranking for PGA Tour players averaged 36 positions worse than for non-PGA Tour players," Rendleman said. At one point Pat Perez was ranked 95th in skill, according to their model, but 195th in the world rankings.

One of the main flaws in the current system involves strength-of-field ratings used to determine how many points players earn for good performance. Tournaments receive a minimum point value, depending on which of the world's tours is sponsoring it, regardless of how many quality players are in the field. Strength of field ratings based on the participating players' skill levels would be more equitable, they argue.

A Worse Case Scenario For The OWGR: Voting!

Long-suffering readers know I'm not a fan of the over-reliance of the Official World Golf Ranking to determine fields because of the safety net created by getting in the top 50, and then accruing points in limited-field events like this week's WGC. But in analyzing how the algorithms figure out the No. 1 player, John Paul Newport shares a scenario that makes me just love the OWGR as it is.

If McIlroy keeps to his recent form, he could ride off with the No. 1 trophy and not return for years. Or, he could lose it this week. With a win at Doral, either Donald or Westwood would recapture the No. 1 ranking; Donald could finish as low as fourth and take back the title, depending on McIlroy's finish.

If the weekly battle for No. 1 stays close, don't expect the world golf rankings, back-weighted as they are to include tournaments two years old, to keep up with the action. The best way to achieve that, as some, including author John Feinstein, have suggested, could be to replace or supplement the rankings for the top players— perhaps the top 10 or the top 25—with a weekly poll of experts, as in college football and basketball polls. Don't hold your breath. That, according to an OWGR spokesman, "would be a huge change in direction and unlikely to be considered."

Whew...that would be awful.

World Ranking Head Scratcher Files: Phil Wins @ Pebble Edition

Alex Miceli with the latest Official World Golf Ranking absurdity: Phil Mickelson received fewer World Ranking points for winning the full field AT&T National Pro-Am than Tiger Woods received for beating 17 players at last December's Chevron World Challenge.

When Woods beat Zach Johnson by a stroke at the Chevron, which is an unofficial event, he earned 44 world-ranking points and moved from 52nd in the world to 21st in the Official World Golf Ranking.

Mickelson, with his two-shot margin against Charlie Wi at Pebble Beach, earned only 38 points. That also was 10 less than the 48 points that Rafael Cabrera-Bello gained for winning the Omega Dubai Desert Classic and the same amount that Lee Westwood garnered for winning the Nedbank Golf Challenge, a 12-man exhibition event in South Africa in December.

And this is a system we're allowing to determine major championship fields, and in 2016, the Olympic Games field?

"The unanimity of their voice was powerful and absolutely worthy of mass scrutiny."

Steve Elling takes a closer look at the Golf World PGA Tour Player Course Ranking project, talks to yours truly, and offers his thoughts after reading all 9000 words in his issue of the magazine.

In a survey that took nine months and hundreds of hours to compile, one of the game's most influential magazines has completed a comprehensive survey of 81 tour veterans, assembling the first no-holds ranking of tour venues in history.

By a landscaping landslide, the older, established tour venues dominated the subjective rankings, and the newer tracks, including a spate of TPC courses designed with tournament play foremost in mind, were mired at the bottom of the list.

Forget the flat-billed orange hats, pink driver shafts, Poulter's paisley pants and the myriad Twitter accounts -- the young guys on tour these days have short attention spans but can still muster the long view. They recognize a gen-u-wine masterpiece when they see one, too.

"With the Middle East swing, those at the top are going to, if anything, stretch their lead."

Ah yes, 2012 is here and with such a short off season it's a bit tough to get excited about Friday's kickoff, but at least Pond Scummers Huggan and Elling haven't lost their cynical touch while bouncing around several topics.

This exchange about the world ranking points up for grabs early in the season could play an interesting part in determining where some big names (Els, Goosen) play, how the final Masters field shapes up and how Americans playing the PGA Tour may fall behind.

Elling: Damned unlikely. For one thing, the fields over the first six to eight weeks of the season are frequently stronger on the European Tour than in the States. The ebb and flow of the world rankings at this time of year often see a slew of Euros rise to the top because of the points on offer early in the season. Then as the bigger U.S. events start kicking off, especially in March, the points start to swing back to this side of the Pond and the Yanks start to move up a few pegs in the pecking order. OK, there's your technical explanation, anyway. As for the emotional portion, read onward.

Huggan: I'd like to see an American make the top three or four of the rankings if only to stop the whining noise that has been emanating from your side of the Pond ever since it became clear that the very best players are no longer nephews of Uncle Sam. My goodness, can you guys not give it a rest? Does it really matter that much where the top players hail from?

Elling: Yeah, it matters. Ever since Francis Ouimet, we Yanks have believed we were the best of the best. It's been a rough three or four years. Men's tennis had ceased to exist as a sport here, in large part because there are zero American players at the top of the totem pole.

Huggan: I tell you one thing about the rankings: Any American wanting to be in the top five by the Masters is going to have to pull his finger out. With the Middle East swing, those at the top are going to, if anything, stretch their lead.

OWGR Folks Knew They Had A Limited Field Problem...

Doug Ferguson explains that the folks controlling the Official World Golf Ranking have an adjustment in place to counteract the excessive impact of limited field events, but it still isn't enough to prevent a massive jump like the one Tiger made last weekend by winning the 18-player Chevron World Challenge.

There will be some slight changes next year for Woods' event at Sherwood, and for the Nedbank Challenge in South Africa, which Lee Westwood won and received 38 ranking points.

The Official World Golf Ranking board, at its annual meeting in July, approved a modification for tournaments that have fewer than 30 players. Those events will no longer get the "home tour" rating component -- essentially bonus points that depend on how many players from the host tour are in the event.

But it won't make that much of a difference.