Does Anyone Care About The World Golf Rankings?
This Weekend Wrapped up the HSBC Champions in Shanghai. The tournament ended in a show down between Francesco Molinari and the newest World #1. Lee Westwood. At the end of the Shanghai Noon-esque putting duel, Molinari finished at -19 with a one shot victory over Westwood.
Congrats Francesco!
They eyes at the beginning of the Tournament were on the Top Four in the world rankings; Lee, Tiger Woods, Martin Kaymar and Phil Mickelson. A win for any of these gents could have shifted the #1 spot, but only Lee finished in the top 5. His 2nd place finish boosted his ranking and put even more distance between himself and Tiger. So how did Tiger fare? Well, he was 11 strokes back, but tied for 6th, while Kamyar finished with a -2. Phil Mickelson spent the weekend complaining about arthritis and shot a 1 over for the weekend. All in all, it was a fairly lackluster showing from the top names in golf.
Now Back to Lee Westwood. He has only 2 PGA Tour wins, which is offset some by his 20 European Tour Wins, 4 Japan Golf Tour wins in the ‘90s and 6 other miscellaneous wins for a grand total of 32 professional wins. His only win this year was at the St Jude Classic (prior to that it was the Dubai World Championship in Nov of 2009), and he has yet to win a Major. When compared to Tiger’s 128 professional wins (including 71 PGA and 38 European), and 14 Majors, all over the same time span, it makes this caveman wonder if the world ranking system is broken, or even worth looking at.
What do you think Rockheads? Does anyone care about the World Golf Rankings anymore?
~Scratch
I remember reading years ago (back in the “60’s) that if a PGA pro had shot even par in every tournament he would have been the leading money winner on tour that year. Would he have been the best golfer on tour? No. Most consistent, but not the best. So how do you determine who’s best? It’s the old adage “What have you done for me lately?” It doesn’t make sense for someone to stay atop the World Rankings when he hasn’t played in months, and when he has played he hasn’t played well. I think there should be a system in which points from tournaments diminish the further along time goes. In other words, recent tournaments should carry more weight than those from a year ago. This year’s Masters should count twice, three times as much as last year’s Masters, etc.