World Golf Rankings Explained- How the System Works

(From January 1 2007)

The Official World Golf Ranking, which is endorsed by the four Major Championships and the six professional tours which make up the International Federation of PGA Tours, is issued every Monday, following the completion of the previous week’s tournaments from around the world.

The official events from the six professional tours together with the Canadian, Nationwide and European Challenge Tours are all taken into account and “Ranking Points” are awarded according to the players’ finishing positions and are generally related to the strength of the field based on the number and ranking of the Top-200 World Ranked players and the Top-30 of the Home Tour players in the respective tournaments (Event “Rating Values”). However, the four Major Championships are rated separately to reflect the higher quality of the events together with the Players Championship in the United States. In addition, the BMW PGA Championship in Europe, the Australian, Japan and South African Open Championships and the Flagship events on the Asian and Nationwide Tours are allocated higher minimum points levels to reflect their status.

The World Ranking Points for each player are accumulated over a two year “rolling” period with the points awarded for each event maintained for a 13-week period to place additional emphasis on recent performances – ranking points will then be reduced in equal decrements for the remaining 91 weeks of the two year Ranking period. Each player is then ranked according to his average points per tournament, which is determined by dividing his total number of points by the tournaments he has played over that two-year period. There is a minimum divisor of 40 tournaments over the two year ranking period.

The winners of the Masters Tournament, the US Open Championship, the Open Championship and the PGA Championship are awarded 100 points (60 points for 2nd place, 40 for 3rd, 30 for 4th down to 1.50 points for a player completing the final round), and the winner of the Players Championship is awarded 80 points (points are awarded down to 1.20 points for 60th place and ties). The BMW PGA Championship has a minimum 64 points for the winner (points to 56th place). Minimum points levels for the winners of official Tour events have been set at 6 points for the Canadian Tour (points to 6th place), 12 points for the European Challenge Tour (points to 14th place), 14 points for the Asian, Sunshine and Nationwide Tours (points to 17th place), 16 points for Australasian and Japanese Tours (points to 19th place) and 24 points for European and the United States Tours (points to 27th place). In addition the Open Championships of Australia, Japan and South Africa have a minimum of 32 points for the winner (points to 37th place) and the Flagship events on the Asian and Nationwide Tours have a minimum of 20 points for the winner (points to 22nd place). In the cases of co-sanctioned Tour events, the minimum points levels are determined using the “average” of the minimum Tour ranking points from each Tour (rounded up to nearest whole number).

Points are reduced by 25% for tournaments curtailed to 36 holes because of inclement weather or other reasons.