How are the world golf rankings calculated?

Points are awarded on the basis of final positions in official money events on the qualifying tours. For each tour, a minimum number of points are available for each event. The number of points available depends on the current rankings (top 200) of the participating golfers and the ranking of the top 30 golfers entered from the “home tour”. In addition, most tours have a premier event that is guaranteed a much higher minimum point level.

The four major tournaments automatically receive the maximum possible rating, with 100 points allocated to the winner. The winners of the three individual events in the World Golf Championships series generally receive 70 to 78 points. The winner of most PGA Tour events gains a number of points in the range from the 24 to 70s, and most European Tour events offer a points tally between 24 and 50s for the winner. (Note: The minimum points for the Sunshine Tour will be raised to 14 beginning in 2007.)

Each player’s personal ranking is calculated from the ranking points he has obtained over the previous two years. Firstly, his scores from all the tournaments he has played in are scaled down over a two year period, with one eighth of the points awarded for each tournament deducted every thirteen weeks in order to give priority to recent form. The player’s adjusted scores are then totalled, and this total is divided by the number of ranking tournaments in which he has participated over the previous two years, subject to a minimum denominator of 40 tournaments. The resulting averages for all players are put into descending order to produce the ranking table. This means that the player who has obtained most cumulative success does not necessarily come top of the rankings: it is average performance levels that are important, and some golfers play substantially more tournaments than others. Players with full membership of one of the larger tours (that is, almost all players in the top few hundred in the rankings) usually play between 20 and 35 ranking tournaments each year, unless they are injured. New rankings are released every Monday.

The Official World Golf Rankings are a system for rating the performance level of professional golfers. They were introduced in 1986 and are endorsed by the four Major Championships and the six professional tours which make up the International Federation of PGA Tours, which are the PGA TOUR, the European Tour, the Asian Tour, the PGA Tour of Australasia, the Japan Golf Tour, and the Sunshine Tour. Points are also awarded for high finishes on the Canadian Tour, Nationwide Tour and Challenge Tour.

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