Rory regains top spot as Donald’s reign halted at Heritage
The rankings are based on a player’s average achievements over a two-year period and endorsed by the four major championships and the six leading professional tours which make up the International Federation of PGA Tours and these are their guidelines as to how the system operates.
“The 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 are then 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 and a maximum divisor of a player’s last 52 events. The winners of the Masters Tournament, the US Open Championship, the Open Championship and the PGA Championship are awarded 100 points [60 points for second place, 40 for third, 30 for fourth down to 1.50 points for a player completing the final round], and the winner of the Players Championship is awarded 80 points.”
McIlroy’s remarkable consistency over the last year, highlighted by his victory in the US Open last June and more recently in the Honda Classic on the US PGA Tour have put him back on top of the pile. He is likely to stay there for longer than the two weeks he enjoyed last month before being usurped by Luke Donald even though the Masters will have been his only competitive appearance over a six-week period. He will next be seen in the Wells Fargo tournament starting on Thursday week at Quail Hollow where he claimed his first success on the US PGA Tour in 2010 thanks to a spectacular closing round of 63.
Luke Donald was ranked number 1 for 40 weeks, a run that ended following McIlroy’s win at the Honda but the Englishman needed only a fortnight to reclaim the spot with his victory at the Transitions Championship.
Donald had taken over last May from fellow Englishman Lee Westwood and remained number one for 40 weeks, the longest of anyone except for Tiger Woods in the last 15 years.
This is the 51st time the top spot has changed hands and the record for longest run at number 1 belongs to Woods with 281 weeks.
The rankings released yesterday show McIlroy ahead of Donald, Westwood, Masters champion Bubba Watson, Hunter Mahan, Martin Kaymer, Steve Stricker, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Justin Rose. Carl Pettersson, the burly Swede who won the Heritage tournament at Hilton Head on Sunday, has improved 33 places to 35th while Louis Oosthuizen, runner-up in the Masters and the impressive winner of the Malaysian Open at the weekend, is a very worthy 12th having begun 2012 in 40th place.
Four other Irishmen, Graeme McDowell, 18th; Darren Clarke, 67th; Michael Hoey, 74th and Padraig Harrington, 81st, are also inside the top 100.
However, McDowell has dropped three spots in the week since Augusta and the newly married Clarke is down 15 places since the start of the year.
After that come Shane Lowry, 122nd; Peter Lawrie, 197th; Damien McGrane, 226th and Gareth Maybin, 278th.
Hoey, Lowry, Lawrie, former winner McGrane and Maybin are all playing in this week’s Volvo China Open at Tinjiang where the Swede Peter Hanson, who led going into the final round of the Masters before finishing in a share for third, may well be the one to watch. However, he will have his hands full with a field that also includes Ian Poulter and Paul Casey and a par 72 course that stretches to a massive 7,667 yards.
Even though the sponsors are putting up $US6.2 million in prize money and have committed until 2018, the field for the Valero Texas Open starting in San Antonio on Thursday has attracted one of the poorest fields of the year on the PGA Tour. KJ Choi (26th) is the only member of the world’s top 30 to have deemed it worth his while to take part.
