The Official World Golf Rankings – shortened to OWGR – is a system used to rate the performance levels of male professional golfers.
24 golf tours are part of the system. From the Big Easy Tour to the Abema TV Tour, then there’s the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour. The OWGR recognises several tours of a wide variety.
How are the Golf World Rankings calculated?
Let’s start by making this very basic. If you compete in a tournament that is eligible for world ranking points, you can gain world ranking points.
Ranking points are decided by each tournament’s field rating. The OWGR system uses rolling ranking periods. Points are kept at full value for 13 weeks from the relevant ranking date. This is to emphasise recent performances.
Points are then reduced in equal decrements for the remaining 91 weeks of the relevant ranking period. Each player is ranked according to their average points during the relevant ranking period.
This is determined by dividing a player’s total points by the amount of tournaments they’ve played in the ranking period. There is a minimum of 40 tournaments in a ranking period, with nothing more than 52 tournaments a player might’ve played in during the relevant ranking period counting to a player’s spot in the OWGR.
There are several eligible formats in the OWGR: stroke play, match play, stroke play qualifiers followed by match play for stroke play elimination, allowable tie-breakers for the elimination element, modified stableford, stableford, and staggered start tournaments. Team events aren’t eligible.
In terms of determining a field rating, every player in an event contributes performance points. The field rating at each tournament is made of the sum of performance points of all players in the tournament field. Performance points are determined by a player’s strokes gained world rating.
A strokes gained world rating is based on a player’s actual scores in tournaments from complete rounds of 18 holes of stroke play, adjusted to the relative difficulty of each round in the ranking period. Each rating has a corresponding value of performance points determined by the performance curve.
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Performance curve is used to work out the value of performance points per strokes gained world rating. This will then equal the amount of performance points each player contributes to a tournament’s field rating.
You can find out more about the rankings here.
Men’s World Golf Rankings 2025: Top 10 (As of December 1)
World No 1: Scottie Scheffler
World No 2: Rory McIlroy
World No 3: Tommy Fleetwood
World No 4: Xander Schauffele
World No 5: Russell Henley
World No 6: J.J. Spaun
World No 7: Robert MacIntyre
World No 8: Justin Thomas
World No 9: Ben Griffin
World No 10: Justin Rose
Women’s World Golf Rankings 2025: Top 10 (As of December 1)
World No 1: Jeeno Thitikul
World No 2: Nelly Korda
World No 3: Minjee Lee
World No 4: Miyu Yamashita
World No 5: Charley Hull
World No 6: Lydia Ko
World No 7: Ruoning Yin
World No 8: Hyo Joo Kim
World No 9: Mao Saigo
World No 10: Sei Young Kim
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