The men’s golf world rankings are quite pointless to look at now.
Jon Rahm is ranked 18th, Brooks Koepka is 79th and Cameron Smith is 101st. They are objectively inaccurate marks and don’t represent the quality of their games compared with other players. There aren’t 100 golfers on Earth better than Cam Smith.
Sure, it’s entirely their fault. They took huge cash offers to join the closed-style LIV Golf League which recruits players not on merit but mostly superstardom, so it can never really be eligible for ranking status unless wholesale changes are made. Playing in unranked events for a long period = Falling in the rankings.
The world rankings didn’t cause this mess and LIV Golf and its CEO Greg Norman have retreated from the clean-up, resigned to the fact the OWGR (Official World Golf Ranking) won’t recognise the Saudi-funded circuit.
I’ll give the rankings a pass on this particular test, but they are still skewed and I’ll give a bold F for assigning the Hero World Challenge ranking legitimacy.
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This 20-man field, playing in an event hosted by Tiger Woods for the benefit of his charity foundation, seemingly has no criteria for participation. By each player’s name on the PGA Tour website, it reads ‘Field Size and Tournament Pointers’ in the ‘How they qualified’ column.
Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, Hideki Matsuyama and Viktor Hovland aren’t in the field but are in the top 11 of the world rankings. I note the top 11 because this cut-off has previously been used as exemption criteria.
So it’s “one of the strongest fields in golf” as the Hero World Challenge website says, of the players who want to play. I can’t imagine McIlroy and Schauffele weren’t invited.
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I’m pleased to see the excellence of Robert MacIntyre, Aaron Rai and Matthieu Pavon rewarded with a spot in this 5-star luxury event in the Bahamas, and seemingly recognised by Tiger himself. A little like the Tour Championship at the end of the PGA Tour season, a spot in the Hero World Challenge shows you’ve had a good year. Play by all means. Have fun by all means.
However, not only does this event resemble the unranked tournaments we see in the LIV Golf League with reduced fields, no cuts and no clear criteria for participation, but the winner of this event will also receive more world ranking points than the winner of the Nedbank Golf Challenge on the DP World Tour and the PIF Saudi International, which has 120 people playing.
Playing in Saudi are Smith, Dustin Johnson, Tyrrell Hatton, Joaquin Niemann, Patrick Reed, Louis Oosthuizen and Sergio Garcia, and playing in South Africa are Max Homa, Corey Conners, Will Zalatoris and Nicolai Hojgaard.
It would be the easiest of moves for the world rankings board to remove the Hero World Challenge’s OWGR status and a straightforward decision to claw back credibility that has been lost since the emergence of LIV.
The Hero World Challenge doesn’t need world ranking points. This period of the PGA Tour calendar is one for experimentation and variety. There’s this hit-and-giggle at Albany Golf Course, a fun mixed event next and a family pairs competition later in December in the form of the PNC Championship which Woods and his son Charlie like to compete in.
What this period full of festive cheer and merriment doesn’t need is a VIP party taking itself too seriously.
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