SHOULD TOUR RANKINGS BE WEIGHTED BY QUALITY OF THE FIELD?

Ringoblack

Your comments/opinions please. Right now it's based on money won. But the quality of the players you beat should count for something not totally by the size of the tournament purse.

mikeintopeka

Ringoblack - There IS a system that generates a ranking based on your schedule and strength of the field. Check out the methodology in Jeff Sagarin's player ratings funded by Golfweek Magazine:

Jeff Sagarin's rating system is based on a mathematical formula that uses a player's won-lost-tied record against other players when they play on the same course on the same day, and the stroke differential between those players, then links all players to one another based on common opponents. The ratings give an indication of who is playing well over the past 52 weeks.

The following list is an explanation of each category Sagarin uses to formulate his rankings.

POWER RATING: This is NOT a stroke average. The rating is calculated using a player's record, stroke differential and connection to all the other players in the database. The difference between two ratings predicts the difference between two players in a typical round.
SCHEDULE STRENGTH: The average strength of each event in which the player has played, calculated using the power ratings of every player in every field.
SCHEDULE RANK: The player's schedule is ranked by difficulty among the entire database.

Here is the current rankings based on Sagarin's methodology - Jason Day is number one in strength of fields entered and his results and Fowler is number one in theoretical head to head results against every field entered in events he's played. http://golfweek.com/rankings/

ZWExton

Does it ever feel like the leading money winners are not the best players in a given year?

I have no issue with the current and simple methodology the tour uses. It never seems farcical to me when the dust settles. And on the tour even a "weak field" is still pretty strong competition. Any guy out there who makes putts on a given day can shoot a 64.

Weirfan

It would be easy to include a strength of field factor in the ranking aalgorithm .

Martee

I think most ranking systems in golf are skewed. It ought to be a point system based on where you finish at. The twist would be if you failed to make the cut, you would lose points.

Look at being ranked #1, you can hold that position for quite awhile if you win the biggies but dont win afterwards.

puttnfool

I thought strength of field was a factor. Did they change that in the last decade?

DC300

It’s already weighted, the big guns show up for the Big tournaments where they pay the big money. Show up and win those, you are more legit, but beyond that, who cares? It’s a ranking, nothing important, unless you are at the bottom of the field and again, go prove it on a big stage and your problems go away.

Bigborgel

Strength of the field could become very subjective, winnings is easy, the bigger events, with bigger purses attract the better players. Therefore it does become weighted, sort of.

mikeintopeka

I just checked and the Fedex Cup is weighted but by only 4 categories: Non PGA Events, PGA Tour Events, World Golf Championships, and The 4 Majors PLUS The Players Championship.

If the tour players aren't complaining about rankings (at least in public), is it an issue?

PA-PLAYA

Lots of things to consider. Ultimately it doesn't come down so much as "strength of field" as it does "strength of money."

This past weekend there was a WGC event in Shanghai, the purse was over twice the value as that of the Sanderson Farms event held this same weekend down in Mississippi.

And while the perception is that these WGC events boost the tour schedule with regard to getting the top players showing up and playing (because of the bigger purses) the reality is that a lot of longstanding non-WGC events are indeed impacted because of that.

The Bryon Nelson is the classic example... one of the oldest tournaments on schedule (perhaps the oldest) that, by the way, generates the most charity fund raising revenue of any of the other tournaments on tour. So you have the WGC event in Mexico three weeks prior. Then you have the Valspar. Then you have the Bryon Nelson, then you have the WGC Dell Matchplay. Not to discount that a lot of players have more and more gradually overlooked this tournament since the passing of Byron Nelson back in 2006.... but the primary reason is because of these enormous WGC purses happening two weeks prior and a week later. Most of these top players are taking the week off prior to playing their next event. It's been this way for a while now, no news there.

When the PGA moves the PGA Championship to May in 2019, what impact will that have on these non-WGC (normal purse) events?

If you double the purse and essentially guarantee the top players a paycheck regardless of how they perform - they're gonna go where the money is.

So now we basically have two tours within one tour. You have the younger, lesser established players competing in these non-WGC and non-major events, then you have the top players competing in the WGC events, the majors, and the FED Ex Cup playoff events. And those top players, sensing that these huge purse tournaments are where they need to play, are forgoing these traditional tour stops, because obviously there's more to be gained winning the Dell Matchplay, even if you play horribly, but especially if you play particularly well, versus playing in the Byron Nelson the week prior.

And with as much money as these top players are earning - you better believe there's very little motivation there to play back-to-back weeks.

Thus my argument that it's no longer about strength of field, but strength of money.

Weirfan

PA-PLAYA Thus my argument that it's no longer about strength of field, but strength of money.

in total agreement

sdandrea1

Rankings are meaningless to me. What the players do is what matters. I don't really care if a win is considered an upset. Just more blah blah fodder for the talking heads.