Sports in today”s world are a big-time business whether we”re talking about the New York Yankees baseball team or the University of Alabama football team. We are long removed from a time when the western swing in baseball meant taking the team train to play the St. Louis Cardinals or the St. Louis Browns, when all four Eastern Division teams in the NBA played doubleheaders at Madison Square Garden on a Friday, and when the Green Bay Packers played home games 90 miles south in Milwaukee.
Ratings and rankings are a relatively new phenomenon in sports, too. As a youth, I certainly wasn”t exposed to the quarterback rating of Bart Star. I never had to worry about how the BCS rated USC or Notre Dame. I didn”t have to know what Jack Nicklaus” world ranking was in relation to Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Lee Trevino or Tony Jacklin. Yes, it was a much simpler time back then.
Nonetheless, today”s sports scene is what it is. While I really don”t need to know what Brett Favre”s quarterback rating is to comprehend that he”s having a poor season, it is out there front and center. While most leagues and entities determine their ultimate champion on the playing field, except for big-time college football, the whole thing continues to be muddied by ratings and rankings.
Professional golf is as much to blame as any sport. It used to be that the accumulation of major titles, tournament wins and money won determined the game”s best. Of course, there was just one top-flight circuit for professional golfers. If you were an Englishman such as Jacklin or from South Africa such as Player, you came to the United States, teed it up in 20-30 tournaments, and went back home during the offseason.
Nowadays there are arguably three major tours, including the American PGA Tour, the European Tour and the Japan Golf tour, as well as three satellite tours, namely the Sunshine Tour (South Africa), the Asian Tour, and the PGA Tour of Australasia. In any given year, big-time professionals such as Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia and Vijay Singh have been known to play events on four, five or even all six of these circuits.
In 1986, the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews set the groundwork for a world ranking of golfers. Wanting to give exemptions into their premiere event, the British Open, the R&A was looking for a way to compare the exploits of Tom Watson on the PGA Tour to the successes of Seve Ballesteros on the European Tour. More to the point, if the R&A was going to exempt 50 professionals into the British Open, they wanted to find a way to determine those 50 golfers instead of coming up with something formulaic such as 35 American and 15 Europeans.
First begin in 1986, the World Golf Ranking rated the golfers during a three-year period of time with the current year weighted more highly than the other two years. During the introductory year of 1986, Bernhard Langer, the 1985 Masters champ, was ranked No. 1 for the first three weeks. Seve Ballesteros held the top spot for the next 61 weeks. Australian Greg Norman dominated the golf rankings for the next six years, staying atop the rankings for 331 weeks. During that time he won just one major, the 1993 British Open. His chief rival and the winner of six majors, Nick Faldo, held the top spot for 97. Ian Woosnam followed him up for the next 50 weeks. After Woosie, Freddie Couples became the first American to top the list. He uncomfortably did so for some 16 weeks.
By now we”ve drifted into the mid-1990s. Nick Price held the top spot for 44 weeks, Tom Lehman held it for one week following his triumph in the ”96 British Open, and Ernie Els followed it up with a nine-week run at the top of the rankings.
Of course, by early 1997 the Tiger Woods era was in its genesis and he took up the top spot for 623 of the following 670 weeks. While Woods was undergoing a swing change, David Duval wrestled away the No. 1 ranking for 15 weeks. During Woods” second swing change, Vijay Singh was atop the world rankings for 32 weeks. As an aside, Woods” 623 weeks in first place pencils out to one week shy of 12 total years. The other thing to note is that all 12 of these men atop the world rankings had at least one major title on their golfing resume.
Which brings us to November of 2010. Tiger Woods had been atop the golf world for the past four years, but he has had extended layoffs because of knee surgery and personal life drama. He is winless in 2010 and hasn”t won a major since the ”08 U.S. Open. Phil Mickelson looked poised to take over the No. 1 world ranking following his Masters win this past spring, but he has been a non-factor for much of the year. Steve Stricker has lost a step or two on his game and Jim Furyk, while reigning as the Fed Ex Cup king, is in sixth place, one place behind Stricker and one place ahead of Paul Casey.
The No. 1 golfer at this very moment is Englishman Lee Westwood, the first top-ranked golfer to be majorless. Westswood turned pro 17 years ago, has 20 European Tour wins, and was a distant runner-up at this year”s Masters and British Open. His only win in 2010 was at the St. Jude”s Classic in Memphis, a decidedly B-level tour event. These days, the world rankings extend over two years instead of the original three years, so all this really proves is that Lee Westwood has been better than Tiger, Phil, Sticker and Furyk during the past 104 weeks.
As for who is really the top golfer, one only need look only as far as No. 3 on the world rankings to get your answer. Martin Kaymer won the PGA Championship and came in eighth at the U.S. Open and seventh in the British Open while winning tourneys in 2010 in Dubai, Holland and Scotland. He is also the leading money winner on the European Tour.
The rankings don”t know what all of us do know. The Woods-Mickelson era is near its conclusion and it”s just a matter of time before the Kaymer-Rory McIlroy-Rickie Fowler-Ryo Ishikawa generation rises to the top of the World Golf Rankings.
