A few weeks ago, Tiger Woods held his annual Hero World Challenge event in the Bahamas, which benefits the Tiger Woods Foundation charity. The eighteen-man event has moved locations a few times, but has the smallest field of the year with one major constant: Tiger always plays regardless of if he’s the first or the last ranked player in the world. The rest of the field is comprised of invites to the Top-11 in the OWGR (Official World Golf Ranking), and invites chosen by Tiger’s team/sponsor. So how does a laid back event, at the end of the season, with no cut factor into things like the OWGR? A lot more than you’d think.
As read on The Courier…
“…in terms of the Official World Golf Rankings, it carries as much weight as the Scottish Open, or the Dubai Desert Classic, or the Shell Houston Open. Incredibly, you get as many OGWR points for winning Tiger’s charity tournament as you do for winning our national open and those other prestige events.
In fact, finishing 18th out of 18th at the Hero World Challenge – there’s no cut, of course – gets as many OGWR points as finishing 48th at the US Open; a major championship that features 156 of the world’s top players on some of the most difficult courses which attracts a qualifying entry of around 10,000 in some recent years.”
Wait a second here. You mean to tell me that just playing in Tiger’s event gets you as many points as a Top-50, yes FIFTY, at a US Open? A win is worth more than a national Open Championship event? That’s just ridiculous. I agree with the author on this one: I don’t think invitationals shouldn’t count (The Masters, DUH), but getting an invite to an event to give your OWGR spot a pretty hefty boost, just for being Tiger’s buddy? Come on now.
I get it, you have to be Top-11 in the World to get the auto-invite, even though not everyone takes it. But, look at Tiger when he was struggling a few years back, making his first comeback. He was outside the top 1000 in the World, and a last-place finish is like a top-50 in the US Open. Yeah, that’ll give him a nice bump in the OWGR. Last year? He finished seventh out of eighteen, and catapulted five hundred and thirty-eight places up the OWGR. Look, I’m not saying this one event is why he moved up the rankings so fast, but come on now. This is an invitational event of eighteen buddies that’s worth more than a national Open. Give me a break.
Moral of the story? The OWGR points system is incredibly confusing with so many events happening at once, and has a ridiculous scoring system. Do I have a better way to do it? No. Do I have a better way to rank/score events? Nope, not that either. But do I recognize that something should probably change here? Yeah, I do. Although the guys who play in it most years might disagree. You know, those who have managed to hang on to top-11 spots for the last few years. Ah, the rich get richer….
