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Only two golfers occupied the No. 1 spot in the Official World Golf Rankings from July 1999 to October 2010. Through the first 60 days of 2023, three golfers have already taken a turn sitting on the mountaintop.
Rory McIlroy started the year at No. 1, but he was usurped by Scottie Scheffler after he won the Phoenix Open. Then, Scheffler was overtaken the following week by Jon Rahm following the Spaniard’s win at the Genesis Invitational.
It’s not unusual for the No. 1 spot in the world to change hands a lot throughout the year. What is unusual, however, is how quickly it has happened. Since the system was implemented in the 1980s, the No. 1 spot has never changed hands more than once before March 1.
This trend speaks to several of things.
The first is that oftentimes one player has dominated and remained at No. 1 for a long period of time. Tiger Woods had two separate stints of at least 250 weeks. The second is that it’s unusual for more than two golfers to be playing at a No. 1 player in the world level for long stretches. The third is that it’s abnormal for players to do so in non-major championship settings this early in the year.
No matter how you dice it, Rahm, Scheffler and McIlroy are the three best players in the world. The OWGR has them in that order, and Data Golf — whose formula is very different than the OWGR — agrees, slotting them a bit differently with Rahm in first, McIlroy in second and Scheffler in third.
We could be headed for a year like 2012 in which there were seven exchanges of the No. 1 spot between Luke Donald and McIlroy. Or, perhaps 2015 when there were eight between Jason Day, Jordan Spieth and McIlroy. We may even get a 2018 when there were nine different exchanges of world No. 1 between Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Justin Rose.
With the PGA Tour’s implementation of designated events in which almost all of the top players in the…
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Source : cbssports
