RANKINGS OVERVIEW: amateurgolf.com offers World and U.S. Rankings for Men (the Golfweek/amateurgolf.com Player Rankings), and yearly Player-of-the-year Points Races for Men (World, U.S., State), Women (National), and Seniors (National).
NATURE OF THE WORLD AND U.S. RANKINGS: The World and U.S. Rankings are meant to be a ranking of golfing stature that aims to answer the question "Who are the best amateur golfers playing today based on recent playing record?" The parallel would be the Official World Golf Ranking for professional golf.
WORLD AND U.S. RANKED PLAYERS: Those appearing on the World Ranking list are those players who have accumulated the most points as awarded in the World Points Tournaments table for the previous year (i.e., the past 365 days). Those appearing on the U.S. Ranking list are those players from the United States who have accumulated the most points as awarded in the World Points Tournaments table for the previous year (i.e., the past 365 days).
NATURE OF THE PLAYER-OF-THE-YEAR RANKINGS: As opposed to a ranking of golfing stature that aims to answer the question "Who are the best amateur golfers playing today?", a Player-of-the-Year points race aims to answer the question "Who had the most outstanding year while competing as an amateur?" The parallel would be the PGA Tour FedEx Cup list, the Ryder Cup points list, or even the Money list, rather than the Official World Golf Ranking. The Player-of-the-Year points race becomes a true ranking only once the year ends, with the ranking applying to that year only.
PLAYERS-OF-THE-YEAR: The World Player-of-the-Year in amateur golf will be the player who accumulates the most points as awarded in the World Points Tournaments table for the calendar year beginning January 1 and ending December 31.
The U.S. Player-of-the-Year will be the player from the United States who accumulates the most points as awarded in the World Points Tournaments table for the calendar year beginning January 1 and ending December 31.
The Senior and Women's National Player-of-the-Year will be the player who accumulates the most points as awarded in the National Points Tournaments table for Seniors and Women, respectively. National Player-of-the-year points may be earned by anyone playing in tournaments held in the U.S., and by U.S. players in selected international events.
The State Player-of-the-Year for a given U.S. state will be the player who accumulates the most points as awarded in the all World Points Tournaments plus the Points Tournaments table for that state (see California and Texas as examples) for the calendar year beginning January 1 and ending December 31.
The amateurgolf.com Tournament Series Player-of-the-Year will be the player in each division (Championship, Senior, and Net) who accumulates the most points as awarded in the respective Tournament Series Points Tables for the calendar year beginning January 1 and ending December 31.
PLAYER-OF-THE-YEAR POINTS YEAR: The Points Year is the calendar year, January 1st through December 31st. All players begin each new points year with zero points. Should an event change dates that would cause the event to be played twice in one points year (for example, the Dixie Amateur in 2008 which was played in January and in December) then points will be awarded twice within that given points year.
POINTS TOURNAMENTS: The goal of the Rankings and Player-of-the-year points races is to have the points lists fairly reflect the players who have had the most outstanding playing records while competing as amateurs. We consider amateur golf to be a separate entity from college golf (although we do include the NCAA postseason in our World Points Table), from junior golf, and from senior golf (we rank seniors separately). Team events from best-balls all the way up to the Walker Cup are not included unless they have a concurrent stroke play championship (e.g., the World Amateur Team or the U.S. State Team).
PLAYER ELIGIBILITY: All amateur players worldwide are eligible to earn World Rankings and Player-of-the-Year points. Only those players whose primary residence is in the United States are eligible to earn U.S. Rankings and Player-of-the-Year points. For the Seniors and Women's National Player-of-the-Year races, all players competing in a National Points Event played in the United States are eligible to earn points, while only those players whose primary residence is in the United States are eligible to earn points in events played outside the United States (e.g., British Amateur, Canadian Amateur).
State Player-of-the-Year points are only available for those players whose primary residence is in that state.
Players of any age are eligible to earn World, U.S., Women's, or state Player-of-the-Year points. Anyone who plays in a National Senior Points Event (some tournaments have a minimum age of 50, others 55) is eligible to earn Senior Player-of-the-Year points.
PLAYERS WHO TURN PROFESSIONAL: Players who turn professional will be taken off of the World and U.S. Rankings once it comes to out attention that the player has indeed turned pro. For the Player-of-the-Year points races, however, each points list is unaffected by players who turn professional during the year. A player can have a great amateur season, turn professional and go to Q-School in the fall, and still be an amateur golf Player-of-the-Year if he had earned the most points during the amateur season.
POINTS DISTRIBUTION: Points will be awarded according to the Designated Points Events tables. In the event of a tie for any place, each player in the tie will earn the appropriate points (no points will be split). In the case that a tournament is shortened or the field reduced due to weather or any other event, a tournament's assigned points may be reduced depending on the size and strength of the field and the number of rounds played. In a limited-field event, points will not be awarded to more than half the field.
TOURNAMENT EVALUATION CRITERIA: The criteria used for evaluating Designated Points Events includes, but is not limited to, the following: Strength of field; Size of field; Inclusion in other national or state rankings programs; Event format. The staff of amateurgolf.com may use other criteria needed to properly evaluate a tournament. The staff of amateurgolf.com is the sole judge of what criteria are worthy of consideration.
TOURNAMENT STRENGTH: Because strength of field is not the sole criterion used in formulating the points tables, it is difficult to draw direct comparisons between points tournaments that appear in the same points table. For example, just because two tournaments are 500-point-level tournaments does not mean that we consider each tournament is "as good as" or "as strong as" the other in general. Likewise, some tournaments award points to more places than do tournaments of higher point levels. This usually has to do with field size but there nay be other factors. It is useful to look at each points table as a whole rather than as a series of one-to-one relationships.
THE INHERENT SUBJECTIVITY OF ANY RANKING OF AMATEUR GOLFERS: Very fine efforts have been made to apply the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) concept to amateur golf. A common impediment to these efforts is the subjectivity inherent in any ranking system applied to a sport in which the top players rarely compete against each other. Consider the top 10 professionals in the OWGR and the top 10 amateurs as ranked by the Golfweek / amateurgolf.com Player Rankings as of April 1, 2009:
Top 10 Pros
Top 10 Amateurs
1
Tiger Woods, USA
1
Danny Lee, NZL
2
Phil Mickelson, USA
2
Sam Hutsby, ENG
3
Sergio Garcia, ESP
3
Rickie Fowler, USA
4
Geoff Ogilvy, AUS
4
Scott Arnold, AUS
5
Padraig Harrington, IRE
5
Reinier Saxton, NED
6
Vijay Singh, FIJ
6
Luke Goddard, ENG
7
Robert Karlsson, SWE
7
Zach Sucher, USA
8
Camilo Villegas, COL
8
Kyle Stanley, USA
9
Kenny Perry, USA
9
Nick Taylor, CAN
10
Henrik Stenson, SWE
10
Alexandre Kaleka, FRA
Those in the top 10 of the OWGR will each play the others 10-15 times per year. Indeed most of the top 200 players in the OWGR come from 2 professional tours so the top players are sure to play almost every other highly ranked player multiple times per year. But in amateur golf, there are some in the top 10 amateur list who may not play against some of the others at all during the year, and there are many more in the top 200 who will never play many of the other highly-ranked players.
There are regions of the world (USA, GBI, Europe, Australia, South Africa, Asia, etc.) in which highly-ranked amateurs compete frequently with others in their region. But there are relatively few opportunities for the highly-ranked amateurs from one region to compete against highly-ranked amateurs from all of the other regions. So the strength of a player's schedule, and the strength of an individual tournament, becomes more difficult to quantify in an objective way than it is for an individual region, country, or state where ranked players are more likely to compete against each other.
This is not to say that applying the OWGR ranking concept to amateur golf is not useful or valuable; on the contrary these rankings are quite valuable as criteria for entry into important tournaments. But they should be viewed as entities of both objectivity and subjectivity, whose use and value besides the obvious entertainment value lies in a particular purpose (e.g., tournament entry priority) rather than an absolute reflection of the true world order of amateur golfers.
Likewise, any points race has elements of objectivity and subjectivity in it. In addition to strength-of-field analysis, we consider other factors like field size, format, stature, tournament location, etc. And while a true world amateur ranking could include practically any tournament anywhere to attempt to be as "accurate" as possible, we believe that the points tables we have formulated are deep enough to serve our goal, which is for the Rankings and Player-of-the-Year points lists to fairly reflect the players who have had the most outstanding playing records while competing as amateurs. We stand by the results we have had so far.
Mid-Atlantic