OWGR - Week #16

Not sure what's the most relevant headline this week, the playoffs or the apparent revival of the Europeans!? Three consecutive weeks without a US winner on the PGA Tour must feel almost like a mini-crisis for the Americans after that endless winning streak they had...

A fantastic win for Graeme McDowell at the Heritage and a very welcome return to the top 10 in the world rankings for him (up to #8). Webb Simpson moves up a couple of spots to #18 after losing the playoff against GMac, while Luke moves back up a notch to #5 after another fine performance in Harbour Town. Kevin Streelman is another big gainer this week, moving up 22 places to #59, with Russel Henley returning inside the top 50 (at #48) and Leishman continuing his impressive ascendancy, up to #63.

Wonderful win also for Raphael Jacquelin at the Spanish Open, after one of the longest playoffs ever seen (hate playoffs where they play the same hole over and over again!). Rapha's win means a welcome return to the top 100 for the Frenchman (up to #94). Very impressive performance from the young German rookie, Maximilian Kieffer, which should translate in a leap of ~140 places in the rankings, up somewhere around #285, while Felipe Aguilar will climb close to #130.

The great Angel Pato Cabrera continues to steel headlines after that memorable finish at the Masters. An amazing eagle 2 at the final hole sent him in a share of the lead and a playoff with another local veteran, Rafael Gomez in his home town of Cordoba, on the Latinamerica Tour. Angel went on to win the playoff and he will move now further up in the rankings, up to #58.

Finally, congratulations also to Y. Tsukada from Japan and to Jake Roos from South Africa, winners on the Japanese and Sunshine tours, and moving up to somewhere around #275 and #155 in the rankings.

The OWGR table after week #16 should look as follows:

1 Tiger Woods
2 Rory McIlroy
3 Adam Scott
4 Justin Rose
5 Luke Donald
6 Brandt Snedeker
7 Louis Oosthuizen
8 Graeme McDowell
9 Steve Stricker
10 Matt Kuchar
-----------------------------
11 Phil Mickelson
12 Lee Westwood
13 Keegan Bradley
14 Sergio Garcia
15 Charl Schwartzel
16 Bubba Watson
17 Ian Poulter
18 Webb Simpson
19 Dustin Johnson
20 Jason Dufner
21 Peter Hanson
22 Hunter Mahan
23 Nick Watney
24 Ernie Els
25 Jim Furyk
26 Jason Day
27 Bo Van Pelt
28 Bill Haas
29 Rickie Fowler
30 Zach Johnson
31 Gonzalo Fdez-C.
32 Branden Grace
33 Martin Kaymer
34 Thorbjorn Olesen
35 Robert Garrigus
36 Carl Pettersson
37 Jamie Donaldson
38 Paul Lawrie
39 Scott Piercy
40 Henrik Stenson
41 Francesco Molinari
42 Nicolas Colsaerts
43 Michael Thompson
44 George Coetzee
45 Ryan Moore
46 Fredrik Jacobson
47 Tim Clark
48 Russell Henley
49 Richard Sterne
50 Matteo Manassero
--------------------------------
51 Marcel Siem
52 John Senden
53 Padraig Harrington
54 Hiroyuki Fujita
55 Geoff Ogilvy
56 David Lynn
57 Martin Laird
58 Angel Cabrera
59 Kevin Streelman
60 Alexander Noren
------------------------------
61 Charles Howell III
62 Chris Wood
63 Mark Leishman
64 Luke Guthrie
65 Thongchai Jaidee
66 Stephen Gallacher
67 Thomas Bjorn
68 D.A. Points
69 Brendan de Jonge
70 Greg Chalmers
71 Jimmy Walker
72 Marcus Fraser
73 Charlie Beljan
74 Rafael Cabrerra-Bello
75 David Toms
76 Jaco Van Zyl
77 Anders Hansen
78 Chris Kirk
79 Shane Lowry
80 K.J. Choi
81 Darren Fichardt
82 Richie Ramsay
83 John Merrick
84 Bernd Wiesberger
85 Scott Jamieson
86 Thaworn Wiratchant
87 Kiradech Aphibarnrat
88 Miguel A. Jimenez
89 John Huh
90 Mark Wilson
91 Billy Horschel
92 Gaganjeet Bhullar
93 Thomas Aiken
94 Raphael Jacquelin
95 Danny Willett
96 Ben Crane
97 Aaron Baddeley
98 Brendan Jones
99 Bae Sang-Moon
100 Kristoffer Broberg
-------------------------------
101 Kevin Na
102 Josh Teater
103 Ryan Palmer
...

Thanks PD - quick on the draw as ever.

Great win for G-Mac

Oh.. slight error "with Russel Henley returning inside the top 50 (at #58) "... should be #48

Cheers BtJ,
I blame the late finish last night, too many playoffs!

There is something rather spooky with the number #58 this morning though, as in the updated ranking on the official OWGR site Cabrera figures at #54 instead of #58... Assume it's a mistake so hopefully they will correct it later on...

Cheers pd,

They should call it UWGR. THIS is the real OWGR site IMO!!

Cheers pedro,

well they're humans, errors happen every now and then...
I guess, my advantage is that I'm not...

PS. I guess the error was in awarding Cabrera 10 points instead of 8 for his win, I see they're taking steps now to correct that on some of their pages...

More bad news for the European Tour, as Johnson&Johnson pulled out of the Ballentine's tournament in Korea this week, citing 'perceived unrest on the Korean peninsula"...

http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/season=2013/tournamentid=2013033/news/newsid=189831.html

Great work on the "OWGR" pd; let's hope the appearance fees on J&J go towards the prize fund for the true golfers - anyone would think the tournament is in Boston. Or Seattle. Or Colorado. Good lord.

princedracula wrote:More bad news for the European Tour, as Johnson&Johnson pulled out of the Ballentine's tournament in Korea this week, citing 'perceived unrest on the Korean peninsula"...

http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/season=2013/tournamentid=2013033/news/newsid=189831.html

I wonder if Kim Young-one is a sponsors invite?
http://www.sportspickle.com/news/4124/kim-jong-un-shames-north-korea-with-7-under-64

princedracula wrote:Cheers pedro,

well they're humans, errors happen every now and then...
I guess, my advantage is that I'm not...

PS. I guess the error was in awarding Cabrera 10 points instead of 8 for his win, I see they're taking steps now to correct that on some of their pages...

Odd that OWGR would make such an error... they had the correct "8" on their projection spreadsheets they sent out earlier in the week. By the time I opened it up this morning (about 5-6am GMT-5)... Cabrera's placing was correct.

robo, at the end of the day there are numbers that need to be inserted by someone and small errors like that happen, happened also to me a few times...

In fairness, they corrected it pretty quickly, before you guys woke up over there. If you're curious, here is how it looked when I woke up here (with Cabrera at #54 instead of #58) and that had me rushing to check all my stuff and see if I made a mistake somewhere...

Spoiler:

Early count for this week suggests:

- Zurich @ ~46 points (down from 52 last year)
- Ballentine's @ ~32 points (same as last year)

- Top 3 are safe (Rose can't catch Scott)
- only Bubba and Bradley can move inside top 10
- King Louis can only move up one spot with a win

princedracula wrote:robo, at the end of the day there are numbers that need to be inserted by someone and small errors like that happen, happened also to me a few times...

In fairness, they corrected it pretty quickly, before you guys woke up over there. If you're curious, here is how it looked when I woke up here (with Cabrera at #54 instead of #58) and that had me rushing to check all my stuff and see if I made a mistake somewhere...

I didn't doubt you... but thanks for the image anyway. And like you said... they're human. I've seen other errors from them in the past when they misapplied points to players with similar names... I'd just hate to see something like that happen the week of a top-50 or top-60 cutoff benchmark... ouch.

Speaking of errors... even now they have a "few" minor problems on their website archive rankings listing for 2013. They have the listing for the ranking for Week 09 ending March 03 listed as March 10.... the week 10 ranking for March 10 listed as March 11... and they have Week 14 listed twice. The rankings are correct... just a webmaster brainfart I'm guessing... :-) See below:

https://i.servimg.com/u/f83/18/25/95/53/owgr-i11.jpg

And by the way... I've already notified Ian of the "listing" issue....

PD... Field Info to date for Zurich... since Friday...

OUT-WD: Gillis, Cauley, McGirt, Mallinger

IN: C.DiMarco-Sponsor exemption (SE), D.J.Trahan-SE, P.Haley II-SE, V.Taylor-SE, A.Gonzales-SE, A.Svoboda-SE, B.Gates-SE, D.Constable-in via WD above,

7 All-American SEs robo? I thought two had to be to foreign players.

NedB-H wrote:7 All-American SEs robo? I thought two had to be to foreign players.

No... actually SE's usually work like this... 4 unrestricted... 2 to members... 2 to web.com/Q-school guys (category 25) if all aren't in the field via priority list. That's a total of 8.

Due to the short season this year as the PGAT transitions to it's new "wrap-around" schedule... the 4 unrestricted SE's drops to 2 and the other 2 are designated for the web.com/Q-school guys... to make 4 for that category. If all the web.com/Q-school guys make it in via the priority list... then those revert to unrestricted.

In addition... there are 2 Commissioners Foreign Exemptions... that can bring the total Sponsor Exemptions up to 10. Most weeks the Foreign SE's aren't used, but they often will be in weeks leading up to WGC's, Majors, Players as non-members come in early...

And last but not least... some of the invitationals have a lot more exemptions to hand out than the 8 or 10. I'll EDIT those into this post in a few...

EDIT: Generally... these are the deviations from the standard SE situation above.

Waste Management Phoenix Open - as a 132 player field it loses one of the web.com, one of the PGAT member exemptions and 1 of the unrestricted.. for 5 total instead of 8.

Puerto Rico - up to 8 additional SE's from P.R. the Caribbean, Central America and South America.

Arnold Palmer Invitational - 18 total Exemptions. 2 from reshuffle list, 8 from PGAT membership, 8 unrestricted. (Plus 2 foreign possible for a total of 20) it also takes in non-member winners of majors for the last 5 years and any in the top-50 OWGR who want to play plus last two years of Ryder and President's cup players.

Shell Houston Open (and this year the Valero Texas Open) 4 additional non-member exemptions for those qualified for the Masters (must be inside OWGR 100).

RBC Heritage - It's an invitational and get's same SE's as regular events.. BUT... it also takes in non-member winners of majors for the last 5 years and any in the top-50 OWGR who want to play plus most recent Ryder and President's cup players.

Colonial - 12 Sponsor exemptions (2 web.com, 6 from membership, 4 unrestricted) And... it also takes in non-member winners of majors for the last 5 years and any in the top-50 OWGR who want to play plus most recent Ryder and President's cup players.

Memorial - Up to 4 money leaders from Foreign tours including Euro, Asian, Australasian, Sunshine, Japan. 14 SE's (6 from current PGAT membership, 2 from reshuffle, balance unrestricted). it also takes in non-member winners of majors for the last 5 years and any in the top-50 OWGR who want to play plus most recent Ryder and President's cup players.

AT&T National - Standard 8 SE's, but in addition it also takes in non-member winners of majors for the last 5 years and any
in the top-50 OWGR who want to play plus most recent Ryder and
President's cup players.

Mayakoba gets an additional 4 "Latin America" Sponsor Exemptions.

NOTE: I should also point out that any of the additional SE categories DO, but any additional exemption categories for the invitationals listed above (such as OWGR or past major champion) do NOT count against the non-member limit of 7 Sponsor Exemptions.... BUT... playing in any of those events does count against the non-member limit of 12 total events.. And don't even ask all the ways a non-member can exceed 12 events... but it can happen too... mainly due to automatic exemptions into the invitationals.

Remember that Shane Lowry secured an SE for this week.
And I'd missed that Marcel Siem is taking advantage of his top ten entree (from San Antonio).

kwinigolfer wrote:Remember that Shane Lowry secured an SE for this week.
And I'd missed that Marcel Siem is taking advantage of his top ten entree (from San Antonio).

Correct... Lowry got a commissioners Foreign exemption. The other SE's this week were: Chris Dimarco, Paul Haley, John Peterson, Vaughn Taylor, Jon Curran, Andrew Svoboda, D.J. Trahan, Bobby Gates, Andres Gonzales. Tianling Guan got a "regular" not a foreign exemption.

(By the way... I know the above is more than the 8 regular exemptions... Some of the above converted to priority list entries due to WD's, but I'm not sure exactly which at this point.)

Thanks, robo. It's at the 44-46 border with those WDs so keep me posted if you hear of any other changes...

princedracula wrote:Thanks, robo. It's at the 44-46 border with those WDs so keep me posted if you hear of any other changes...

Hank Kuehne and Neal Lancaster are out... Rod Pampling is in.
4 spotters are Ken Looper, Matt Fast, Zack Fischer and Lee Janzen.


Also saw where Alan Dunbar went pro, signing with Chubby... forfeiting his U.S. Open spot... was that expected?

It's been rumoured well before the Masters that after Augusta he will turn pro... and signing with Chubby wasn't too much of a surprise either...

Could he not wait the couple of months until a guaranteed position in the US open?

He has a long time to play in obscurity on a minor tour overshadowed by 12 year old Chinese kids. He may as well get a couple of rounds at Merion in first.

Thobjorn Oleson in New Orleans via the top 10 in the Masters?

PD... Field Update... Garrigus out... Mayfair in.

GPB... Yes... Olesen is in via his top-10 in the Masters. Players get in from a top-10 finish in all fully official events except WGC's... Here's the language:

"The top 10 finishing professionals and those tied for 10th place from each tournament awarding official victory status (excluding World Golf Championship events) into the next open tournament awarding official victory status."

Cheers, robo, droping to 44 for sure. Another one like Garrigus gone and will drop to 42...

robopz wrote:
GPB... Yes... Olesen is in via his top-10 in the Masters. Players get in from a top-10 finish in all fully official events except WGC's... Here's the language:

"The top 10 finishing professionals and those tied for 10th place from each tournament awarding official victory status (excluding World Golf Championship events) into the next open tournament awarding official victory status."

And that was not The Heritage?

Heritage theoretically still an "invitational" . . . . . .

kwinigolfer wrote:Heritage theoretically still an "invitational" . . . . . .

Yep... that's the reason. The "open tournament" referred to in the rule would be an event with Monday qualifying.

McLaren wrote:Could he not wait the couple of months until a guaranteed position in the US open?

He has a long time to play in obscurity on a minor tour overshadowed by 12 year old Chinese kids. He may as well get a couple of rounds at Merion in first.

Are you talking about Dunbar? I suspect that the longer he waits to turn pro, the less leverage is British Amateur win has when negotiating with Sponsors.

Got to strike when the Iron is hot, or at least before it gets cold.

In the OWGR anomaly of the day department. I was looking at Brandon Grace and exactly what he has done to improve his year end ranking of (#34) to his current ranking (#32) as I really don't remember being in contention this year.

Top two 6 finishes in the middle east moved him to #29th but really has not done much since then.

His year end average was 3.16 and it is now 3.20 and he has moved up two spots. Only one player has passed him this year (Jason Day) and he has 'passed' three players (Kaymer, Lawrie, Molinari).

Through 4.5 Months, he has basically tread water in his OWGR average yet he has moved up two spots in the rankings.

IMO, the OWGR rankings need to be more fluid and dynamic than they are.

Only counterpoint to that, GPB, might be that the group of 18 players from Watson at #8 and Zach Johnson at #25 were all packed tightly, within .95 of a point at the beginning of the year.
Whereas the group immediately below them were spread out pretty thin comparitively speaking, with Gonzo at #33 a further .94 behind.

The big points scorers in 2013 have almost all come from the top 33, Woods, Scott, Kuchar, Rose, Sneds, McDowell, Stricker, Phil, Sergio, Dustin, all with more than ninety points already.

The group 34th and below have no-one in that category, apart from Jason Day. Oleson (now 34th from 50th) and Streelman (who has climbed from 225th to 59th) are the only ones with more than 80.

So: If the guys below, say 35th, are not playing especially well, it's not suprising there appears to be something of a status quo.
Should be some greater "churn" now that Europe is getting up and running again and, meanwhile, guys like Zach Johnson, Els and Van Pelt who are all in poor form will start to slide more quickly unless they can turn it around.

I know there has been poor performance from #25-50 range thus far. Despite their poor performance, there has been little turnover. Guys are not crashing into the top 50.

I look at the Sagarin Rankings with a lot skepticism. They have Rory ranked #17 for goodness sakes. But I like that they have a one year resume window (albeit with no attrition). And I like that they have no subsidies like the OWGR does.

Grace is ranked 93rd, Michael Thompson is ranked #240. Both of them in no immediate jeopardy of falling out of the top 50.

Two players probably ranked artificially high by Sagarin is Brendon de Jonge at #14 and Billy Horschel at #26. Two players that I think are undervalued by the OWGR, but should not be ranked as high as Sagarin. I think both should be in the #40-$50 range and be exempt into the US Open and WGCs.

Here is the OWGR top and their corresponding Sagarin rankings.

Tiger Woods … 1 … 1
Rory McIlroy … 2 … 17
Adam Scott … 3 … 2
Justin Rose … 4 … 7
Luke Donald … 5 … 4
Brandt Snedeker … 6 … 23
Louis Oosthuizen … 7 … 36
Graeme McDowell … 8 … 43
Steve Stricker … 9 … 3
Matt Kuchar … 10 … 5
Phil Mickelson … 11 … 16
Lee Westwood … 12 … 13
Keegan Bradley … 13 … 34
Sergio Garcia … 14 … 8
Charl Schwartzel … 15 … 10
Bubba Watson … 16 … 22
Ian Poulter … 17 … 11
Webb Simpson … 18 … 33
Dustin Johnson … 19 … 12
Jason Dufner … 20 … 9
Peter Hanson … 21 … 30
Hunter Mahan … 22 … 52
Nick Watney … 23 … 27
Ernie Els … 24 … 44
Jim Furyk … 25 … 6
Jason Day … 26 … 18
Bo Van Pelt … 27 … 21
Bill Haas … 28 … 28
Rickie Fowler … 29 … 19
Zach Johnson … 30 … 38
Gonzalo Fernandez-Cast … 31 … 56
Branden Grace … 32 … 93
Martin Kaymer … 33 … 63
Thorbjorn Olesen … 34 … 47
Robert Garrigus … 35 … 20
Carl Pettersson … 36 … 41
Jamie Donaldson … 37 … 71
Paul Lawrie … 38 … 68
Scott Piercy … 39 … 46
Henrik Stenson … 40 … 32
Francesco Molinari … 41 … 39
Nicolas Colsaerts … 42 … 61
Michael Thompson … 43 … 243
George Coetzee … 44 … 72
Ryan Moore … 45 … 31
Freddie Jacobson … 46 … 25
Tim Clark … 47 … 65
Russell Henley … 48 … 84
Richard Sterne … 49 … 57
Matteo Manassero … 50 … 45

princed,
Do you have Freddie Jac in your field?
Looks like he's a goner with Gary Christian getting a tee-time.

Quick final count for this week:

- Zurich @ 44 points
- Ballantine's @ 34 points (just makes it once again on the number)

Interesting (small) field developing for the first ever visit to the Thracian Cliffs in Bulgaria in two weeks...

DJ, BVP and Ogilvy joining some of the top Euros (incl. GMac, Poults, etc...)