OWGR - Week #21

I remember I joined the old 606 after Matteo won his first tournament, so I have him to blame for wasting my Sunday nights ever since...

Fast forward ~2.5 years later and the young Italian stallion is not disappointing! Each one of the 4 wins he earned since then has got biger and biger, culminating with this brilliant win at the BMWPGA! He jumps all the way up to #28 in the world, which is the best (by one place) of his carreer (thanks to Kuchar's birdie at the last hole in TX, which stopped Zach just behind him at #29). Incredible story for Simon Khan, who out of nowhere came so close to recording his 2nd win at Wentworth, but a runner up place will push him at least back up in the ranking to ~#145. And once again, it was close, but no cigar, for Marc Warren who is making at least a very nice jump up to probably #109. Talking of cigar... probably the next biggest story this week at Wentworth has to be the remarkable return of The Most Interesting Man In Golf on the big stage! Wow, that was impressive, putting all those disapointing top 10-ers to shame. And great timing as well, as he was just about to exit the top 100, but now he's jumping all the way back to #75. Another very dissapointing finish for Westwood... I guess a small consolation is that he moves back inside the top 10...

Fantastic win also for Boo Weekly at the Colonial after a long wait... Another popular winner, no doubt, and the timing of this one is even better, as he jumps all the way up to #55 and earns him a spot in the US Open. Another great result for Matt Kuchar, who climbs back inside the top 10 at #9, while Zach Johnson, as I said, moves up to #29, just behind Matteo...

Very well done also to all the other winners this week:

- Michael Putnam (US) winner on the Web.com Tour and moving up to ~ #180
- Daniel Gaunt (AUS) winning the battle here at Waterloo on Challange Tour and moving up to ~ #500
- Kang Kyung Nam (KOR), winner in Korea and moving up to ~#315

Otherwise, I'll let you figure out who made it and who didn't, inside the top 60 for the first US Open deadline...

The OWGR table after week #21 should look as follows:

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

Good Job, PD, Thanks for your efforts.

I asked this in the BMW thread, w/o much success.

Does anyone have a link to where I can see some sort of scoring for the US Open qualifier at Walton Heath tomorrow.

I would imagine some sort of local or regional golf association is in charge at Walton Heath, but USGA wants to make it difficult for a guy in the midwest USA to follow the scoring.

Edit

I did find a link to tee times

http://www.waltonheath.com/Content/TheDraw.pdf


Edit again

two-somes and no split tees. teetimes start at 6:40 am and the last one is 3:20

Liang Wen-Chong looks like he is playing as a single as he is paired with Matteo!

Nice to see Monty and Ollie trying one more time. Merion could be a good course for Monty.

Wasn't able to watch much of the Wentworth action but what a thrill to see Matteo finish the job in style!

Different games obviously but reminds me of the young Olazabal of 1987 vintage.

David Toms and KJ about to hit the trap door from the top 100, Senden and Ogilvy joining many other Aussies on the escalator to Hades.

Thanks pd, Still awaiting your "where am I" revelation.

Very glad to see that Hideki Matsuyama was the low qualifier in the Japan Sectional for the USOpen. He might be the player that Ryo Ishikawa was supposed to be.

1 Hideki Matsuyama 132
2 Jung-Gon Hwang 136
3 Yui Ueda 137
4 Yoshinobu Tsukada 138
5 Hiroyuki Fujita 138

Rest of scores here:

http://www.jga.or.jp/jga/jsp/2013/53-0-0/fullreaderboard2_en.html

Early count for this week:

- Memorial @ ~70 points (equals best ever)
- Nordea @ 26/28 points (26p last year)

- Tiger can move 5.19 points clear if he wins and Rory doesn't score
- Rose can catch Scott at no. 3 with win
- Lefty can move back inside the top 10...

princedracula wrote:
- Lefty can move back inside the top 10...

If Westy gets shut out? (Lefty is not playing)

Final US Open sectional finals from Walton Heath (unofficial

Khan 137
Van Zyl 138
Casey 138
Madson 139
Frasar 140
Pepperell 140
Hedblom 140

Ollie, Doak, Goya, Howell, Parry 141 advance in playoff
Karlberg at 141 loses the playoff

princedracula wrote:Early count for this week:

- Memorial @ ~70 points (equals best ever)

Maybe the players just wanna check out Jack's new clubhouse?

PS... thanks for your efforts PD... 70 Wow.... I thought the field looked good... but not THAT good... about how much room at 70 does it have to spare considering potential WDs and such...

But for now you can add 4 ERV's... And add Spieth +1, Karlsson +1, Wittenberg +1, F Gomez +0 and Kohles +1 as late entries via Sponsor exemptions...

GPB wrote:

princedracula wrote:
- Lefty can move back inside the top 10...

If Westy gets shut out? (Lefty is not playing)

Yep... Even though Phil's 2011 Memorial won't fall off his divisor until week 23 (which he'll replace with Memphis)... Westy is depreciating just over 1.2 pts/p/wk faster than Phil... and at only about 1/100th of a point behind in the average... that's enough for Phil to jump if Westy goes NADA this week. If level 70 holds for Memorial and Westwood can finish even T58th, then he gets his 1.2 points back and stays just ahead of Phil.

By the way... I haven't noticed anything from you about "OWGR lapping" in the last few weeks... does that mean you finally accepted my definition... or maybe I just missed it...

Robo: Did you get my PM?

And last I saw, you used my definition of lapping.

GPB wrote:Robo: Did you get my PM?

And last I saw, you used my definition of lapping.

Excuse me? Not hardly. I've responded to some posts of people who have though... with the same POV.

We talked the other day about jet lag being a reason for certain PGA Tour members not competing in Europe.
But . . . . . Lowry and Wittenberg played today and are still teeing it up in Dublin on Thursday (perhaps Shane thought it was Dublin, Ireland and not Dublin, Ohio?).

do any of you OWGR whizz kids know what points Tiger will be on when he wins the Memorial this week?

IF the event were to stay at 70 and IF Tiger were to win, he'd be at ~600 total depreciated points or ~15 in the average. (371 raw points for the year).

For comparison purposes... Rory earned ~597 points in 2012.

For further comparison... at the end of 2000 (his best OWGR year), Tiger had 1323 depreciated points on his 2 years ledger, and earned 948 raw points for that year.

thanks Robo, hopefully he can start the major train rolling again and match, if not surpass, his 2000 season.

incontinentia wrote:do any of you OWGR whizz kids know what points Tiger will be on when he wins the Memorial this week?

where's s_r?... i sense another gauntlet has been cast t'ward his general direction

even super isn't dumb enough to bet against Tiger this week!

Has there been a change in the OWGR points system since 2000?

McLaren wrote:Has there been a change in the OWGR points system since 2000?

A couple of them... The OWGR was revamped completely going to 2 years from 3 years in 1996... but since then the changes have been relatively minor in structure. (adding morel tours to the rankings... smoothing out depreciation... removing home points for small events... etc).

GPB - yep, Lefty's in for a little gift if Lee and others don't do the business...
I know, this damn OWGR system always favours the Americans for some strange reason...

robo - about the Memorial, there's an 8(ish) EVP margin there from 68 points...

Mac - system changed a few times since 2000, but most changes were not so significant. One of the most notable was in 2007 when the 13-week full points + the points roll-off after that was introduced...

inco - just to add some more stuff to what robo said there, if Tiger wins and Rory doesn't score, he'll distance to ~5.19 points from #2. If the reverse happens, then Rory closes the gap to ~1.98points...

In case anyone missed it, the US Open gave 12 spots to the Walton Heath Qualifier. There was only one player from North America in the qualifer.

On the other hand, the British Open only took 8 players from the IFQ in Dallas last week which had many players from the European Continent.

incontinentia wrote:thanks Robo, hopefully he can start the major train rolling again and match, if not surpass, his 2000 season.

Wow... optimistic much? :-)

I never say never... but Tiger's less than 1/3 of the way to what he would need to get to 2000 levels. He's got between 13-14 OWGR point events left to play... If he ran the table on ALL of them that would be about 980-1000 more points he could possibly earn for the year. Bottom line... it would probably take 5-6 more wins, at least two of them majors, plus he would need mid to high top-10's in most if not all the rest to approach 2000 levels. That's a TALL order.

Robo:

Something really weird happened with Rory's ranking in Sagarin. He went from 13th to 6th.

With Rory missing the cut (yes I know he missed the cut at BMW last year), I don't know how his ranking goes up.

GPB wrote:Robo:

Something really weird happened with Rory's ranking in Sagarin. He went from 13th to 6th.

With Rory missing the cut (yes I know he missed the cut at BMW last year), I don't know how his ranking goes up.

If I had to guess it's a week shift thing... so maybe something worse dropped from last year last week instead of the BMW? Remember, the OWGR dropped a week at the end of 2012 and the 2013... just treated it as if it never existed. but my guess is Sagarin may be on a TRUE 52 week deal? Again... just guessing.

But either way... Rory is somewhere in the process of dropping 3 consecutive MC's off of 2012 in Ssgarin. (PLAYERS, BMW and Memorial)... so far this year he has a T8 at the PLAYERS, MC BMW... so even though he MC's at the BMW... taking the first 2 in total would be a big improvement over last year.... that's got to help him out somewhere sooner or later.

So long as deJonge is in the Top Ten . . . . . . . .

Rory went from 17th to 13th when the Players dropped out and 13th to 6th when last years the BMW dropped out.

If you remember our discussions about a 1 year time period for the OWGR which you only like if the points don't depreciate (IIRC). I said there could be some weird anomalies and this Rory situation was one of them.

I don't remember the exact Tennis circumstance but a couple of years ago, I believe Djokovic could have overtaken the #1 spot (Federer) if he finished 2nd. And that was even if Federer WON the tournament (IIRC it was the USOpen).

Roger was 'defending' his WIN and could not increase them while Novak was only 'defending' an early round loss and was not risking anything.

GPB,
That circumstance DEFINITELY happened with the Ladies a year or two ago, I think at the French, but can't recall exactly who was involved - Williams and Shazza I think, but not positive, could've been Azarenka.

Yep, Kwini,

Robo and I have had a lot of discussions about the OWGR. I really dislike the 2 year period. (I would like to see more volatility) and Robo would only want to see it a 1 yr period if there was no attrition. And if there was no attrition you would see jumps up and down like what happened at Sagarin that would leave a lot explanation to the layman that questions it.

My dislike with the lack of volatility has been exemplified by players like Zach Johnson keeping a top 30 ranking while playing so badly (until last week).

GPB wrote:If you remember our discussions about a 1 year time period for the OWGR which you only like if the points don't depreciate (IIRC). I said there could be some weird anomalies and this Rory situation was one of them.

Yep, Kwini,
Robo and I have had a lot of discussions about the OWGR. I really dislike the 2 year period. (I would like to see more volatility) and Robo would only want to see it a 1 yr period if there was no attrition.

I've never believed, nor said that ANY form of a 1 year period was better than a 2 year period. But if it were to be a one year period, I've discussed ways of making the best of it. But I'm 100% positive I've never espoused a 1 year period without depreciation... not once... not ever... PERIOD. And I've used Tennis examples similar to what you cited as just one of the reasons. And I've felt this way since at least 2003 when I had issues with the OWGR using eight equal 13-week periods. (which was changed to 13 weeks at level then 91 weeks of consistant ~1.09% depreciation starting with 2007)

GPB wrote:Rory went from 17th to 13th when the Players dropped out and 13th to 6th when last years the BMW dropped out.

I haven't been watching the Sagarin that close... but Between the Valero and now... something had to be out of sync SOMEWHERE in the Sagarin rankings with non-matching events dropping off from the prior year. This year the Valero moved before the Masters leaving only 6 events between the Masters and this weeks Memorial instead of 7 like last year. In the OWGR one week of mismatched events falling off would have been barely noticeable as points from 2 years ago would be depreciated around 99% anyway... but in Sagarin, "mismatched" events coming on and going off would have a much bigger effect because of no depreciation.

But again... I haven't been studying it... so exactly WHAT happened would be pure speculation on my part..

kwinigolfer wrote:So long as deJonge is in the Top Ten . . . . . . . .

Brendon De Jonge is not in the top 10 (he is 18th).

My position on BdJ is that he is under-ranked in the OWGR (I suspect the 2 year system is the primary reason).

But BdJ definitely over-ranked in the Sagarin system. Sagarin does not give any "bonus" to wins. The difference between 1st and 2nd is the same difference between 2nd and 3rd and the same difference between 50th and 51st. Its a linear calculation. It values consistency more than it does wins.

Two 15th place finishes is going to get ranked much higher than a 1st and 50th in Sagarin.

A great example of the Sagarin formulas rewarding consistency is Jimmy Walker is ranked #9 in the Sagarin rankings this week. He has not missed a cut in nearly a year and consistently finishes in the top 25 each week. He is ahead of players like Luke, Justin, Sneds.

A great example of the volatility is Poulter. Just a few weeks ago, when his cut streak was intact, Poulter was ranked around 10th. Now he is 25th and falling quickly. There is just no way that a player in the OWGR would ever fall from 10th to 25th in less than 2 months.

GPB... one other thought on Rory's ranking....

Without benefit of an archive of Sagarin rankings its tough to know for sure... but my impression was the weather at the BMW knocked out a lot more of the "PRIME" or top-10 players this year than last. Not knowing how Sagarin might be weighting their different categories (top-10, top-50... etc), it could be that even though Rory missed the cut both years... this year's BMW MC wasn't as bad as per Sagarin as last year's BMW MC.

Robo: I can't imagine Valero changing spots on the calendar had anything to do with their formulas. They use the last 52 weeks. There was a couple weeks where it had two Valeros in the database, so what? Next Spring there will be a couple of weeks with no Valero in the 1 year window.

And Robo, I am 100% positive that when I advocated a one year OWGR system (with attrition) that if they went to a one year system without any attrition.

And my biggest beef with the two year system is for the rookies. It is virtually impossible for a newbie to break into the critical OWGR benchmarks.

At this point it is a player like Jordan Spieth virtually has little chance to qualify for WGCs and the PGA Championship. He is ranked 141 in the OWGR and ranked 49th in Sagarin. I suspect Jordan would be really close to the top 100 in the OWGR if it was a one year window which probably gets him into the PGA Championship.

robopz wrote:GPB... one other thought on Rory's ranking....

Without benefit of an archive of Sagarin rankings its tough to know for sure... but my impression was the weather at the BMW knocked out a lot more of the "PRIME" or top-10 players this year than last. Not knowing how Sagarin might be weighting their different categories (top-10, top-50... etc), it could be that even though Rory missed the cut both years... this year's BMW MC wasn't as bad as per Sagarin as last year's BMW MC.

A couple of players that Rory passed last week did have horrible weeks.

Luke lost his win at the BMW to a badly missed Cut

Charl dropped a T18 at the 2012 BMW to a MC at Colonial

Furyk went from a T19 to a T31 at Colonial.

Yes, if you "dig" you can explain what happened, but 99.9% of fans are going to look at these type anomalies and say someone is cooking the books.

Spieth only $150K adrift of PGA qualifying list; almost certainly he'll get in if current form trajectory continues (possibly even via the owgr's also).

GPB wrote:
My position on BdJ is that he is under-ranked in the OWGR (I suspect the 2 year system is the primary reason). But BdJ definitely over-ranked in the Sagarin system. Sagarin does not give any "bonus" to wins.

IMO it all comes down to what we want a ranking system to be... it has to start with SOME assumption of what we believe defines a good player...

Take the example of these two players who happen to be ranked #18 and #20 in Sagarin... and lets look at their 2013 season to date.

#18 de Jonge = 3 top-10's (6th being the best along with a 9th and 10th), plus 4 more top-25... and a bunch of of fairly "nondescript" finishes to make up the balance of his 17 starts.

#20 Mickelson = A WIN plus two 3rds (in fairly strong WGC and Wells Fargo), two more top-25's along with mostly fairly "nondescript" finishes in the rest of his 11 starts

Now if I were to define the best player as the one who is more likely to finish higher in any given week (the fantasy game approach)... then I would certainly favor de Jonge.

But if I were to define the best player as the one who is more likely WIN or finish VERY high in any given week (the superior singular results approach)... then I would certainly favor Phil.

Now I don't know how to put a "number to it", but in my mind Phil is by FAR the better player, and by FAR has had the best season in 2013... So while I certainly see the merits of the head to head nature of Sagarin... and might even agree that the "correct" answer might be somewhere between the two systems... IMO the balance tilts extremely heavy towards the OWGR as a better system than Sagarin.

Yes, Jordan Spieth does have reasonable chance to make the PGA Championship, through the PGA Money list but IMO, the hurdle is much tougher for him than it should be.

Robo: Did you miss where I said BdJ was "definitely over-Ranked" in the Sagarin System?

FWIW, I meant that he was ranked too high.

GPB wrote:Robo: Did you miss where I said BdJ was "definitely over-Ranked" in the Sagarin System?

FWIW, I meant that he was ranked too high.

I saw it... Perhaps I could have been more clear by leaving my reasoning out and simply stated: IMO de Jonge may be "slightly" under-ranked by the OWGR (by maybe half a dozen spots), but IMO he is "grossly" over-ranked by Sagarin (by maybe 50 spots).

Garrigus will miss Memorial, Summerhays in instead.

BdJ would do better in meaningful rankings if he played better in the biggest events.
26th in a PGA is his best Major finish, while I can't find anything better than a couple of 15th-place finishes at The Players. Nothing better than a 12th at Memorial . . . . . .

GPB wrote:And Robo, I am 100% positive that when I advocated a one year OWGR system (with attrition) that if they went to a one year system without any attrition.

I assume some words were left out of the above sentence.. but I think I get where you are coming from. And you would be 100% mistaken again... or at best any construction of words by me to that effect would have had to have been grossly taken out of context of what might have been discussed at the time.

I have NO freeking idea why you are doing this here... but I think you know better. In all our prior discussion of this, I can't believe you simply "missed" the 100's of times I must have said that ANY system has to have depreciation to avoid the sudden "falloff" effect. My ONLY other discussion of depreciation vs non-depreciation in a 1 year system was that I preferred the most recent 4 majors being more similarly valued like they are in a two year system than the much wider disparity that would be between them in a depreciating 1 year system. Now if you decided to take my comment A... and go straight to conclusion Z without me EVER saying I was in favor of a non-depreciating 1 year system... then there's no point continuing this discussion.

kwinigolfer wrote:Garrigus will miss Memorial, Summerhays in instead.

BdJ would do better in meaningful rankings if he played better in the biggest events.
26th in a PGA is his best Major finish, while I can't find anything better than a couple of 15th-place finishes at The Players. Nothing better than a 12th at Memorial . . . . . .

BdJ hasn't been able to play in the 6 or 7 annual gift giving OWGR events which almost hand out OWGR points for just showing up. WGC's, TC, Nedbank, Volvo Matchplay, World Challenge.

He is rewarded by finishing T25 in FULL FIELD events.

A 25th the Houston Open is rewarded much more in Sagarin than a 25th in the Cadillac.

GPB wrote:A 25th the Houston Open is rewarded much more in Sagarin than a 25th in the Cadillac.

... a perfect example to illustrate the biggest problem with Sagarin.

Robo: I know we have had dozens of conversations about this another board, and I am nearly positive you said that if they went to a one year system, you would not want the points depreciated

Now if you want to say that you have changed your viewpoint or that I misunderstood (which I don't think I did), go right ahead.

IIRC, your opinion about the depreciation in a one year system would even have more calendar bias than the current system (and I agree with that).

I postulated many depreciation schedules and I think I like this one the best.

26 Free weeks
Weeks 27-51 at 3% per week
52nd week at 25%. (Balloon payment)

GPB wrote:Robo: I know we have had dozens of conversations about this another board, and I am nearly positive you said that if they went to a one year system, you would not want the points depreciated

Say it all you want... but you're still unequivocally 100% incorrect... PERIOD! (OK... maybe 99% incorrect since you added "nearly" into the above.... :-)

EDIT: And as you well know... I most certainly AM one that will change his opinion from time to time when I'm presented more convincing arguments than my own. And you also know well, that when I'm mistaken, I have NO problem admitting it. So I'm telling you right now, you are WRONG... I began forming my opinion on the necessities of depreciation in the OWGR (or any system) when the OWGR was first explained to me in 2003 by some guys who were doing an alternate ranking system for just the PGA Tour... and was 100% firm in that notion by late 2006 when the OWGR basically "lifted" their weekly depreciation scheme to start in 2007. I have remained firm in that conviction ever since.

Now I have certainly disagreed with not just yours, but most any 1 year system I've seen proposed... Could I have looked at one of your ideas or TT's or somebody else's idea and said something to the effect of "Even a 1 year non-depreciation system would be better than that". Sure I might have. But you and I have discussed this in such detail I still can't believe you could have missed my oft repeated underlying premise to each and every OWGR tweak or revamp.... They MUST include depreciation.

Now... you can either accept what I've said on this matter and move on... or continue to beat this dead horse...

robopz wrote:

GPB wrote:Robo: I know we have had dozens of conversations about this another board, and I am nearly positive you said that if they went to a one year system, you would not want the points depreciated

Say it all you want... but you're still unequivocally 100% incorrect... PERIOD! (OK... maybe 99% incorrect since you added "nearly" into the above.... :-)

So you didn't have any concerns about calendar bias in a one year, depreciated system?

GPB wrote:So you didn't have any concerns about calendar bias in a one year, depreciated system?

REFRESH and see my edited remarks above...

Of course I remember the calendar bias topic. That's another "issue" with golf ranking systems that I believe is better addressed in a 2 year system over a 1 year system... A non-depreciating system could remove calendar bias if it was done in equal years.... but on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the biggest problem) calender bias is a 1 or 2 where a non-depreciating system would be a full blown 10.

Anyone paying attention to the NCAA Division I Golf Championship.

My Alma Mater (Ga Tech) is currently tied for the lead. Unfortunate that they are playing their home course.

IMO, the NCAA individual title is the best field/tournament in amateur golf although it has gone down a notch or two since they went to this format. Only 54 holes of stroke play, followed my 3 days of match play for the team championship.

What about the US Amateur and British Amateur? Simply put, I do not like Match play to determine individual champions. Love match for team events like Ryder and Walker Cups and even the NCAA team format. I just don't like it for a individual format.

(and this is from someone who won 3 match play club championships and never won a stroke play club championship).

To be honest I think the problem with the NCAA Championships is trying to hold simultaneous team and individual championships... much easier to follow if they hold two separate tournaments, surely. It's a bit like the problem Formula 1, where the fans are interested (mostly) in who wins the individual title, but the financial backers only care about the team championship. Having multiple titles at stake from the same event is always asking for trouble.

I see now that Garrigus has disappeared from the Memorial field, any idea who took his place, or if there were any other late WD's that I may have missed. At the minute is looking it may drop down to 68points...

Yup, Summerhays replaced Garrigus on Wednesday . . . . .

Not sure if Summerhays was the first alternate or not, but just as well it was him that got in, because he's worth 1 point and that point is what keeps the Memorial at 70 points this year.

Nordea worth 28, hopefully they keep moving up next year...