When will the OWGR resume?

Darth Putter · May 28, 2020

During his announcement of the resumption of the European Tour today, Keith Pelley said to expect an update on the status of the OWGR "within the next seven days."

If it restarts with just the US Tour then those golfers will have five weeks to improve their ranking before the European Tour can resume. The other major tour at this time of year is the Japan Tour which has no start date yet, though baseball is currently set to resume June 19. Korn Ferry Tour players could also see their status in the OWGR rise.

If the rankings remain frozen then it obviously hurts the top players. Colonial already has 40 of the top 50 lined up for an event that will carry a WGC level of ranking points if the commits all show up. Do you restart when Europe does, or do we need to wait on Japan? What about the developmental tours in places like China and Canada?

The OWGR determines places in the majors and WGCs. This will be a very difficult and contentious decision.

My best guess is that the PGA Tour events will count for ranking points, but they will be capped. Say 50 first place points at most or all ranking point totals halved. So if the Colonial has a first place point value of 72 it goes down to 36. The Korn Ferry Tour will be played for no ranking points at least until the European Tour and or Japan Tour comes back, since those players are much closer together in the standings.

cdnglf · May 29, 2020

My guess is that full points will be given for every top level Tour event that is held. Not ideal perhaps, but nothing is in 2020. I think there is a strong desire in all pro sports to be as “legit” as they possibly can.

If only one tour had suspended play, they wouldn’t have suspended the OWGR in the first place. If one is later to come back than the others, tough (I guess?)

Maybe the majors will take this into consideration, though. I think it would be fine for the USGA to invite the top 5 otherwise ineligible players from the RtD, for example.

SirFuego · June 1, 2020

In terms of the OWGR, I would agree. The points accrual is mainly important to the "bubble" players for major/WGC qualifying. While it might not be fair that a bubble Euro Tour player might potentially "lose" his bubble position because he didn't play, it's also not fair if a bubble PGA Tour player post some high finishes and not get (full) OWGR credit (especially considering how strong the fields are expected to be in these upcoming weeks). Given how the OWGR works, even under normal circumstances there are things that can happen beyond a player's control that will reduce his points. If a top 200 player withdraws from an event, the event ranking could decrease, which in turn will reduce the number of OWGR points he accrues during the event. If he misses the exempt line for a major by a fraction of a point, it literally could have been that last minute withdrawal of a top 200 player that caused him to miss the ranking (and allow the other guy to get in).

I believe the USGA has already announced that they are going extend invitations based on the typical makeup of qualifiers (between number of amateurs and how many from each tour typically qualifies). So I would guess that if the above scenario happens, the PGA Tour player would qualify automatically by his ranking, and the Euro Tour player who was on the bubble prior to the shutdowns likely would get extended an invitation anyways as part of whatever "quota" the USGA determines is reasonable for Euro Tour players.

Darth Putter · June 3, 2020

The OWGR have picked their poison. The world rankings resume with the Colonial and the Korn Ferry stop next week.

World Ranking to resume with PGA Tour restart, but not to everyone's liking

Body_Visions · June 3, 2020

Did players lose points as they normall would during this? I couldn’t find any information on that.

MattyO1984 · June 3, 2020

No, the rankings were essentially paused so everyone is just where they were when they stopped them.

Darth Putter · June 3, 2020

No, the rankings were frozen back in March.

Once they start up again next week, the players not playing on the PGA Tour or Korn Ferry Tours will start to see their rankings go down. (overall, some individuals could go up)

Darth Putter · June 4, 2020

European Tour not happy, but they were the only dissenting vote.

The relaunch of the World Ranking didn't go the way the European Tour was hoping

The majors and WGCs will take the current frozen rankings into account for determining spots in their tournaments. The European Tour has frozen the Ryder Cup standings until their tour restarts at the end of July.