Ranking: Schauffele, runner-up to Scheffler

07/26/2024 10:54 PM

Magnificent winner of The Open in Troon, Xander Schauffele climbs back to 2nd place in the world rankings with an average of 11.1330 points ahead of Rory McIlroy (9.0561), unable to make the cut in Scotland. 50th in this last Major of the season, Matthieu Pavon loses a place. The Frenchman is in 23rd place.

Second in the world rankings after his victory at the PGA Championship on May 19, Xander Schauffele gave up his place on June 16 to Rory McIlroy… The Californian, irresistible in the wind and rain at the British Open, gets his due. With an average of 11.1330, he is nevertheless still very far from Scottie Scheffler (17.9949), the undisputed No. 1.

A very solid 5th at The Open without having conceded a single bogey during the last round, Russell Henley is also progressing. He gains eight ranks and now occupies 12th place. Also good progress by South Korean Sungjae Im, 7th in Scotland. He enters the top 20 (18th).

50th in the last Major of the season, Matthieu Pavon loses a place (23rd) while Victor Perez (missed cut) drops two ranks (74th). Injured in the back and forced to abandon after only eight holes on Thursday during the first round of The Open, Romain Langasque maintains his 85th place.

Third in Austria on the Challenge Tour, Martin Couvra gains 50 places. The Côte d'Azur native is now 385th in the world.

The impetus for the creation of the Official World Golf Rankings came from the tournament committee of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, which in the 1980s realised that its system of sending out invitations to the British Open by analysing each tour individually was leading to the exclusion of more and more top players because they were splitting their commitments across multiple tours, and from the influential sports manager Mark McCormack, who became the first chairman of the international committee that oversees the creation of the rankings. The system used to develop the rankings was based on that of McCormack's World Golf Rankings, which had previously been published in his World of Professional Golf Annual from 1968 to 1985, which was an unofficial ranking and was not used for other purposes such as selecting players to be invited to tournaments.

The first rankings were published prior to the 1986 edition of The Masters. The top six players were: Bernhard Langer, Severiano Ballesteros, Sandy Lyle, Tom Watson, Mark O'Meara and Greg Norman. The top three were European players, but thirty-one of the top fifty were American.

Over the years, the ranking method has changed a lot. Initially, the ranking was calculated over a three-year period, with the current year's score multiplied by four, the previous year's score multiplied by two and the two-year score left unchanged. The ranking was drawn up with the total score and the total points rounded to the nearest whole number. All tournaments recognized by the professional tours and some of the invitational tournaments were classified into categories, ranging from "major tournaments" (where the winner received 50 points) to "other tournaments" (where the winner received a minimum of 8 points). In each tournament, the other ranked players also received points proportionally to their placement, starting with the second-placed player who received 60% of the points due to the winner.