Women's World Golf Rankings

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1 Calculation of the rankings
- 1.1 Original formula
- 1.2 Revised formula
2 Criticisms
3 Significance of the rankings
4 Top players
5 See also
6 External links

The Women's World Golf Rankings, also known for sponsorship reasons as the Rolex Rankings were introduced in February 2006. They are sanctioned by the five main women's golf tours and the organisations behind them: Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA Tour), Ladies European Tour, Ladies Professional Golfers’ Association of Japan, Korea Ladies Professional Golf Association, and Australian Ladies Professional Golf, and also by the Ladies' Golf Union, which administers the Women's British Open.

The idea of introducing a set of women's rankings similar to the Official World Golf Rankings for men was developed at the May 2004 World Congress of Women's Golf, and was first planned for 2005, [1] but then put back to 2006.

[edit] Calculation of the rankings

The rankings are based on performances on the five major tours and the Futures Tour, the official developmental tour of the LPGA, over a two year period. Amateur players are eligible. The system for calculating the rankings is similar to that for the men's Official World Golf Rankings. Players receive points for each good finish on the relevant tours, with the number of points available in each event depending on the strength of the field, as determined by the competitors' existing rankings (when the rankings were introduced rankings were calculated for earlier periods; indeed the first ever set showed notional changes since the previous week). The only exceptions are the four LPGA majors and Futures Tour events, which will have a fixed-point allocation. Rankings are tapered so the recent results are more important.

[edit] Original formula

When the rankings were first introduced in February 2006, a player's ranking as calculated in the above description was divided by the number of events played, with a mininum required events of 15 over the previous two years. In addition, players were required to play in a minimum of 15 eligible events over the previous two year period in order to be included in the rankings.

[edit] Revised formula

On August 2, 2006 the Rolex Rankings Board and Technical Committee announced following its bi-annual meeting two changes to the ranking formula.

The elimination of the minimum event requirement. Players would no longer be required to participate in fifteen qualifying events to be included in the rankings and could be included after playing in as few as one qualifying event. This change would also have the effect of permitting amateurs who had played well in one event to be ranked (e.g., Morgan Pressel, who finished second in the 2005 U.S. Women's Open, or Michelle Wie from age 13).
The introduction of a minimum divisor. Where previously a player's point total was divided by the number of events she played over the previous 104 weeks, now the player's point total would be divided by the greater of (i) the number of events played or (ii) 35. Thus, players with 35 or more events over the previous 104 weeks would continue to use the actual number of events played as the divisor, but players with fewer than 35 events would use 35 as the divisor.

Many commentators saw the latter change as directed at Michelle Wie, who at the time was ranked second in the world despite having competed in only 16 women's professional events in the two-year period. However, the chairman of the Rolex Rankings Technical Committee defended the change as one designed to make the women's rankings more comparable to the Official World Golf Rankings for men, which use a minimum divisor of 40 events.

[edit] Criticisms

When they were introduced the rankings attracted considerable criticism on two grounds. [2] First, it was widely felt that members of the LPGA of Japan Tour were ranked too high, since few of them had competed successfully outside Japan. Second, the minimum of 15 events needed to qualify for a ranking was widely seen as having been selected purely to enable Michelle Wie to be highly ranked because she had played exactly that number in the preceding two years, while every other highly ranked player had played many more events. If the women's rankings used the same system used for the men's rankings –- that is a minimum number of events of one but a minimum denominator of forty to calculate the average points per tournament -- Wie would have been just outside the top ten. But under the women's ranking system where only players who had played a minimum number of events were included, if the minimum number of events had been set higher than fifteen, Wie would not have been ranked at all.

The revised formula addresses the second criticism. The technical committee that administers the rankings urged patience with regard to the first criticism, since the continuing "strength of the field" weighting of tournaments may correct the issue without any technical changes being made.

[edit] Significance of the rankings

The rankings will be used by each of the sponsoring tours to determine eligibility criteria for certain events. On the LPGA Tour, they will be one of the entry criteria for the LPGA Championship, the Women's British Open, and the HSBC Women's World Match Play Championship, where they are also used for seeding the 64-player qualifying field. They will be used to select players for the Women's World Cup of Golf, and from 2007 four of the twelve places in the European Solheim Cup team will be allocated on the basis of the rankings. [3]

[edit] Top players

Annika Sorenstam of Sweden topped the first set of rankings, which was released on Tuesday 21 February 2006. Paula Creamer (United States); Michelle Wie (United States); Yuri Fudoh (Japan); and Cristie Kerr (United States) took the other places in the top 5. The top one hundred players in the initial rankings came from the following countries:

25: South Korea
23: Japan
21: United States
6: Australia, Sweden
5: United Kingdom (England 3; Scotland 2)
4: Taiwan
2: France
1: Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Philippines

[edit] Initial top 10

February 21, 2006

Rank	Player	Country	Points
1	Annika Sorenstam	Sweden	18.47
2	Paula Creamer	United States	9.65
3	Michelle Wie	United States	9.24
4	Yuri Fudoh	Japan	7.37
5	Cristie Kerr	United States	6.94
6	Ai Miyazato	Japan	6.58
7	Lorena Ochoa	Mexico	6.10
8	Jeong Jang	Republic of Korea	4.91
9	Hee-Won Han	Republic of Korea	4.49
10	Juli Inkster	United States	4.11

[edit] Initial top 10 after August 2, 2006 formula change

August 7, 2006

Rank	Player	Country	Points
1	Annika Sorenstam	Sweden	17.41
2	Lorena Ochoa	Mexico	9.87
3	Karrie Webb	Australia	9.39
4	Paula Creamer	United States	8.13
5	Cristie Kerr	United States	8.04
6	Juli Inkster	United States	7.75
7	Michelle Wie	United States	6.83
8	Jeong Jang	Republic of Korea	6.09
9	Yuri Fudoh	Japan	5.98
10	Ai Miyazato	Japan	5.79

[edit] Current top 10

November 20, 2006

Rank	Player	Country	Points
1	Annika Sorenstam	Sweden	16.79
2	Lorena Ochoa	Mexico	12.67
3	Karrie Webb	Australia	11.53
4	Cristie Kerr	United States	8.55
5	Juli Inkster	United States	7.54
6	Ai Miyazato	Japan	6.93
7	Paula Creamer	United States	6.70
8	Jeong Jang	Republic of Korea	6.68
9	Shiho Ohyama	Japan	6.16
10	Michelle Wie	United States	5.68

[edit] World number ones

21 February 2006 to date: Annika Sorenstam, Sweden (42 weeks as of 20 November 2006)

Note: The issue date and date stamp of the first set of rankings, 21 February 2006, was a Tuesday. Updates are issued each Tuesday but date-stamped as of the preceding Monday.