OWGR - Week #43

Like it or not, this week and continuing for the next month or so, Asia is becoming the center stage for the top events in the world of golf. And this week there has been already a significant increase in the number of top pros travelling and getting involved as well as in the standard of competitions compared to last year...

European Tour
Congratulations first of all to Peter Hanson, winner of the first edition of the BMW Masters in Shanghai. Despite of being largely overlooked at the Ryder Cup by Olazabal, Hanson is having the best year of his carreer and his move inside the top 20 players in the world (at #17) is a much deserved reward at this stage. He's now amassed almost €11mil in earnings on the ET and in his 6th consecutive year earning over or around €1million. More importantly, he's moving now to 2nd place in the RtD, ~€0.8mil behind Rory. Hanson overcame a very strong, albeit a bit late, charge from McIlroy on the back nine. Another impressive result from Rory considering that he didn't look like moving in his top gears most of the week. He distances now to more than 3.5 points from Tiger at the top of the world rankings. A very good performance again from Poulter, who continues his slow move upwards, now at #26 and yet another very welcome sign that Paul Casey may be indeed back; a T6 in an event like this is probably the best evidence that this is indeed the case, and he is moving now back up to somewhere around #112. Shane Lowry needed a 3rd place to move inside the top 50. He finished short of that but a 5th place is clear evidence that he belongs to the top echelon right now, and he becomes the highest ranked Rep. of Ireland golfer at #57, moving ahead of Harrington (#59) after many, many years (I'll have to check exactly how many later on). A special remark here for Alex Noren from Sweden, who is climbing inside the top 50 in the world for the first time in his carreer after his T6 finish! Really happy for him and hope he will remain here long term...

PGA Tour (&Asian Tour)
A fantastic course record 61 in the last day from Nick Watney did the trick and he is now the winner of the CIMB Classic in Malaysia. What started as a very average year for him, is now becoming a pretty good one, with his 2nd win in the last two months and he is climbing back up to #16 in the rankings, just ahead of Hanson. Another great week abroad for Bo Van Pelt, who finishes runner up here together with Garrigus and they climb to #20 and #41 respectively. A good T4 finish for Tiger Woods, although he continued to show the same mixture of highs and lows that marked a lot of his performances this year. With only one OWGR sanctioned 'event' (his own) lft for him this year, I'd expect his 2nd spot will come under pressure from Luke Donald, while the distance from Rory's top spot will probably continue to expand. Martin Laird looked like will have a good tournament at some stage, but his finish was pretty average, which means unfortunately that he is being knocked out of the top 50 after quite a while. Not sure how he is fixed for the majors and WGCs next year, but he certainly needs to try and regroup and get back up there as soon as possible...

Japan Tour
Congrats to the American (Korean) Han Lee, winner on the Japanese Tour this week, moving up to somewhere ~#270. KTKim finished T3 and Ryo Ishikawa T6. KTK climbs one spot to #68, but that T6 couldn't stop a furher drop of 3 places for Ryo, now on #91 and moving ever closer to the top 100 exit door...

Web.com Tour
The Tour Championship is the final event of this tour and it will finish tonight so will update the situation later on. Interestingly enough, the current top 3 in the OoM, Wittenberg, Guthrie and Henley are all inside the top 10 after three rounds and can break into the top 100 with a win or even less in some cases...

EDIT: In the end none of the top three did enough to push them inside the top 100, but Wittenberg is now very very close (at #104). Congrats to Justin Bolli who won the final event last night and secured at the last hurdle his card for next year's PGA Tour. He's moving up to #272 in the rankings as ell after that success...

Challenge Tour
Congratulations to Espen Kofstad from Norway for winning the grand final evnt in Italy and with it, the Order of Merit! He will move up inside the top 200 (somewhere around #180) as a result, but probably Kristoffer Broberg will be remembered as the real star performer this season, finishing 2nd in the OoM after an astonishing record of 4 wins and 3 top 10s in a total of seven events played all season! No surprise to find him well ahead of Kofstad in the rankings, somewhere near the #125 spot...

Australasia Tour
Perth had a great couple of weeks, staging another event after the successful Perth Intl. last week. Nothing as fancy as that this time, but maybe this WA Open at Royal Perth GC will provide some answers to the question I was asking in a post last week about the future of Australian Golf and where/who are Australia's next generation of golf stars... Brett Rumford was probably the brightest 'star' in that field, and he finished a decent 3rd, but the winner was decided in a play-off between two amateurs! In the end, the 18-year old Oliver Goss overcame the 22-year old Brady Watt. Neither of them were previously ranked, but now they will, with Goss ending somewhere around #770. Remains to be seen if these two will confirm in the future...

Korea Tour
Well done to Baek Joo Yeob, winner on the Korean Tour this week, he was also previously unranked and is guarranteed to end up joint position with Goss somewhere around #770.

Sunshine Tour
Finally, congrats also to Ruan de Smidt, winner of the Suncoast Classic in South Africa, who will jump up almost 200 places somewhere near #675...

The OWGR table after week #43 (with the Web.com event still to be accounted for) should look as follows:

1 Rory McIlroy
2 Tiger Woods
3 Luke Donald
4 Lee Westwood
5 Justin Rose
6 Adam Scott
7 Webb Simpson
8 Bubba Watson
9 Brandt Snedeker
10 Jason Dufner
--------------------------
11 Louis Oosthuizen
12 Steve Stricker
13 Matt Kuchar
14 Keegan Bradley
15 Dustin Johnson
16 Nick Watney
17 Peter Hanson
18 Zach Johnson
19 Phil Mickelson
20 Bo Van Pelt
21 Sergio Garcia
22 Graeme McDowell
23 Hunter Mahan
24 Ernie Els
25 Jim Furyk
26 Ian Poulter
27 Paul Lawrie
28 Rickie Fowler
29 Jason Day
30 Carl Pettersson
31 Francesco Molinari
32 Charl Schwartzel
33 Nicolas Colsaerts
34 Gonzalo Fdez-Castano
35 Martin Kaymer
36 Bill Haas
37 David Toms
38 Branden Grace
39 John Senden
40 Ryan Moore
41 Robert Garrigus
42 David Lynn
43 K.J. Choi
44 Scott Piercy
45 Thomas Bjorn
46 Fredrik Jacobson
47 Geoff Ogilvy
48 Alexander Noren
49 Jamie Donaldson
50 Rafael Cabrera Bello
----------------------------
51 Martin Laird
52 Bae Sang-moon
53 Richie Ramsay
54 Kevin Na
55 Greg Chalmers
56 Bud Cauley
57 Shane Lowry
58 Hiroyuki Fujita
59 Padraig Harrington
60 Aaron Baddeley
61 Simon Dyson
62 Thorbjorn Olesen
63 Marcel Siem
64 Kyle Stanley
65 Anders Hansen
66 Bernd Wiesberger
67 K.T. Kim
68 John Huh
69 Vijay Singh
70 Jonathan Byrd
71 Marcus Fraser
72 Ben Crane
73 George Coetzee
74 Jonas Blixt
75 Alvaro Quiros
76 Ben Curtis
77 Mark Wilson
78 Michael Thompson
79 Toru Taniguchi
80 Brendon de Jonge
81 Pablo Larrazabal
82 Thaworn Wiratchant
83 Noh Seung-yul
84 Marc Leishman
85 Matteo Manassero
86 Jeff Overton
87 Tim Clark
88 Johnson Wagner
89 Robert Karlsson
90 Y.E. Yang
91 Ryo Ishikawa
92 Miguel A Jimenez
93 Yuta Ikeda
94 Robert Rock
95 Danny Willett
96 Jeev Milkha Singh
97 Retief Goosen
98 Ross Fisher
99 Ted Potter-jr
100 Charles Howell-III
----------------------------
101 Charlie Wi
102 Chris Kirk
103 Ryan Palmer
...

Lots of early morning (my time anyway!) questions answered in one post!!

Especially pleased for Peter Hanson who, not so long ago, looked to have difficulty closing out tournaments. No such problem today and good for him - JMO hopefully the first to congratulate him but probably not.

Laird is the victim of his own bonehead scheduling; I'm sure Meagan was busy making him better offers, but not playing Las Vegas was one of the own goals of the season.

Pleased to see Donaldson squeak into the Top 50, Noren too - if only Noren could match some consistency with his undoubted talent.

Thanks for the Aussie update, this is the time of year when it would be good to see a string of decent (not necessarily star-studded) events, but suspect the reluctance of its better golfers to support home tournaments is matched by so many young wannabes tied up in PGA Tour Q-School (or web.com) commitments. Would think this will become an increasingly aggravating thorn in the side of Aussie Tour Directors.

Cheers pd, I hope Doug Ferguson is paying attention!

Thanks, kwini.

I see that somehow Bjorn has moved now just above the cut-off line for next week's HSBC. Hopefully that will help him stay inside the top 50...

Ah ha!
I just posted that Bjorn is first alternate - how quickly things change! Wonder who dropped out.

A small correction: I mixed up the ages of the two Aussie amateurs... the winner Oliver Goss is in fact 18-years old, and found this piece about him. He's going to join University of Tennessee...

http://www.golfgrinder.com/news/players/oliver-goss-australias-next-amateur-hope/

Useless fact...

If Henley, Guthrie and Wittenberg finish 1-2-3 tonight in that order in the Web.com event, they will all move inside the top 100!... knocking Ross Fisher, Ted Potter and CHIII out, of course...

It would appear that Schwartzel is the guy who was replaced by Bjorn in the HSBC entry list...

Ooh, Wonder why he absconded? Lucky break for Thomas though.

Charl and Tim Clark signed up for the SA Open. Hope other names do, but pathetic prize-fund. Obscene that Nedbank and the Hope project lavish fortunes on the players but sponsors can't be bothered to support the historic tournaments. Nothing against South Africa specifically, the same the world over.

The OWGR site is late this morning with their updated rankings... I edited in the main post the results for the web.com event last night. None of those top three I was mentioning did quite enough to get themselves inside the top 100. I think Wittenberg stops just below my #103 cutline at #104...

Early count for this week:

- WGC-HSBC @ ~66 points (up from 62 pts last year)

Luke needs a 2-way tie for 2nd to move ahead of Woods at #2.
Lee can't move to #3 even if he wins.
Anyone playing between 5.Scott and 11.Oosthuizen could move to #4 with a win (or less in some cases).

By not playing this week and travelling to Bulgaria instead to lay by the pool side with Caroline, Rory will end up after week #44 with the same number of average points in the rankings as if he would've played the HSBC and finished ~solo 6th(ish). Smart boy!

Bit by bit, McIlroy's lead just gets bigger and bigger...........dare i say a 3.57 point lead is bigger than anyone has had since TW???

Certainly the biggest 'since' TW... In relative terms, it's the 4th largest in history of owgr. Faldo and Norman also had a bigger relative lead margin at some point in the 90's...

Is Rory heading to Nedbank or Chevron or Caroline???

Since this is the active thread, does anyone know if Rory v Tiger exhibition match was on free TV in Europe and/or Asia.

JC - Nope, I believe it's Wozzilroy all the way after Dubai and until Abu Dhabi in January...

GPB - not that I'm aware of, I don't think so. And I understand that the much hyped on-line high quality 'broadcast' (for $$) has been a bit of a disaster...

A bit unfortunate for the Laird to drop outside the Top 50. When do the Majors settle on their top 50 for automatic qualification?

Self-inflicted by Laird.

Dec 31st is the first cut-off and then ten days before The Masters begins.

I get the impression he messed his schedule around to fit a few European tournaments in to try & impress Ollie but blatantly forgot to bring any form over with him, missed RC by quite a long way and now seems to be paying the price.

JAS, He also omitted Las Vegas from his schedule, where he secured one of his two wins and lost another time in a play-off to Jonathan Byrd's hole-in-one.

Unless Laird can recapture his form early in 2013, it could be a long season for him as I don't think he's in any Majors or WGC's at present.

Lee's #4 spot comming under pressure in the rankings...
Provisional OWGR table after Round 2 of the WGC-HSBC:

1 Rory McIlroy
2 Tiger Woods
3 Luke Donald
4 Louis Oosthuizen
5 Adam Scott
6 Lee Westwood
7 Justin Rose
8 Jason Dufner
9 Webb Simpson
10 Bubba Watson
-----------------------------------
11 Brandt Snedeker
12 Steve Stricker
13 Dustin Johnson
14 Keegan Bradley
15 Matt Kuchar
16 Nick Watney
17 Ernie Els
18 Peter Hanson
19 Phil Mickelson
...
45 Shane Lowry
...
49 Rafael Cabrerra-Bello
50 Alexander Noren
-------------------------------
51 Martin Laird
52 Geoff Ogilvy
53 Thorbjorn Olesen
...
60 Padraig Harrington
...

kwinigolfer wrote:JAS, He also omitted Las Vegas from his schedule, where he secured one of his two wins and lost another time in a play-off to Jonathan Byrd's hole-in-one.

Unless Laird can recapture his form early in 2013, it could be a long season for him as I don't think he's in any Majors or WGC's at present.

Laird is qualified for the PGA Championship... but that's it at this point...

pd,
Just reward for a very indifferent trot of form from Westwood.
Lowry doing himself proud, but Donaldson and Ramsay not doing themselves justice.


I must be thick as can't see Laird's qualification for the PGA Championship unless he stays in the Top 100. He's losing points fast right now and needs to stop the slide.

kwinigolfer wrote:
I must be thick as can't see Laird's qualification for the PGA Championship unless he stays in the Top 100. He's losing points fast right now and needs to stop the slide.

Aaaak.... Nope it's not you. I took a quick look at http://www.pgatour.com/r/2012_majorqualifiers/index.html and for some reason assumed that was 2013... duh... so you are correct... I don't see Laird as being qualified for the PGA either assuming the criteria remains the same as 2012.

Final count: WGC-HSBC @ 64 pts

Kept counting in originally one of the big names that was obviously not here...