OWGR - Week#36

It's been a loooong week!
Congratulations to Thomas Bjorn and Webb Simpson in particular for their great wins!
Really delighted to see Bjorn in such sparkling form and after his 3rd win of the year, he jumps up to a well deserved #28 in the rankings. Also, a very good performance by the top European trio present in Crans Montana, which means that the Europeans are now once again filling up the top 4 positions in the world rankings.
And another top performance and another win for Webb Simpson (Hallelujah!)! Just a month ago we were talking about him not making the all important top 50 and now he is looking down on us from #14 in the world... Tough luck to Chez Reavie for not wining in the end, but a terrific result nevertheless, propelling him up almost 90 places to #81.

We've had a bit of a situation this week over in Japan... Although taifun Talas wasn't quite as mean as Irene, it's been nasty enough to mess up completely the tournament schedule there. They just about managed to finish 36 holes in the end, which meant that the share of owgr points had to be cut by 25%. Still, that is sufficient for last year's winner, Ryo Ishikawa, to overtake Tiger in the rankings, after a T5 finish this year.

Finally, talking about Tiger, he is taking another small plunge this week, down to #44! As I said already, at this rate, he may be out of the top 50 even sooner than initially expected, but we'll see about that later...

This is how the OWGR table should look like after week #36:

1 Luke Donald
2 Lee Westwood
3 Martin Kaymer
4 Rory McIlroy
5 Steve Stricker
6 Dustin Johnson
7 Jason Day
8 Phil Mickelson
9 Matt Kuchar
10 Adam Scott
11 Nick Watney
12 Carl Schwartzel
13 Graeme McDowell
14 Webb Simpson
15 Bubba Watson
16 K.J. Choi
17 David Toms
18 Ian Poulter
19 Paul Casey
20 Robert Karlsson
21 Kim Kyung-Tae
22 Hunter Mahan
23 Jim Furyk
24 Francesco Molinari
25 Brandt Snedeker
26 Anders Hansen
27 Retief Goosen
28 Thomas Bjorn
29 Martin Laird
30 Zach Johnson
31 Matteo Manassero
32 Rickie Fowler
33 Alvaro Quiros
34 Keegan Bradley
35 Ernie Els
36 Miguel Jimenez
37 Justin Rose
38 Darren Clarke
39 Bo Van Pelt
40 Gary Woodland
41 Y.E. Yang
42 Jason Dufner
43 Ryo Ishikawa
44 Tiger Woods
45 Bill Haas
46 Ryan Moore
47 Sergio Garcia
48 Louis Oosthuizen
49 Jonathan Byrd
50 Geoff Ogilvy
---------------------------
51 Peter Hanson
52 Edoardo Molinari
53 Tim Clark
54 Vijay Singh
55 Simon Dyson
56 Robert Allenby
57 Aaron Baddeley
58 Rory Sabbatini
59 Ryan Palmer
60 Mark Wilson
61 Fredrik Jacobsen
62 Lucas Glover
63 Charley Hoffman
64 Yuta Ikeda
65 Scot Verplank
66 Ben Crane
67 Sean O'Hair
68 Alexander Noren
69 Richard Green
70 Anthony Kim
71 J.B. Holmes
72 Ross Fisher
73 Charles Howell III
74 Kevin Na
75 Padraig Harrington
76 Stephen Marino
77 Camilo Villegas
78 Bae Sang-Moon
79 Nicolas Colsaerts
80 Jeff Overton
81 Chez Reavie
82 Chris Kirk
83 Brian Davis
84 Raphael Jacquelin
85 Robert Garrigus
86 Brendan Jones
87 Hiroyuki Fujita
88 Tommy Gainey
89 Fredrik A. Hed
90 Spencer Levin
91 Pablo Larazabal
92 Jamie Donaldson
93 John Senden
94 D.A. Points
95 Davis Love III
96 George Coetzee
97 Tetsuji Hiratsuka
98 Stephen Gallacher
99 Stewart Cink
100 Angel Cabrera
-------------------------------
101 Carl Petersson
102 Brendan de Jonge
103 Gregory Bourdy
...

pd

Tiger's top 50 days are numbered; no PGA Tour tournament next week but Bill Haas, Sergio and Moore will be unemployed, then big points again for the Beemer.
And Hanson, Eddie and Symes will play well in Holland.
Tiger probably down to ~55 by the time he tees it up again.
PS: By all accounts he sprayed it at Turning Stone on Wednesday.

Interesting new feature on owgr site enables one to track players' ranking by week over the past two years(ish).

Yep, it's been introduced a week or so ago... Luke is stretching his lead at the top, but Lee will have the opportunity to close that down a bit after the KLM Open. In turn, Lee can't be caught at #2 by Kaymer or Rory this week...

Looks like it'll be only 38 points for the KLM winner... Rory and Kaymer won't have it for free, they'll need to work a little bit (~top 40 finish) to stay ahead of SS and DJ after this week. Tiger will drop one more place for sure...

Oosthuizen is one of those who could overtake Tiger with a good week - crucial to him as he'll almost certainly forfeit his place on Greg Norman's Presidents Cup Team otherwise.
Ogilvy, Badds, Singh, Allenby and Roary are close behind him with opportunity for points at the Beemer.

With #1 and #2 becoming unreachable milestones in the owgr these days, we can concentrate for a moment on the moving milestone that Tiger is becoming (or 'dropping milestone' to be more precise)...
As I said, Tiger will drop one spot to #45 this week anyway through amortisation, and after that the KLM-ers that could overtake him are Oosty, Hanson, Eddy and Symes. However they will have to bring in their A-games (not Padraig's current version though) as they all need top finishes, from a top 4 for Oosty to a top 2 for Symon. And they'll have to outplay #2,#3 and #4 in the world for that. Tough but not impossible, of course...

another dropping milestone to keep an eye on must be Paul Casey. i dont know how hes still top 20!
any news on whether he will play fall series events?

Hend, Casey's rather slow slide down the rankings can be explained in terms of the owgr maths... He scored really well for about a year (approx. between 02/2010-02/2011) and the weight of that combined with the fact that his divisor keeps going down as he's not playing, is helping him stay afloat, still...

As for your question on his playing schedule, I was going to say that only he knows it, but I'm begining to wonder if he knows himself where he is going at the moment... A bit like Tiger, leaving his own ranking situation aside, he's becoming one of those players who climbed to the very high positions in world rankings, but then all that has been somewhat wasted for a long period of time by not playing. High ranked players are worth and contribute a lot of 'rating value points' to a tournament, but if you don't play all that goes wasted...

I don't want to be too harsh on Casey as I don't know for sure if there is some sort of long term health issue involved in his case, as it's been suggested lately... He and his management team certainly should try and be a bit more open about his situation, his schedule and what's happening with him. BTW, anyone knows who manages Casey?

This is Casey's website - as you can see, it doesn't tell you much about his future US plans, just that his two upcoming tournaments will be in S.Korea and China. Perhaps he hasn't received the letter yet from PGA Tour HQ . . . . . . .?

http://www.paulcasey.com

He talks about his "turf toe" here, but obviously nothing about the rumoured "personal" problems. Peter Kostis is his coach, and quite possibly also has a hand in Casey's management - just an uninformed guess.

I thought he was in the IMG stable, and the website confirms - Guy Kinnings at IMG is listed as his manager under "Paul - My Team" in the menu.

Sky,
I realised how daft I was not to check that out just after I'd clicked "send"!

Interesting note for those fond of criticising the owgr rationale and would prefer a rolling one-year ranking a la ATP and WTA:
Following her early round defeat in the US Open, Sharapova will leapfrog Zvonereva into the 32 spot, even tho' Zvoner reached the "quarters". A reprise of last year when Zvoner went ahead of Clijsters despite being beaten by Kim.

There are lots of good systems, none perfect.

Final owgr count shows that the KLM Open has just 'made the cut' for the 40 point bracket, on the number...!
Anyway, a pretty dismal showing in the end from Eddi, King Louis plus Hanson's withdrawal, means that only Simon is left in the cards to overtake Tiger from the KLM field this week. He needs a 3-way tie for 2nd or better...

On the other hand, Kaymer showed that his late struggles are far from over and as a result of this MC he'll quickly drop back from #3 to #6 this week! Rory needs a top 7 to get back to #3 in the world. But he should really go for a win here... that's the only way he can have a chance to meet Caroline's expectations in the near future, of becoming world #1...

Norman's President's Cup list should look like this after this week:

1 Jason Day
2 Adam Scott
3 Carl Schwartzel
4 K.J. Choi
5 Kim Kyung-Tae
6 Retief Goosen
7 Ernie Els
8 Y.E. Yang
9 Ryo Ishikawa
10 Geoff Ogilvy
-------------------------------------
11 Louis Oosthuizen
(12 Tim Clark)
13 Vijay Singh
14 Aaron Baddeley
15 Robert Allenby
....

Oosty and Ogilvy may well switch positions again next week, but I'd say Greg wouldn't really mind that much if Vijay will move ahead of them in the next couple of weeks if you consider the current form of those three...

Hi pd,
Unimaginable missed cut from Kaymer - all the other guys on my Fantasy Team got the message, why not him?

I think Shark is hoping that he is able to take the top nine (down to Ryo) plus three Melbourne boys, Ogilvy, Badds and Allenby. But, as you say, Veej would do just fine also!