OWGR - Week #47

For the second week in a row we had two of the main tournaments cut down to 54 holes due to bad weather.
And probably for the 1st time in a long while, the strogest tournament of the week has been on the Japanese Tour.
Congratulations to the three main winners:
- Toshinori Muto wins the Dunlop Phoenix in Japan (28pts) and moves from #199 to somewhere close to #110
Gonzo had another excellent week after winning in Singapore and his runner up finish today moves him decisevly inside the top 50 (#46) and hopefully he will stay there until the end of the year to take advantage of all the 'goodies' that come with that. A very good result also for Shane Lowry (T3) who should move back well inside the upper half of the top 150 in the world.
- The in-form Dutchman Joost Luiten finally gets his very first win at the Iskandar Johor Open in Malaysia (24 pts) and jumps up to #66. No win but a decent result for Padraig (T3), only good to lift him up a couple of positions to #80 though...
- Garth Mulroy wins the Alfred Dunhill Champ. (20 pts) at home in South Africa and he should move up more than 100 places somewhere close to #180.

So, Tiger's return inside the top 50 proves to be short lived, as Gonzo's impressive climb over the last couple of weeks means that Woods drops now back to #51...

The OWGR table after week #47 should look like this:

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

Shocking stat from next week's S.A. Open; Els and Goosen playing but only Simon Dyson that I can see in the top 50. Ernie and Retief hoist by the petard of their own lousy form.

With the players ranked between aboiut 30th and 50th-ish so closely bunched, it highlights the utter folly of awarding points to the Nedbank and Chevron exhibitions.

Can't find the Aussie field for next week but Day and Scott, at least, will give it a nice boost.

Great stuff, pd

Thanks kwini.

You can have a look at the Ausie PGA field here, it's a pretty decent one...

http://www.pga.org.au/site/_content/document/00041852-source.pdf

YE and KT are staying over another week and Bubba is joined by his mate Rickie Fowler, plus most of the top Ausies (hopefully in better form than these last few days)...

...and forgot to mention DC is in that field as well...

Not a bad field, Thanks!

Very top heavy these Aussie events, aren't they? Seems they have such a narrow window for their season, South Africa and Southern South America also, plus this week's World Cup, and eligible players are spread pretty thin.

Early predictions for the strength of this week's events:

- Australian PGA Champ.: 36-38 pts to the winner
- South African Open: 32 pts
- Casio World Open Japan: 18 pts
- World Cup: 0 pts, but lots of $$$ & pride...

princedracula wrote:...and forgot to mention DC is in that field as well...

Really think DC is doing the right thing by taking a lot of time off since the end of august...........................at this time of year he's usually chasing big finishes to get his ranking up. He can relax now, play when he wants and arrange his schedule around the Majors and WGC's...........................i know the Ryder Cup is a serious goal for him in 2012, but personally, i don't think he will make it.........................

Hard to say for sure now, but the trend we've been talking a lot for the most part of this year (ET tour strengthening compared to the PGA Tour) looks to come to a halt, or even experience a setback next season... Here's two simple stats:

Start of 2011 season
- 6 of the top 30 owgr were ET members only (non PGA)
- 2 of the top 3 owgr were ET members only

Start of 2012 season (predicted)
- only 1 or 2 (Kaymer, Casey) of the top 30 will be ET members only
- none of the top 3 owgr will be ET members only

I was about to say that Adam Scott could move to no.5 in the world this week, but then I just saw he had a rather funky start down under:
birdie-triple bogey-birdie-bogey-double bogey, i.e. +4 after 5 holes.
Not much better from Allenby and Senden, but Chalmers seems to continue from where he left it a couple of weeks ago... Good starts also from Bubba, DC and KtK...

prince

Where do you get your OWGR info, I ask because the way the data is presented on their website it is difficult to use it how you want. Do you know where to get it in an excel type format or similar.

Mac - have you tried copy/paste into Excel? Is that good enough for you?

Mac - no excel data available from what I know apart from some brief ranking history on the individual player pages. So, Sky's advice is the best I can think of...

KtK is having another brilliant week down under. A win tomorrow (or even a solo 2nd) will move him back where I think he belongs right now, the top 20...
Both Ernie and Goose were having pretty bad finishes today, still Goose remains on track to get back into the top 50 (and Aiken back into top 100). One consequence of that would be that Tiger will be pushed one place (could be even 2 if he's unlucky) further down the ranks...

Otherwise, if Adam or Jason don't finish in the top 3 or so, then DJ and Stricker will switch places (5/6), and same will happen for Kooch and Watney (10/11)...

And Chalmers does it again! Wouldn't have bet on him in a million years a couple of weeks ago, but now he'll be among the favorites for a hattrick down under when he tees off at the Aussie Masters in 3 weeks time... He should move to just below #60 in the world after this week, but another good one at the JBWere Masters and he could find himself in heavenly teritory... (top 50).
Watched the start of this late last night and was the most bizarre few holes for yesterday's leaders, falling one after another like flies... Bubba started the trend when he smashed his first tee shot in the drink and it was all downhill from there... KtK trouble started at the 5th (he was 4 shots ahead by then) when he found the jungle on both sides of the fairway and had to drop shots twice. Went straight to bed after all that...

Interesting result from a rankings perspective pd, Badds will consolidate his top 50 status, and Allenby arrests his slide - whatever happened to the Allenby who was invincible in play-offs?

Meanwhile, Goosen letting things slip in S.A. and Ernie in with a 79 - his next weekly blog should make fascinating reading.

Allenby was the one who could have pushed Tiger further down with a win, but wasn't to be... Goose is below the top 50 line as it is now so he needs to push it over the last few holes.

As for Ernie, after droping out of top 50 after 19 years couple of weeks ago, and now after what must be one of the worst ever performance in his home Open, it must all feel more like the apocalypse rather than just a bad slump...