OWGR - Week #18

So, 4 (four) American winners this week (one more famous than another), just as well I didn't have too much time to follow the action this weekend...

Congratulations to Derek Ernst (who?), the highly unexpected winner at Quail Hollow! As a result, we will see one of the highest jumps seen in the owgr's history, moving up 1084 places, from #1207 to #123! He may well be regreting now this great missed opportunity for a memorable win, but a fantastic result for David Lynn nevertheless, who moves back up to #42. Looked that this will be all between the heavyweights Phil, Lee and Rory, but none of them lived up to the expectations in the end. Lefty however will return inside the top 10 after this, while the other two will stay put...

Amazing couple of weeks in the Far East for Brett Rumford: ~ 1 million bucks richer, up at the top of the R2D and jumping to a career best #76 in the rankings! Great result for the Finn Mikko Ilonen who will move somewhere around #130, while my bet Dubuisson (no, I don't pick him because of his caddy!) moves within touching distance to the top 100 (#105). And it's welcome back to top 100 for Pablito Larrazabal (up to #98), after a nice string of good results the last few weeks.

As the Europeans have just missed on the wins on the two main tours, a consolation prize comes from the Asian |Tour, where Bernd Wiesberger won in Indonesia against a pretty decent field and will move up to #70, while Ernie Els moves up to #22 following his runner up finish...

No double in the end for young Hideki Matsuyama in Japan (due mainly to that strange collapse in the last part of the 3rd round), but still, a 2nd place and very impressive first three weeks of his pro career, and the results are now there to reflect that, with a move up inside the top 100, to a new career best of #90. Congrats also to the winner in Japan, Michio Matsumura, who should move up somewhere around #245.

Very impressive win by the talented American B. Koepka, who outclassed the field on the Challenge Tour in Italy and should enjoy a nice jump to ~#260 in the rankings. And finally, congrats also to two other Americans, Brendon Todd and Timothy O'Neal, winners on the Web.comand LatinoAmerica tours, moving up to somewhere around #345 and #595 respectively.

The OWGR table after week #18 sould look as follows:

1 Tiger Woods
2 Rory McIlroy
3 Adam Scott
4 Justin Rose
5 Luke Donald
6 Brandt Snedeker
7 Louis Oosthuizen
8 Graeme McDowell
9 Steve Stricker
10 Phil Mickelson
---------------------------
11 Matt Kuchar
12 Lee Westwood
13 Ian Poulter
14 Keegan Bradley
15 Sergio Garcia
16 Charl Schwartzel
17 Bubba Watson
18 Webb Simpson
19 Dustin Johnson
20 Jason Dufner
21 Peter Hanson
22 Ernie Els
23 Hunter Mahan
24 Nick Watney
25 Jason Day
26 Bo Van Pelt
27 Jim Furyk
28 Bill Haas
29 Rickie Fowler
30 Zach Johnson
31 Gonzalo Fdez-C.
32 Branden Grace
33 Thorbjorn Olesen
34 Martin Kaymer
35 Jamie Donaldson
36 Robert Garrigus
37 Carl Pettersson
38 Scott Piercy
39 Henrik Stenson
40 Francesco Molinari
41 Paul Lawrie
42 David Lynn
43 Nicolas Colsaerts
44 Ryan Moore
45 Michael Thompson
46 D.A. Points
47 Fredrik Jacobson
48 George Coetzee
49 Billy Horschel
50 Tim Clark
51 Richard Sterne
52 Russell Henley
53 Matteo Manassero
54 Kevin Streelman
55 Marcel Siem
56 John Senden
57 Marcus Fraser
58 Padraig Harrington
59 Thongchai Jaidee
60 Alexander Noren
-------------------------------
61 Luke Guthrie
62 Angel Cabrera
63 Charles Howell III
64 Geoff Ogilvy
65 Hiroyuki Fujita
66 Chris Wood
67 Martin Laird
68 Jimmy Walker
69 Stephen Gallacher
70 Bernd Wiesberger
71 Mark Leishman
72 Brendan de Jonge
73 Charlie Beljan
74 Chris Kirk
75 Greg Chalmers
76 Brett Rumford
77 Thomas Bjorn
78 Jaco Van Zyl
79 Rafael Cabrerra-Bello
80 John Merrick
81 Shane Lowry
82 David Toms
83 Anders Hansen
84 Kyle Stanley
85 Kiradech Aphibarnrat
86 Darren Fichardt
87 Richie Ramsay
88 K.J. Choi
89 Scott Jamieson
90 Hideki Matsuyama
91 John Huh
92 Thaworn Wiratchant
93 Miguel A. Jimenez
94 Mark Wilson
95 Brendan Jones
96 Gaganjeet Bhullar
97 Thomas Aiken
98 Pablo Larazabal
99 Kevin Stadler
100 Danny Willett
------------------------------
101 Raphael Jacquelin
102 Ben Crane
103 Josh Teater
...

pd

Surprise, surprize! The Players is still going to be worth 80 points to the winner.

As for the top ranks prospects, it's pretty simple:

- Rory can only hope to regain no. 1 with a win
- Tiger needs to finish solo 13th or better to remain no. 1 regardless of what Rory does...

PD

Also... I realize you're probably not keeping ERV's on this one... but Ernst in bumps Scott Langley out of the originally published field to 1st Alternate...

Ernst's meteoric rise in the OWGR falls short of Tom Watson following the 2009 Open Championship

He went from ranked 1374 to 105 in one week after finishing 2nd in the 2009 Open Championship,

Is there a place where you can find US Open qualifiers fields? Like not the local ones but the sectional ones.

benson,
The Sectional ones should be available when the local qualies are completed. Might have to dig; the USGA web-sites are excrutiatingly difficult to navigate.

Cheers Kwini......always interesting to see who tries to qualify and who doesn't.....Also the Walton Heath qualifier could be argued as a stronger Euro Tour event than some others at the moment.

Agreed!
Perhaps pd will publish a stat on that!
Hadn't seen that Harrington is playing in Dallas; not sure he's ever played there in the past.

Yeah, good decision imo.......will mean with Wentworth the following week it will be four weeks on the bounce, he needs to play to try and find some form......and he needs more rounds before the US OPEN AND THE OPEN itself....so I am happy with that decision. Presume he will play the St Jude before the US as well.....vital he gets some good results soon.

Many are still of the belief that the PLAYERS is still the strongest field in golf. That used to be true, but since the PGA started inviting all the OWGR top-100 it has become the strongest field in golf year in and year out (despite the 20 club pros in the event). Also the Open Championship has surpassed the Players a few times in the last few years as well (in both OWGR ERV ratings and OWGR sum of averages).

Bringing the PLAYERS field down in quality just a bit the last 3 years has been the lack of participation by some of the worlds top pros who are eligible. Some of that by choice and some by the injury bug.

2012 - The field was missing #4 Bubba Watson (maternity leave) #14 Charl Schwartzel (by choice), #17 Dustin Johnson and #34 Thomas Bjorn (injury) and #44 Paul Lawrie and #46 Anders Hansen (by choice)

2011 - It wasn't the injury bug... just top eligible players skipping - #1 Lee Westwood & #6 Rory McIlroy (both skipped due to Chubby Chandler power play - which failed and cost him a huge client), #23 Jimenez, #35 K.T. Kim, #44 Anders Hansen, #50 Ryo Ishikawa #67 Hiroyuki Fujita.

2010 - Hit hard by injuries to #3 Stricker, #11 Anthony Kim, #15 Goosen & #47 M.Sim. Those that were eligible but declined invites were #32 Ross Fisher, #36 E.Molinari, #37 Jimenez, #38 Ishikawa, #43 Oosthuizen, #49 S.Hansen.

But this year things are looking a bit better. Barring last minute injuries or WD's it appears as though all the top 34 are playing. There are still 3 top-50 players declining invites: #35 Jamie Donaldson, #41 Paul Lawrie & #43 Nicolas Colsaerts (overscheduling issue). But over all, the field should be stronger than the past years.

robopz wrote:

2012 - The field was missing #4 Bubba Watson (maternity leave)

Thought he was looking a bit tubby, when did he give birth?

I think we're also missing #51, Sterne, and #48, Coetzee, both of whom were qualified.

robopz wrote:Many are still of the belief that the PLAYERS is still the strongest field in golf. That used to be true, but since the PGA started inviting all the OWGR top-100 it has become the strongest field in golf year in and year out (despite the 20 club pros in the event).

So far this year, there has been 9 players ranked higher than 100 win on the PGATour, and just one player ranked between 26-100 win on the PGAT.

That is showing me that there is little talent gap between #35, #72, and #350 in the OWGR, (if they are playing the PGAT).

IMO there is a HUGE Talent gap between a journeyman PGAT player and a Club Pro

This year the Players Championship has 144 player ranked #444 or better in the OWGR.

Derek Ernst showed us last week that even the lowest ranked PGATour player is capable of winning against a PGAT quality field, as have a player such as Craig Perks did in the Players Championship.

These journeyman type players are left out by the 20 club pros in the PGA Championship and several former PGA Championship winners and really dilute the field.

Lets put into an analogy that you can appreciate.

The PGA Championship dilutes 200 Proof Grain White Lightning with water.
The Players dilutes Bacardi 151 Rum with regular Bacardi 80 Rum.

[quote="GPB"]

robopz wrote:
IMO there is a HUGE Talent gap between a journeyman PGAT player and a Club Pro

Robo, There is a HUGE talent gap between some of the better club players at your club and mine and the resident Pro (or rather Mars Bar Salesman) at their club.

Club pro's in general are not very good at all, get such little golf in and could theorhetically be no better than a 4HCP, whereas it's pretty likely there will be Scratch, +1, +2, +3 and even +4 players at many clubs.

super_realist wrote:

robopz wrote:

2012 - The field was missing #4 Bubba Watson (maternity leave)

Thought he was looking a bit tubby, when did he give birth?

Well, he's more of b*tch than his wife, that's for sure... and she didn't give birth either. (they adopted as far as I remember)

kwinigolfer wrote:I think we're also missing #51, Sterne, and #48, Coetzee, both of whom were qualified.

We may well miss our 'deer' Vijay as well by the look of things...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2013/05/08/vijay-singh-pga-tour-deer-antler-spray/2143849/

This is turning into a bit of a comedy...

Can't see that Veej has a hoof to stand on.
It was banned.
The end.

Whatever next?
Tiger suing The Masters for loss of earnings due to his two-shot penalty??
Deer oh deer.

He has been too long in America.

[quote="super_realist"]

GPB wrote:

robopz wrote:
IMO there is a HUGE Talent gap between a journeyman PGAT player and a Club Pro

Robo, There is a HUGE talent gap between some of the better club players at your club and mine and the resident Pro (or rather Mars Bar Salesman) at their club.

Club pro's in general are not very good at all, get such little golf in and could theorhetically be no better than a 4HCP, whereas it's pretty likely there will be Scratch, +1, +2, +3 and even +4 players at many clubs.

I agree with your comments... but the quote you are responding to is GPB's... not mime.

robopz wrote:

I agree with your comments... but the quote you are responding to is GPB's... not mime.

I hate mimes, Stevie Wonder has no idea what he is missing.

GPB wrote:So far this year, there has been 9 players ranked higher than 100 win on the PGATour, and just one player ranked between 26-100 win on the PGAT.

That is showing me that there is little talent gap between #35, #72, and #350 in the OWGR, (if they are playing the PGAT).

IMO you have discovered an unusual situation this year and are reading WAY too much into it. So far there have been 7 first time winners on the PGA Tour out of 19 events... I believe you have to go back to 2002 to find 7 first time winners this early.

And to just say there are more winners this year ranked higher than #100 is misleading... that's because there have been far more STARTS on tour by players ranked #101 and higher... so it would be expected more #101 and higher players would win. In an attempt to be overly fair... if we were to take out the Hyundai, 2 WGC's and the Masters (because few #101 or higher players participated) and take out Puerto Rico (because few top-100 players participated), there have been 2088 total starts made in the remaining 14 events, 5 won by top-100 players, 9 won by players ranked #101 or higher. However, only 24.14% of those starts were made by players ranked #100 or better. So for the #101 and higher players to be performing as well as the top-100... they would have to be winning at roughly a 3-1 ratio instead of the less than 2-1 ratio they are winning at.

Also I would offer that when looking at wins... you're considering less than 1% of all finish positions as the average field size for those 14 events was just over 149 players (just over 130 average for all events including TOC, WGC's, P.R. and Masters). But if you take a look a little deeper, say at top-10 and top-25 finish positions by OWGR rank this year, you will see that players ranked #26-100 are performing FAR better than indicated by the single win that group has to date. (I base that opinion on a cursory look as my data on the matter is not yet complete)

GPB wrote:IMO there is a HUGE Talent gap between a journeyman PGAT player and a Club Pro

This year the Players Championship has 144 player ranked #444 or better in the OWGR.

Derek Ernst showed us last week that even the lowest ranked PGATour player is capable of winning against a PGAT quality field, as have a player such as Craig Perks did in the Players Championship.

These journeyman type players are left out by the 20 club pros in the PGA Championship and several former PGA Championship winners and really dilute the field.

I would agree that fields are VERY deep and lots of players can win. Even Jack Nicklaus has suggested fields are far deeper today than in his day... and Ernst certainly seems to support that point. And I would also agree that Club pro's are NOT as competitive as even low ranked but full time real live Touring pros. But that said... that still doesn't push the PLAYERS over the PGA in terms of field strength... because there are TWO ways to look at depth, not just one.

QUANTITY - If you want to get right down to it... the PLAYERS and PGA fields aren't that much different in size. We can't yet know this exact makeup of this year's PGA field... so let's look at 2012 fields as an example.

For purposes of discussion... let's call players ranked #500 and better "competitive", and consider only them. When you take out the club pros and non-competitive past champions from the PGA you are left with 132 players ranked #366 or better (the other 24 are all above #500 or not ranked. Where as the PLAYERS had 145 players ranked #500 or better... 142 of them #366 or better. So the net difference is a 13 player larger field for the PLAYERS.

QUALITY - But IMO another key element of depth is quality. Consider that the PLAYERS had 70 players ranked top-100 or better in its field... where as the PGA invites all the top-100 and in 2012... 99 of them participated. Then take it further and the PLAYERS had 112 top-200 players, compared to 127 for the PGA. It is my contention that the "extra" 29 top-100 ranked players participating in the PGA, add far more strength to the PGA field than an extra dozen #297-500 ranked players adds to the PLAYERS field.

And the quality difference of those two fields are borne out by TWO measures. First are the OWGR strength of fields. OWGR "WORLD" event rating values were 707 for the Players... and 848 for the PGA.

The second measure is the "OWGR sum of the averages" of the two events. IMO the OWGR field strength ratings are too top-heavy as they over value top players and give no value for players ranked #200 or higher. So I believe the ERV's above unfairly penalize an event like the PLAYERS. But using different OWGR data, I believe we can arrive at a truer picture of "real" field strength. IMO summing the OWGR point average of ALL players in the field gives a truer picture of field strength. In 2012 the SUM for the PLAYERS was 308.57 compared to 359.76 for the PGA. BUT to be fair, in summing the average OWGR, calendar bias comes into play. Adjusted for this bias the PLAYERS comes out with a SUM of 319.19 and the PGA 346.20.

GPB wrote:
I hate mimes, Stevie Wonder has no idea what he is missing.

Now that thar am FUNNY

Robo:

There are more than two ways to rank a strength of field. Sagarin does it another way.

The Sum ( OWGR avg ) is the best way to evaluate a field if we are to use the OWGR as the only ranking system, but as we have discussed many time the OWGR is subject o the calendar bias. Players in the PGA Championship are going to have higher averages in Mid August vs Early May.

And as we have discussed before, the OWGR is biased against the PGAT because they do not get as many supplements as the International Tours.

Sagarin's method of field evaluation is questionable because it only measures only quality rather than quantity. But for comparing fields of similar sizes, it does a pretty good job. for example, Sagarin ranks World Challenge #1 and Nedbank #3.

As for comparing fields of similar sizes, it does a pretty good job.

And it ranks the Players noticeably higher than the PGA Championship. Here are the 10 highest ranked tournaments for field of 132-156.

# Name Overall ranking Rating
1 Players 13 70.51
2 NTOpen 20 70.64
3 Heritage 21 70.85
4 Honda 24 70.9
5 Tampa 26 70.91
6 PGA Ch. 27 70.92
7 US Open 30 71.01
8 British 29 71.01
9 Houston 31 71.01
10 Farmers 32 71.04


http://rankings.golfweek.com/ellington/default.asp?t=worldt

Not to get involved in the discussion, but:
I can't think of any time since I started following the PGA Tour in the late 70's that so few of the better players really gave a monkey's about the events they show up for, Majors excepted.
The double-dipping International players especially play some (many?) events just to be assured of getting their 15 or 16 events in - as these are largely golfers in the Top 100, is it any surprise that performance is patchy?

Chubby's guys (possibly excluding Westwood who seems to have his schedule pretty well sussed) are prominent among this group but by no means the only culprits (add Poulter and Stenson) and it's difficult to see how this trend is healthy and for how long it can be tolerated.


Meanwhile, wonder if princedrac has had a chance to feast his eyes on this lot:

http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/season=2013/tournamentid=2013038/teetimes/index.html

Let's hope the absence of any significant Americans so far is not due to the perilous security situation in Virginia Water . . . . . .

Unfortunately there would be a few others that I would blame before any Americans, i.e. Lairdy, Oosty and Schwartzy... Hope they have some very good reasons for not being on that list...

Sergio is listed. I thought he didn't play in the UK unless it is the Open Champ (or Ryder Cup)

I wonder if Laird is eligible?


GPB: Sergio can afford it . . . . . .

kwinigolfer wrote:GPB: Sergio can afford it . . . . . .

Irrelevant to my comment

In that case, what is the relevance of your comment?
PS: Just seeing summer slip away on the West Coast of New England, been phenomenal weather here the last ten days - probably did Jay's season in after all.

GPB wrote:
Sagarin's method of field evaluation is questionable because it only measures only quality rather than quantity. But for comparing fields of similar sizes, it does a pretty good job. for example, Sagarin ranks World Challenge #1 and Nedbank #3.

As for comparing fields of similar sizes, it does a pretty good job.

And it ranks the Players noticeably higher than the PGA Championship. Here are the 10 highest ranked tournaments for field of 132-156.

# Name Overall ranking Rating
1 Players 13 70.51
2 NTOpen 20 70.64
3 Heritage 21 70.85
4 Honda 24 70.9
5 Tampa 26 70.91
6 PGA Ch. 27 70.92
7 US Open 30 71.01
8 British 29 71.01
9 Houston 31 71.01
10 Farmers 32 71.04


http://rankings.golfweek.com/ellington/default.asp?t=worldt

That is absolutely STUNNING... this is so whack it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever... at least not if you want to determine the strongest fields. I had to download the entire list myself and sort a few ways to understand what is happening... and I think I have it figured out... ANY non-competitive player reduces the field strength as it must be based on some kind of averaging.

Correct me if I'm wrong... but If I'm viewing the info correctly the Sagarin field system must work something like this (the numbers are guesses just to illustrate the effect)

Event A) has 5 players ranked #1 + #2 + #3 + #4 + #5... then it might be a 3.
Event B) has 6 players ranked #1 + #2 + #3 + #4 + #5 + #6... then it might be a 3.5.
(Event B has a stronger field due to the extra player but is ranked worse due to averaging)

And in a more real world example it might look something like this:

Event C) 120 players ranked inside the top-500 might be ranked 70.00....
Event D) EXACT same 120 players as C above PLUS 10 non competitive players... its ranking might go up to 71.00.

Am I wrong? They have to be doing something like this... it looks more like a dilution factor like you have talked about before. I see no other possible explanation... how else could the World Challenge be the highest ranked out of the roughly 250 events on their list? I mean come on... to have a list with even similar size field events like Tampa ranked above a PGA Championship and U.S. Open... simply can NOT be a ranking that is trying to determine which is the better field. I'd bet using the 2012 fields, if you removed the 20 club pros and 4 non-competitive past champions... the remaining 132 players in the PGA Championship would rate better than a 142 player PLAYERS Championship field as per Sagarin (I'm also eliminating 3 non-competitive guys from the PLAYERS and I'm also agreeing that the PGAT players suffer an OWGR negative bias)

Well it is out of whack sort of.

The theoretical tournament with Rory/Tiger in China would theoretically be the strongest possible tournament.

I said in my post that it doesn't measure quantity. It only measures quality.

That is why you should compare tournaments of similar field size.

Chevron got ranked the highest because the lowest ranked player is in the top 50.

I think we can agree that PGATour players would be HIGHER ranked, generally, if it weren't for the supplements and home tour for all the tours.

If it weren't for minimum tour ratings, who would be ranked higher? Gary Woodland (#248), Lorenzo Gagli (#247) or Michio Matsumura (#244)??

For the record, their Sagarin rankings are

Matsumura (#788)
Gagli (#319)
Woodland (#167)

kwinigolfer wrote:In that case, what is the relevance of your comment?
PS: Just seeing summer slip away on the West Coast of New England, been phenomenal weather here the last ten days - probably did Jay's season in after all.

Whether Sergio can or cannot afford to play Wentworth (because of taxes) is irrelevant to the fact that he said he won't be playing in the U.K. because of the tax situation.

I can afford to pay more taxes, doesn't mean that I want to pay more taxes.

Dad should be headed back to Vermont next weekend. He will be coming up Route 7 to South Burlington, and then up I-89 to St Albans. So if you see a 91 yr old, and very bald, guy driving a Lincoln Town Car with a Florida license plate from Volusia County....LOOK OUT! Probably on Sunday evening or Monday morning. He might take the country roads from Burlington to the Jay Peak area, through Underhill and Waterville. Depends on how tired he is from driving 1300.

GPB wrote:Well it is out of whack sort of.

The theoretical tournament with Rory/Tiger in China would theoretically be the strongest possible tournament.

I said in my post that it doesn't measure quantity. It only measures quality.

That is why you should compare tournaments of similar field size.

Chevron got ranked the highest because the lowest ranked player is in the top 50.

I think we can agree that PGATour players would be HIGHER ranked, generally, if it weren't for the supplements and home tour for all the tours.

If it weren't for minimum tour ratings, who would be ranked higher? Gary Woodland (#248), Lorenzo Gagli (#247) or Michio Matsumura (#244)??

For the record, their Sagarin rankings are

Matsumura (#788)
Gagli (#319)
Woodland (#167)

Interesting.... I could buy the Woodland Gagli comparision... but it would be a stretch. IMO the OWGR ranks them too close... but I'm thinking Sagarin has them too far apart. (and that's just instinct... not based on science or statistics)

What I wonder though is where the Japan Tour guys really rank. I mean think about it. Sagarin works if A beats B and B beats C... the A is better than C. I get that and it makes sense to me. But the Japan Tour is almost as much of a closed shop as you can get and their players venture out the least. It seems to me one single player like Ryo can come over to the PGAT and if he were to have a great year and with lots of high finishes... he might raise ALL the Japan Tour guys by a bunch.... And if he had a tough year like this year... then he would lower them all a bunch.

I just looked at the top 3 OWGR ranked Japan Tour players as an example (OWGR/Sagarin rank). Fujita (65/161) has just 8 of 31 events agianst "outside" competition. Matsuyama (90/55)has only 3 out of his 19 total events outside Japan. Taniguchi (115/145) just 5 out of 24 in the last year against outsiders... but 4 of those 5 were majors and a WGC. I mean that is NOT a very big sample and I don't know if that really represents their talent level or not.

On one hand... I wouldn't expect any Japan players to play well outside if they venture out little. Different kind of courses, different grasses, culture etc. And their only top player who's playing a lot outside Japan, Ishikawa (121/209) has had a "rough go" for quite a while now (even though he's been showing some signs of life in the last 6 weeks or so)


But back to comparing tournaments of equal size.... I still don't think you can do that with Sagarin. The U.S. Open, PGA, and British all have "dilution" because of qualifiers, or club pros. And IMO that dilution inordinately distorts events downward as per my "120 + 10" example in my prior post. Fields should never get worse when they keep all their exiting players then add some more... the more players they add, at WORST it should be rated "as strong" if not stronger... but NEVER weaker.

Part of the Japanese Tour problem is when "Outsiders" play and win on their tour.

Last years Dunlop Phoenix had Luke Donald winning. Blixt and Gonzo finishing T10. Colsaerts T22, Stadler T38 and Oleson T48.

==========

And FTR, a few months ago, I talked with Lance Ringler about their ranking of tournaments. This is when he became extremely defensive and started talking so fast that I could not get a word in. He basically said that he knows their ranking system is flawed and to do what I did, compare tournaments of the same field size.

I do think think Sagarin is quantifying (and supporting) my hypothesis that there is little difference between a tour player ranked #75 in the OWGR and a tour player ranked #300. But there is a huge talent gap between a tour player ranked #300 and unranked Club Pro Joe from Kokomo. (Thanks Joe Dey).

The OWGR has International ranked inside the top 100 that are probably not truly top 100 players because of the Min Tour value and supplements from the Home Tour EVR. And these are the guys that you are hanging your hat as proof that the PGA Championship is better quality field than the Players.

Much stronger field than usual for next week's Byron Nelson.
Initial commitments include:
K Bradley
Cabrera
Dufner
Garrigus
Harrington
Jacobson
DJohnson
Kaymer
Kuchar
Oosthuizen
Pettersson
Schwartzel
Van Pelt (isn't he supposed to be with the Bulgars?)

Some top fifty guys going home:
Phil
Poults
Rose
Gonzo
Olesen
Haas
Watney

PS: And there goes Piercy and Donner Garrigus.
PPS: DJ w/d's

I think GPB will see some reshuffling this week.

kwinigolfer wrote:PPS: DJ w/d's...

...first his wrist, now his back. Paulina's killing the poor fella...

princedracula wrote:

kwinigolfer wrote:PPS: DJ w/d's...

...first his wrist, now his back. Paulina's killing the poor fella...

Or maybe too much hockey with Wayne.