Lynch: Rankings complaints are less about fuzzy math than outdated European entitlement

Justin Harding earned more ranking points for second at the 2019 Magical Kenya Open than he did for a T-12 at the Masters.

“The world is unfair, Calvin,” the precocious child in Bill Watterson’s celebrated comic strip Calvin and Hobbes was once told by his father.

“I know,” Calvin replied. “But why isn’t it ever unfair in my favor?”

That Tao of Calvin has been embraced as a governing sentiment by European tour loyalists, who appear more alert than ever to any perceived dilution of their circuit’s long-established grace and favor status. And in August’s radical overhaul of the Official World Golf Ranking, the perpetually aggrieved found fresh wood with which to fashion a cross that they might nail themselves to.

“Laughable” is how Jon Rahm described the OWGR at this week’s DP World Tour Championship in Dubai. “The fact that the (PGA Tour’s) RSM Classic, which doesn’t have any of the top 20 in the world, has more points than this event, where we have seven of the top 20, is laughable.”

Rahm is a thoughtful guy and, to be fair, his comments erred only in their timeliness. The rankings were laughable. Now they are like most rating systems: merely imperfect.

Golf’s world ranking was compromised at birth and corrupted regularly thereafter, hostage to politicking and used as a statistical strut to prop up weak tournaments and tours. Member tours designated ‘flagship’ events, often ensuring more ranking points were awarded than would otherwise be justified by the strength of field. Every tour was also assigned a minimum number of points that would be given to winners of tournaments with weak lineups. The PGA and European tours both had a 24-point minimum. The PGA Tour relied upon that in roughly 12% of its events and the Europeans in about 50%, while other tours used it every time.

Any time an event was artificially inflated in value with the use of minimum points, the ranking was degraded, which served also to diminish the worth of accomplishments against elite fields. The 2019 Magical Kenya Open was elevated that year from the Challenge Tour to the main European circuit, but the field quality remained challenged. Justin Harding was the only player ranked higher than 117th in the world. He finished second and earned more ranking points (10.4) for that result against mediocre competition than he did for a T-12 at the Masters (10.3) a month later.

The system introduced this summer ended institutional bias and endemic false accounting. Every player contributes points to a total that is disbursed by percentage. The winner of the RSM Classic is projected to receive 37 points, or 17.2% of the 215 total points available. The winner in Dubai should get 21.8, or 18.2% of the 121 points on offer.

“The current method recognizes that every player contributes to the strength of a field,” said Mark Broadie, the Columbia Business School professor who devised the algorithm. “The winner of the DP World Tour Championship has to beat 49 players, with 34 of those players ranked in the top 200. The winner of the RSM classic has to beat 155 players, with 68 of those players ranked in the top 200, a considerably tougher challenge.”

People minded to look for eye-opening wrinkles in the ranking system won’t be disappointed. For example, the man who finishes dead last in the no-cut tournament in Dubai is projected to receive more points than the bottom four finishers in Georgia, who will have beaten 90 guys to play the weekend. The line between imperfect and unfair is often a matter of perspective, and legislating against every such scenario is impossible.

The OWGR has flaws but it isn’t laughable. Removing bias from any system will always be perceived as unfair by those who benefitted from that bias. Griping from those quarters ought to be greeted with skepticism, if not quite the contempt warranted for the conspiratorial guff being peddled by LIV golfers who are eager to portray the OWGR as lacking credibility or being part of a cabal intent on ruining Greg Norman’s folly. (It’s a diversionary tactic to skate around the pesky non-compliance issue.)

Dismissive verdicts like that of Rahm are proving commonplace among Europeans accustomed to their tour offering ranking points incommensurate with the talent pool competing for them. The only credible way to rank the world’s best golfers is to measure how they perform and against whom they do so, without consideration for legacy entitlements or politics. The new ranking system is finally weighted toward accuracy rather than influence. Some people are just unhappy that their thumbs have been dislodged from the scale.

[mm-video type=playlist id=01es6rjnsp3c84zkm6 player_id=none image=https://golfweek.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]

Ashun Wu rides dynamic short game to comfortable win at DP World Tour’s Magical Kenya Open

After the round, Wu was greeted by his wife and young daughter, both of whom made the trip to Nairobi.

Ashun Wu had a strategy heading into the weekend at the Magical Kenya Open.

“After two rounds, I talked to myself and said if I make 5 under each day on the weekend, I have a chance to win the tournament,” he said.

Wu did one better — firing a 5-under 66 on Saturday and then following it with an impressive 65 on Sunday, using an outstanding short game to capture the DP World Tour event at Muthaiga Golf Club.

For Wu, it marked his fourth European Tour victory and it also proved to be the first win by a Chinese player on the circuit’s African loop.

“It’s a very, very good feeling today,” Wu said. “It was very tough today but I was playing very, very good today.”

Wu pulled away from Thristan Lawrence, Hurly Long and Aaron Cockerill on the back nine to secure a four-stroke victory. Only four of the top 100 players on the Official World Golf Ranking took part in the event.

After the round, Wu was greeted by his wife and young daughter, both of whom made the trip to Nairobi.

[mm-video type=playlist id=01es6rjnsp3c84zkm6 player_id=none image=https://golfweek.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]

Justin Harding holds off Kurt Kitayama to capture Magical Kenya Open

Harding finished Sunday with a 66 and ended the event at 21 under. Kitayama was alone in second at 19 under.

American Kurt Kitayama made a charge on Sunday during the final round of the Magical Kenya Open, but Justin Harding met him shot for shot, and the South African clinched his second European Tour win in the process.

Kitayama — who stands at 125 in the Official World Golf Ranking and 224 on the Golfweek/Sagarin Rankings, but entered this week in the top 30 in the Euro Tour’s Race to Dubai — made a pair of eagles on Sunday and cut Harding’s lead to one on the 17th hole with a birdie.

But Harding, who has seven Sunshine Tour wins under his belt, responded with a birdie of his own to give himself some cushion on the final hole at Karen Country Club in Nairobi.

https://twitter.com/EuropeanTour/status/1373628781227872259

Harding finished Sunday with a 66 and ended the event at 21 under. Kitayama was alone in second at 19 under.

Only two players in the OWGR top 100 — No. 77 Aaron Rai and No. 87 George Coetzee — made the trip.

[lawrence-related id=778094231,778085270]