Tag: Peter Dawson

Padraig Harrington, Cristie Kerr among finalists for World Golf Hall of Fame 2024 induction class

Final selections for the 2024 World Golf Hall of Fame induction class will be announced the week of March 6.

The World Golf Hall of Fame announced its finalists for the 2024 Hall of Fame induction class Wednesday, and it’s loaded with star power.

Among the big names? Padraig Harrington, Jim Furyk. Cristie Kerr and Dottie Pepper.

Final selections for the 2024 World Golf Hall of Fame induction class will be announced the week of March 6. There are 12 finalists, and they include major champions, instructors and those who had a profound impact on the game, including the remaining seven of the 13 founders of the LPGA.

The finalists were selected by a nominating committee comprised of select Hall of Fame members, media, World Golf Foundation Board organizations and at-large selections. Additionally, all living Hall of Fame members were sent ballots and had the opportunity to vote.

“The nominating committee has selected finalists who represent the highest caliber of competitors and contributors,” said Greg McLaughlin, CEO of World Golf Hall of Fame. “Congratulations to all who have been nominated for this special recognition.”

These 12 finalists will be considered for admission into the World Golf Hall of Fame, Class of 2024 by a 20-member Selection Committee, comprised of Hall of Fame members, media representatives and leaders of the major golf organizations. They will be tasked with reviewing the merits and qualifications of each finalist and ultimately selecting the Class of 2024.

The 12 finalists are Padraig Harrington, Tom Weiskopf, Dottie Pepper, Jim Furyk, Cristie Kerr, Sandra Palmer, Peter Dawson, Butch Harmon, Johnny Farrell, Beverly Hanson, Jay Sigel, and the seven remaining co-founders of the LPGA: Alice Bauer, Bettye Danoff, Helen Detweiler, Helen Hicks, Opal Hill, Shirley Spork, Sally Sessions.

Harrington won 21 times professionally, 15 of those coming on the European tour. he also has three major victories and appeared on six Ryder Cup teams. He also captained the 2020 team.

Weiskopf won 16 times on the PGA Tour and captured the 1973 Open Championship.

Pepper won 17 times on the LPGA, including two majors. She was also tabbed 1992 Player of the Year and was a part of six Solheim Cup teams.

Palmer has 21 victories and two majors in her career, earning Player of the Year honors in 1975.

Dawson served as chief executive of the R&A for 16 years and played a pivotal role in golf returning to the Olympics.

Harmon is one of the best instructors in golf history. His pupils include Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman.

Farrell has 22 victories on Tour and won the 1928 U.S. Open.

Furyk has captured 17 wins on the PGA Tour, including the 2003 U.S. Open. He was named Player of the Year in 2010. He’s the only golfer to have shot a 58 in competition.

Hanson won the U.S. Women’s Am in 1950 and went on to win three majors and 17 titles.

Kerr has 20 official victories and two majors and has been a part of nine Solheim Cup teams. She ranks third on the LPGA’s all-time money list.

Sigel was a stellar amateur, winning 27 total am events, including the 1982-83 U.S. Amateur, the 1979 British Am and three U.S. Mid-Ams.

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Letter from LIV players to OWGR chairman says system akin to ‘leaving the Big 10 or the SEC’ out of college football rankings

Inclusion in the OWGR is a significant point of emphasis for LIV as CEO Greg Norman has touted it as the last major hurdle.

Despite an understanding that they’d likely be omitted from the current Official World Golf Ranking if they left for the startup LIV Golf circuit, players for the Saudi-backed league sent a letter to OWGR Chairman Peter Dawson asking for inclusion in the current system.

The letter, which was sent to the media on Tuesday morning, opened by noting that players depend on the OWGR “not just to qualify for the most important events, including the Majors and Olympics, but to tell us where we stand among our peers,” adding that “trust in the OWGR has been widespread and well-deserved.”

The note was signed by the 48 players who competed in the LIV Golf Invitational Chicago (which was won by Cam Smith), as well as Bubba Watson.

Also, the note likened the omission to erasing the top two college football conferences from the college football rankings.

Inclusion in the OWGR is a significant talking point for LIV as CEO Greg Norman — who is meeting with members of Congress this week on Capitol Hill to discuss the upstart circuit that features 54-hole tournaments, no cuts, shotgun starts and massive paydays — has touted it as the last major hurdle for the circuit to climb.

“If we get the OWGR points, then everything else takes care of itself,” Norman said in August.

Without the points, however, players continue to slide out of the picture for major tournaments, For example, as the note pointed out, Dustin Johnson was ranked 13th on OWGR shortly before he announced he would play in LIV tournaments. He is now 22nd, despite finishing eighth, third, second, and first in the first four LIV events. Johnson won the event in Boston, defeating 15 players who had finished either first or second in the four majors, yet continued his slide.

“The fans deserve rankings that are inclusive and accurate. Failure to include 48 of the world’s best golfers would mean the fans are being denied what they deserve,” the letter said.

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New world order: Official World Golf Ranking adds some teeth to more accurately evaluate players

A three-year analysis involved nearly a dozen academics, mathematicians, statisticians and sports analytical experts.

Following a three-year, independent in-depth analysis involving nearly a dozen academics, mathematicians, statisticians and sports analytical experts working with the game’s governing bodies, championships and tours in men’s professional golf, the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) added some teeth to its measuring system to more accurately evaluate players.

Chief among the changes announced Wednesday by the OWGR governing body were two critical modifications:

World ranking points will be given to all players making the cut.

For instance, in last week’s World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, Cameron Davis finished 60th while Si Woo Kim was five strokes back in 65th; neither received rankings points. Under the OWGR revision, Smith would receive slightly more rankings points than Kim.

And a Field Rating system has been developed where tournament fields will be evaluated based on the skill level of every player in the field, rather than just those in the field among the current top 200 of the OWGR.

The previous version of the system used several assigned values (minimum point levels, for instance), resulting in a bias in the system. By using modern analytic techniques, OWGR can accurately evaluate the Field Rating of all eligible tournaments through mathematically justifiable methods.

Dustin Johnson, Peter Dawson
Dustin Johnson receives The Mark H McCormack award for being the leading playing in the Official World Golf rankings for 2018, from OWGR Chairman Peter Dawson during a ceremony ahead of the 2019 British Open at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland. Photo by Jon Super/Associated Press

The OWGR began in 1986 and covered six tours. Today it covers 23. Since its inception, the system has been modified 17 times.

“Sometimes these modifications have been very minor and sometimes a bit more radical, but they’ve all been directed at catering to this expansion and at increasing the accuracy of the rankings,” Peter Dawson, the chairman of the OWGR governing board, said in a Zoom conference with reporters. “Now, despite all of these well-considered improvements, and believe me, they were well-considered, the OWGR governing board felt that the time may have come for an in-depth review of the rankings.”

The updated OWGR system goes into effect in August 2022.

“What these reviews revealed was that through the use of assigned values in its strength-of-field calculation, which includes tour minimums, flagship tournaments, and the home tour rating, there was some level of bias in the system, which means that there was some level of performances that were either being undervalued or overvalued,” said Billy Schroeder, a member of the OWGR technical committee and vice president of PGA Tour international relations. “What the reviews also revealed is that there’s an opportunity for improvement in the ranking’s ability to differentiate performances, and that sounds like a fancy term, but when you get down into it, and you look at a given week’s ranking, there are quite a number of players out there that, although they have made the cut, they are awarded zero ranking points.”

Added R&A executive director Steve Otto, a member of the OWGR technical committee: “The enhanced accuracy offered by the new field rating calculation enables a higher level of differentiation between performances. This further removes an additional artificial constraint and enables a truer reflection of established golfing norms within ranking systems and the rewarding of players who make the cut in all events.”

The OWGR determines significant portions of the field for major championships, the Players Championship, several World Golf Championships events and many other tournaments. The four major championships will continue to award 100 points to the winner while the Players victor will get 80.

Being inside the top 50, 60 or 100 in the OWGR leads to more playing opportunities for larger purses. As well, many of the game’s players receive bonuses from their sponsors and equipment manufacturers based on their OWGR.

“It is very important to the game of golf and to all of the organizations in it that player pathways clearly exist. We want good players coming through to the very top of the game and finding the route to do so,” Dawson said. “It is not, however, the job of the rankings to provide those pathways. The rankings are there to try to accurately rank players relative to one another, and pathways have to be provided not just through that process but also by the, shall we say, higher level tours and championships, finding ways for players from perhaps lesser events or lesser tours in terms of standard of play to find their way through.”

Ranking points for each player are accumulated over a two-year “rolling” period, with ranking points awarded for each tournament maintained for a 13-week period to place additional emphasis on recent performances. Points are then reduced in equal decrements for the remaining 91 weeks of the two-year ranking period. Each player is then ranked according to their average points per tournament, which is determined by dividing the total number of ranking points by the number of tournaments he has played over that two-year period.

There is a minimum divisor of 40 tournaments over the two-year ranking period, with no more than the most recent 52 tournaments within the two-year period counting towards a player’s rank.

In a given two-year period, there are approximately 2,800 rounds in which 8,600 players post 250,000 scores.

“A huge amount of work has gone into developing this revised system, and we think it’s fit for purpose for many years ahead,” Dawson said. “I have no doubt that things will arise that suggest to the technical committee that one or two changes might be appropriate, but it’s very hard to see at this point what they will be. I think we’re satisfied that a very thorough job has been done.”