Rory McIlroy - 4 Time Major Winner

pistol_75 · 07-09-2015 4:13pm

rrpc wrote: »

Maybe Monday golf suits him but McIlroy is 6 under after 11 holes today. Birdied the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 9th and 11th. Two of those birdie putts were 20ft and 26ft.

Looks like he has found an improvement with his putting.

Seve OB · 07-09-2015 4:49pm

ah yis jinxed him.... looks like he just missed 2 7footers

HighLine · 07-09-2015 5:05pm

Yeah has been a scrappy few holes and a club throw in there as well for good measure. Has about 9/10ft on the last for birdie so hopefully he can get that.

vienne86 · 07-09-2015 5:12pm

Five under round today - that's a great improvement!

charlieIRL · 07-09-2015 8:24pm

Much better alright, has he changed his putting grip?

Keano · 07-09-2015 8:52pm

charlieIRL wrote: »

Much better alright, has he changed his putting grip?

A phone call with Stockton is all he needed!

charlieIRL · 08-09-2015 10:51am

Keano wrote: »

A phone call with Stockton is all he needed!

Have you got his number?!!!!:D

rrpc · 08-09-2015 11:02am

Rikand · 08-09-2015 12:00pm

rrpc wrote: »

Back to World number two this morning. Jordan takes the number one spot.

But getting much tighter at the top:

Position|Name|Points
1 |Jordan Spieth |12.0840
2 |Rory McIlroy |11.9344
3 |Jason Day |11.0471
4 |Bubba Watson |8.5887
5 |Rickie Fowler |7.8656

Rickie still has a way to go but he could conceivably take the number four spot off Bubba if he goes well in the BMW.

3 wins this year and only 5th in the world. It's tough at the top

rrpc · 08-09-2015 12:45pm

Rikand wrote: »

3 wins this year and only 5th in the world. It's tough at the top

No wins last year though, got a couple of runner-ups and third places. He was 10th at the end of last year, so it's a big jump all the same.

sky88 · 08-09-2015 5:31pm

rrpc wrote: »

Back to World number two this morning. Jordan takes the number one spot.

But getting much tighter at the top:

Position|Name|Points
1 |Jordan Spieth |12.0840
2 |Rory McIlroy |11.9344
3 |Jason Day |11.0471
4 |Bubba Watson |8.5887
5 |Rickie Fowler |7.8656

Rickie still has a way to go but he could conceivably take the number four spot off Bubba if he goes well in the BMW.

so first rory takes no1 back without playing

then spieth takes it back when missing the cut and rory making the cut, these rankings make no sense at all

rrpc · 08-09-2015 6:18pm

sky88 wrote: »

so first rory takes no1 back without playing

then spieth takes it back when missing the cut and rory making the cut, these rankings make no sense at all

They make sense if you know that they basically work on a moving two year window. As a tournament result gets added at this end, one can get dropped off the back end. If the dropped one is worth more points than the added one, your overall points drop.

Rory's best results are from last year and early this year whereas Jordan's are pretty much in this year so he's only dropping dross.

That's a basic explanation. There are weightings for older results and higher points for majors etc.

Rory lost about 0.4 this week which is pretty significant. He needs to start winning again but we don't really need a ranking system to tell us that.

vienne86 · 09-09-2015 8:47am

sky88 wrote: »

so first rory takes no1 back without playing

then spieth takes it back when missing the cut and rory making the cut, these rankings make no sense at all

It is a while since Rory won, whereas Spieth and Day won more recently - that is being reflected in the OWGR, which is what we want IMO.

sky88 · 09-09-2015 9:52am

vienne86 wrote: »

It is a while since Rory won, whereas Spieth and Day won more recently - that is being reflected in the OWGR, which is what we want IMO.

i actually agree day and jordan should be ahead on this year performances i just think sometimes how the movements in the ranking are kinda redicolous

Seve OB · 09-09-2015 10:58am

Well no. We don't want recent wins to detarmine the world rankings and here is a reason why.

For example, take the premier league in England. The teams play 38 matches in the season. Whoever comes out on top at the end of it all will be champion. But there will be teams who go through good and poor spells. That just happens. A team could in theory win their last 10 games and still come second to a team who wins 6 draws 3 and looses 1. It's about a whole season, not just current form.

Now I Know the golf rankings aren't based on one season, but rather over 2. But that is 40 or so tournaments, similar in numbers to the games premier league teams play. But for the older tournaments, they are weighted and points gained reduce every week. So for eg, Rorys Win from the British Open gained him 100 points, but that was over a year ago now, so the weighting has reduced that to 48.91 now to reflect the fact his win was not current.

A world no. 1 has to be someone who has been at the top of the game for a sustained period of time. It would be wrong to base it over anything less than 2 years IMO. To base it over a year, will just give you whoever is on form and form does not necessarily mean they are the best. Though it does mean something of course :cool:

valoren · 09-09-2015 11:10am

I'd look at it as follows.

Order of Merit as a determination of current Form. If a player is injured and misses tournaments then his form is off or missing cuts then their OOM position will reflect it.

World Ranking is a determination of current Longevity. As in how well they have played over a longer period of time.

You could have had a scenario in the mid-00's where Tiger could have taken a year long sabbatical without touching a club. He would have finished last on the OOM but he would still be the World No 1.

It's why the Ryder Cup teams are selected as they are isn't it?

You pick the best in form players from the Order of Merit, the best according to to OGWR. They have to be picked automatically. The captain can't change that. The captain is allowed that discretion for wild cards if they don't auto qualify.

You had Tom Watson before Gleneagles saying he would have Tiger as a Wildcard regardless of the qualification spots assuming he was healthy. He wasn't and ruled himself out.

r3dsalmon · 09-09-2015 12:15pm

Seve OB wrote: »

Now I Know the golf rankings aren't based on one season, but rather over 2. But that is 40 or so tournaments, similar in numbers to the games premier league teams play.

valoren wrote: »

You could have had a scenario in the mid-00's where Tiger could have taken a year long sabbatical without touching a club. He would have finished last on the OOM but he would still be the World No 1.

Until a few years ago I was fairly on the fence on using a two year system and it was primarily because of the Woods scenario you mentioned. I found it very questionable that a player regarded as the best in the world could effectively go and sit in the Bahamas for over a year, come back, and still be No.1 - it didn't make sense.

However, I think in recent years since then the ranking system has come good and in short Woods was an anomaly; it's unlikely anyone in the near future will be able to get anywhere close to that far ahead.

On another side note I'm really interested to see how McIlroy goes at the BMW and then even more interested for his chances at the TOUR championship/overall Fedex. After a break this weekend I can see Speith coming back into the frame after a few poor weeks so it should make for a very nice finish to the season

Miley Byrne · 10-09-2015 11:14am

At one stage the gap in points between Tiger at No.1 and (I think) Phil at No.2 was bigger than the gap between No.2 and No.1000 in the OWGR:eek:

rrpc · 14-09-2015 9:04am

Rory back to number one again.

abff · 14-09-2015 5:53pm

Miley Byrne wrote: »

At one stage the gap in points between Tiger at No.1 and (I think) Phil at No.2 was bigger than the gap between No.2 and No.1000 in the OWGR:eek:

I remember reading that and it sounds very impressive. In reality, it happened any time that Tiger's average points were more than twice the average points of the number 2 ranked player. I downloaded the world rankings history for Woods and Mickelson and looked at the number of weeks she Woods was number 1, Mickelson was number 2 and Tiger had more than twice as many points as Phil.

I was surprised to discover that these conditions were met for 100 weeks in total, the earliest being in February 2001 (the start of a 29 week period during which this applied) and the last being in July 2008. And that's only Mickelson. I'm sure there were times when he was more than twice the second ranked player when it was other than Mickelson at number 2.

I guess it just shows how dominant Woods was. Very unlikely that anyone will achieve anything like that level of dominance going forward.

slave1 · 14-09-2015 6:47pm

IIFC Woods was over 32pts at some stage, compare that to Rory and Speiths total with their recent enough Major wins and it demonstrates not just how much Tiger was in comparison to everyone else at the time but also relative to today's number ones...

abff · 15-09-2015 12:44am

slave1 wrote: »

IIFC Woods was over 32pts at some stage, compare that to Rory and Speiths total with their recent enough Major wins and it demonstrates not just how much Tiger was in comparison to everyone else at the time but also relative to today's number ones...

That's correct. He was over 32 points in June 2001, which was shortly after completing the Tiger Slam. And this put him way ahead of everyone else. But it's not directly comparable to today's rankings because there have been a number of changes to the system since 2001.

In particular, the changed the weightings given to results more than three months old at the beginning of September 2001 and Woods' points average reduced from 27.36 to 21.05 that week. A further change was made in 2009, but this has less impact.

So the extent to which Woods' points average exceeded the current top golfers wasn't quite as high as the numbers would seem to indicate, but it was still a huge dominance compared to the current situation.

rrpc · 15-09-2015 12:04pm

For those a bit confused by the ranking system, Golf Digest has a pretty good, simplified explanation of how it works:

1. The OWGR uses two years, or 104 weeks, worth of results.

2. Each player earns points based on how he finishes in a tournament. He earns more points for a higher finish.

3. If a tournament field is strong, total points rise. If a field is weak, total points fall. This next sentence will be the most complicated I write: There's a world rating chart (taking into account the quality of players) and a home rating chart (taking into account the number of quality players from the home tour), and those numbers are combined into a "strength of field" rating. After that, the OWGR has a handy guide telling them exactly how many points each finisher should get.

4. The points a player earns in a tournament are counted, in full, for 13 weeks. After that, the value decreases by about 1.09 percent per week for the remaining 91 weeks, diminishing gradually until the 105th week, when it vanishes into the fog of time and is counted no more. Does that create some complicated math? Absolutely. Is it difficult to understand? Absolutely not.

5. Each player's total points are added, divided by his total events played, and then, voila, world rankings!

abff · 15-09-2015 10:14pm

That pretty much sums it up. The only things they forgot to mention is that there is a minimum divisor of 40 and only the last 52 tournaments count if a player has played in more than 52 tournaments over the preceding two years.

slave1 · 16-09-2015 8:33am

abff wrote: »

...there is a minimum divisor of 40 ...

That killed Tiger over the years because he rarely met the minimum but still had his total divided by the higher 40 number.
I think it's the best system out there but maybe they should reduce to 18mths

rrpc · 16-09-2015 8:53am

slave1 wrote: »

That killed Tiger over the years because he rarely met the minimum but still had his total divided by the higher 40 number.
I think it's the best system out there but maybe they should reduce to 18mths

The weighting system takes care of that. After 18 months (78 weeks less the 13 that maintain full value), the value of points earned is reduced by 65 * 1.09%, so their value is vastly reduced.

20 points would be worth about 5 after 18 months. About the same as a top twenty finish in a run of the mill PGA tour event.

yipsnomore · 19-09-2015 2:44pm

McIlroy is in danger of getting bogged down in poor putting. Not sure how many but he's missed a lot of short putts in the last 12 months. US Open was horrendous. Once the nerves start its *ip time

rrpc · 19-09-2015 4:52pm

yipsnomore wrote: »

McIlroy is in danger of getting bogged down in poor putting. Not sure how many but he's missed a lot of short putts in the last 12 months. US Open was horrendous. Once the nerves start its *ip time

In fairness the greens at the US Open were awful.

bigtimecharlie · 19-09-2015 10:55pm

His 67 this evening was shot with a stone cold putter. The birdie, birdie finish only put a gloss on things.

Still he could be in the last group tomorrow, hopefully a good finish (2nd) to bring to the tour championship next week

rrpc · 21-09-2015 8:16am

Rory McIlroy - 4 Time Major Winner

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