Tiger Woods is currently ranked #13 in the world. Strong recovery by him, no doubt. But it's actually much stronger than people realize.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I'm correct on all this.
The way the rankings work, you get a certain number of points for each tournament, and then those points are weighted (they start losing value over time), and a two-year period of tournaments makes your ranking. You take your total points over those two years and divide them by the number of tournaments played, and your average points per tournament is what the rankings are based on.
Tiger has 203.79 total points right now and is averaging 5.0948 points per tournament, ranking 13th. But... not really. The minimum # of tournaments you must play in a two year span is 40, and if you haven't played 40, your total points are still divided by 40.
So, Tiger has only played 22 tournaments in the last two years. So he is ranked 13th in the world right now despite essentially having 18 of his 40 tournaments give him zero points. In other words, if he had missed 18 consecutive cuts to end 2017, his ranking right now would be exactly the same. His actual points per tournament since he returned last year is 9.2272, which would rank him #2 in the world behind only Justin Rose.
So that's how good his 2018 actually was. Since missing the cut at the US Open, he has played 11 tournaments. Five top 10's, a win, a runner up, no missed cuts, six straight top 25s.
As he (hopefully) plays a full schedule this year, his ranking will continue to creep up as he backfills his world ranking points with actual results instead of zeros.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I'm correct on all this.
The way the rankings work, you get a certain number of points for each tournament, and then those points are weighted (they start losing value over time), and a two-year period of tournaments makes your ranking. You take your total points over those two years and divide them by the number of tournaments played, and your average points per tournament is what the rankings are based on.
Tiger has 203.79 total points right now and is averaging 5.0948 points per tournament, ranking 13th. But... not really. The minimum # of tournaments you must play in a two year span is 40, and if you haven't played 40, your total points are still divided by 40.
So, Tiger has only played 22 tournaments in the last two years. So he is ranked 13th in the world right now despite essentially having 18 of his 40 tournaments give him zero points. In other words, if he had missed 18 consecutive cuts to end 2017, his ranking right now would be exactly the same. His actual points per tournament since he returned last year is 9.2272, which would rank him #2 in the world behind only Justin Rose.
So that's how good his 2018 actually was. Since missing the cut at the US Open, he has played 11 tournaments. Five top 10's, a win, a runner up, no missed cuts, six straight top 25s.
As he (hopefully) plays a full schedule this year, his ranking will continue to creep up as he backfills his world ranking points with actual results instead of zeros.
