You're Reading: The FedEx Cup Standings and the OWGR Explained
As we near the start of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, much conversation will revolve around players’ accumulation of FedEx Cup Points. This is in slight contrast to the importance of World Ranking standings for the Olympic Men’s Golf Competition and this week’s WGC FedEx St. Jude Invitational. As of the posting of this article, Jon Rahm leads the World Golf Rankings while Collin Morikawa sits atop the FedEx Cup standings.
To clear up any confusion about these rankings, we thought that it was a perfect time to draw the distinction between these two important but different rankings on the PGA Tour.
Of the two, the FedEx Cup Standings are by far the simplified one. At each FedEx Cup event (of which there are 47 in the 2020-2021 season), points are awarded to all players based on their finish in a given event. At regular PGA Tour events, the winner receives 500 points with those in second and third receiving 300 and 190, respectively. At the majors and the Players Championship, the points are amplified, and the top 3 earn 600, 330, and 210 respectively. As is intuitive, the player having amassed the most total points is No. 1 in the FedEx Cup standings.
To put it in perspective, Dustin Johnson, who won the FedEx Cup for the 2019-2020 season, earned 3471 points throughout the season – the most of any player. He played in 14 of the 35 tour events (there were fewer events due to the shutdown).
Note: Points are only awarded to golfers who make the 36-hole cut or who compete in a no-cut event.
At the start of the PGA Tour’s season, all points awarded to players are reset to zero. Throughout the season, points are awarded on the basis described above right until the start of the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
During the Playoffs, starting at The Northern Trust, points for each place are quadrupled, and instead of the typical allocation of 500 points to the tournament champion, it becomes 2000.
The third leg of the Playoffs and the final event of the PGA Tour season is the Tour Championship. Since 2019, the Tour Championship has used a staggered leaderboard based on the FedEx Cup standings. At this event, FedEx Cup Points are all reset to zero in preparation for the upcoming season.
Here’s where things get a little tricky. Unlike the FedEx Cup standings, the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) factor in the number of events played in addition to a player’s accumulated OWGR points to compute a weighted average. Essentially, players cannot rise to the top of the world rankings by simply playing every week on tour. Additionally, the points never reset.
More specifically, according to owgr.com, “points are accumulated over a two-year rolling period,” meaning that ranking points received by a golfer in any event over the past two years will count towards his gross total. This gross total is then divided by the number of events played or, if the number is less than 40 events or more than 52, divide by 40 or 52, respectively.
For example, South Korea’s Sungjae Im, who has played in 71 events (it’s a lot) in the two-year period, will have a divisor of 52 with only his last 52 events counting towards to his total points. Im’s last 52 events earned him 176.423 World Ranking Points. Divided by 52, his average points are 3.3928, leaving him ranked 27th in the world.
Due to his accident back in February, Tiger Woods only has 17 events racked up while still using a divisor of 40. He has fallen to 204th in the world.
Note: Due to the PGA Tour’s and OWGR’s Shutdown in March of 2020, the world rankings paused and skipped weeks 12 to 23 of the OWGR 2020 season. To account for this, World Ranking Points will include events played in the last 2 years and 12 weeks. This will normalize after week 23 of 2022.
To place higher importance on recent performance, OWGR points earned at an event increasingly start to lose value after 13 weeks. For each of the remaining 91 weeks of the 104-week/two-year rolling period, events are reduced in value in equal increments.
For example, Brooks Koepka’s victory at the 2019 PGA Championship garnered him 100 points (as do all the majors). His ranking maintained this 100-point value for 13 weeks. In the 14th week, however, the major victory was only worth 91/92 of its original value or .9891 x 100 = 97.83. The fifteenth week would see the value be worth 90/92, and now, 103 OWGR weeks later, Koepka’s win is only worth 1/92 of its original value or just 1.09. Next week, the win no longer is tallied toward his total.
At this point, it may have occurred to the reader of some seemingly oddities that can be brought about by this formula. Say the top two players in the world are separated by a slight margin and each have played in between 40 and 51 events in the last two years. If the World No. 1 plays the next week and misses the cut, he increases his divisor by one without earning any additional OWGR points, decreasing his average points. Therefore, without playing, the World No. 2 can claim the top spot.
Denis Hurley from todaysgolfer.co.uk describes how this scenario played out over the course of the summer of 2015 between Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, and Jason Day.
The last point of discussion concerns how OWGR points are awarded at a given event. As stated earlier, golf’s four majors each award its winners 100 points, its runner-ups 60, and all who make the cut a minimum of 1.5. While majors are the only events where players who make the weekend are guaranteed points, all other OWGR-sanctioned events utilize a similar point distribution based on a player’s finishing position not unlike a tournament’s prize purse distribution.
Not all eligible events are created equal. Naturally, majors offer the most points while events on the mini tours offer the least. For non-major events, the level of points distribution is determined by a metric named Strength of Field. You can find a detailed description of this metric here, but just know that the more high-ranked players in a tournament’s field, the higher the Strength of Field will be, ultimately leading to more OWGR points up for grabs
Overall, the OWGR is a better index for identifying who are the best golfers in the world. The FedEx Cup standings merely describe which players have had the most top finishes on the PGA Tour, regardless of the number of poor performances they also may have had. During the playoffs, with quadrupled points and fields comprised of the world’s best players, the FedEx Cup standings can also reflect the hottest golfers in the game.
