Sal Johnson, our good friend at www.golfobserver.com has asked it be pointed out the amazing climb by Tiger Woods in the World Rankings following his victory last Sunday in the Chevron Challenge.

So with permission by Sal hereunder is his very interesting story:-

In all of the excitement of Tiger Woods first win in two years, a little oddity was hardly notice by many media and fans. That anomaly was that with the win, Tiger jumped from 52nd to 21st in the Official World Rankings.

It seemed very extreme. In thinking about it I thought how in the hell could a player climb so far in an unofficial, money grab event that only has a field of 18?

One of the intriguing aspects of the world ranking is that over the years it’s turned into a foolproof system of judging players fairly, to the point that it’s used by all events for players to earn spots in every big event in golf. So did I find a flaw in the system?

It didn’t get any prettier when I started digging further once the rankings became official on Sunday night.

For his win Woods got 44 points which is an incredible number when you think that when Woods finished T4th at the Masters earlier this year he got 24.67 points.

So according to this ranking, it gave more points for a silly event than a major?

Going a bit further to show the extreme of the points Woods got, those that win a major get 100 points and showing another extreme, when Bill Haas won the Tour Championship he got 54 points.

Oh for the run of a mill PGA Tour event like the Wyndham Championship, Webb Simpson got 38 points and that was a full field event.

So you get my point, 44 points for a silly season event is extensive in my mind.

Now I know that the Chevron had 18, top-50 players in the field but the point is still that this is not an official event in which money is official, there is no FedEx points awarded, gosh Tiger didn’t get a single Ryder Cup point for the victory.

Now I have tried to explain all of this in layman terms, you almost need a PHD to really figure out the complexity of the rankings when it comes to figuring out divisors, rating values, ranking periods and so on.

But the bottom line is that I feel that events like the Chevron, Nedbank and any other non-official event should be award about 50% of what a Wyndham Championship gets.

In firing off a letter to the folks that run the rankings, I got immediate action.

Seems that starting in 2012 there will be changes to the system so that unofficial events will get about 50% less points in the future.

No, it wasn’t my email or complaint. Seems that the folks that run the rankings, felt the same way and changed the rule back in July.

See the rankings are run as a joint effort of the International Federation of PGA Tours along with the USGA, R&A, Augusta National and the PGA of America. The board meets usually twice a year at the Masters and British Open and discusses issues that pertain to the rankings and modify things.

It seems that last year was the first year that ranking points were award to events like the Chevron and Nedbank.

In reviewing what happened the board realized that too many points were awarded and at the British Open adjusted the way “Limited Field” events would be awarded.

Again for those with PHDs it’s simple they determined that those events would no longer receive “Home Rating Values” which in layman terms means that only about half the points will be available and the rule goes into effect at the start of 2012.

So if the point system would of been in action this year, Tiger would of only moved up to about 37th in the rankings, again something that we can all live with. So it’s just another fact that shows that there is a way to the madness with the world rankings and that they do watch and react to areas that make the rankings fair for all.

Update – Dec 6th, 3pm Have received a lot of feedback from this story, including a phone call from the PGA Tour that say that the information that I got of 50% reduction is wrong.

They are saying that in the case of the Chevron, the new rule only reduces around 10% of the total points, so in the case of this year if the new system was put into effect Tiger would of gotten 40 points instead of the 44 that he got.

So this goes back to the original premise of this whole post, is it fair that limited field events receive more points and value than regular PGA Tour and European Tour events that are official? Guess the bodies to be at the World Rankings feel that this is the case.

*  Thanks again to Sal for allowing us to run his story.