Padraig Harrington has weighed in on the thorny issue of the new Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) system as he feels it does not properly reflect the strength of both individual players and the fields for tournaments.
Jon Rahm had his say recently by labeling the new system as “laughable” when the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai had fewer ranking points available than the RSM Classic on the PGA Tour.
The marquee event on the DP World Tour was marked down for being a limited field, which is one big criticism of the new ranking system.
Former Ryder Cup captain Harrington has brought up a different area for concern – namely the new use of the strokes gained rating of each player to calculate the strength of the field for each event.
Harrington says that using strokes gained is not the right statistic to use, and believes that it could have a negative impact on European fields if players go to one-off PGA Tour events and don’t perform at their best.
A point missed with the OWGR. @DPWorldTour @PGATOUR @OWGRltd @VC606 @MarkBroadie @DodoMolinari @gregallenRTE pic.twitter.com/amSsQ15uUTDecember 1, 2022
“SG ranking is what the stats guys use to rate players essentially for gambling,” Harrington said in a post on social media.
“But from my “personal anecdotal experience” this can lead to a false narrative.”
Harrington explained that because of the new system, if a good player from the DP World Tour plays in a PGA Tour event but doesn’t perform well, his poor scoring then drags down the rating of players he’s been playing with back in Europe .
The three-time Major winner said that European players can often underperform the first time they play out of their comfort zone, but now under the new ranking system that will also hurt fields back in Europe.
“This now reflects terribly on all his fellow European members’ SG as he’s out scoring the European members consistently in his home environment.”
And Harrington added that it doesn’t work the same way in reverse as it’s usually only the very top American players that head over to Europe and the red carpet is often rolled out for them as big name draws for tournaments.
The Irishman ultimately believes that the new system will see international players leave Europe quicker and head to America to avoid their SG ranking taking a hit.
“I actually believe that the new system will force more international players earlier in their careers to the PGA Tour, squeezing out homegrown US players. This is not an endorsement of LIV, they have other issues when it comes to OWGR points.”