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With a recent change to the Official World Golf Rankings' algorithm, Scottie Scheffler had a chance to regain his status as the top-ranked golfer in the world. A while ago, he lost the ranking to Rory McIlroy after a reign of 30 weeks atop the leaderboard.
McIlroy did not play in the last PGA Tour event, which is controversial. The new OWGR algorithm counts the Hero World Challenge, which occurred last week.
Had Scheffler won, he would have moved back up to No. 1. He didn't, though, so he'll have to wait for another shot at reclaiming the throne.
The next official PGA Tour event is scheduled for January 5-8. The Tournament of Champions is the next sanctioned event where Scheffler can add to his tally and improve his standing, should he compete.
The same is true for McIlroy, who might compete and do enough to ward off Scheffler, but the back-and-forth will be interesting to watch over the next year.
Scheffler was the top-ranked golfer before McIlroy went on a run to overtake him, and now he'll try to return the favor. The top spot changes hands reasonably often, so it wouldn't be surprising to see these two alternating spots frequently in 2023.
Even further, World No. 4 Patrick Cantlay might make a run. No. 5 Jon Rahm could, too.
No. 3 ranked Cam Smith is on LIV Golf, so he can't improve his standing now.
Scottie Scheffler and others criticize new OWGR system
According to Golf Channel, the former number one wasn't in love with the new system. Despite the potential for it to work in his favor, he admitted it was flawed:
“I understand that they got away from the minimums for every tour, which I think made a lot of sense. I think now I would say the top players are not bringing as much weight to events as they should."
He continued:
“It's really tough to rank golfers when they're not playing the same schedule. So I think as we all start to play together more often and you get the best players playing together more often, it's going to be much easier to rank those guys."
Not all golfers were participating in the Hero World Challenge, such as McIlroy:
"It depends on how much value you place on a guy No. 1 in the world versus No. 50 in the world. It's a tough system, it's not something that's easy to get right.”
Jon Rahm echoed the sentiment, saying it was laughable. Tiger Woods agreed that it was a flawed system.
The criticisms largely came in the wake of the revelation that more points would be assigned for the 20-man Hero World Challenge than the Australian Open, which is a full-field event.
It didn't work out in Scheffler's favor as it could have. Though he'd like to reclaim that spot and probably wouldn't have been too upset if he had at Hero World, he's perhaps not disappointed that McIlroy still holds the top place.
