Jon Rahm's 'laughable' criticism of Official World Golf Rankings could result in changes, hints Keith Pelley

ByAlex Livie

Published 20/11/2022 at 17:39 GMT

Jon Rahm, the winner of the DP World Tour Championship on Sunday, was extremely critical of the recent changes to the Official World Golf Rankings, that were partly the idea of Rory McIlroy. The Spaniard described the changes as "laughable", and DP World Tour chief executive Keith Pelley said he will take the criticism to the next board meeting, and suggested changes could be made to the system.

DP World Tour chief executive Keith Pelley has said conversations about tweaking the Official World Golf Rankings will take place following criticism of the changes by Jon Rahm.

Changes to the system have resulted in fields with smaller numbers of players being awarded fewer rankings points than a tournament with more players, irrespective of the quality of players on show.

That’s been the case this week, with the DP World Tour Championship offering fewer ranking points than the RSM Classic on the PGA Tour, despite the Dubai event having seven of the top 25 in the world in the field.

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World No. 1 Rory McIlroy has spoken in favour of the changes - that he helped engineer - but they were described as laughable by Rahm.

“I'm going to be as blunt as I can. I think the OWGR [Official World Golf Rankings] right now is laughable,” Rahm said. “Laughable, laughable, laughable. The fact that the RSM doesn't have any of the top 25 in the world but has more points than this event where we have seven of the top 25 is laughable.

“The fact that Wentworth [the PGA Championship] had fewer points than Napa [the Fortinet Championship] is laughable.

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“Look, I understand what they are trying to do with the depth of field but having the best players in the world automatically makes the tournament better. I don't care what their system says. I think they’ve made a mistake. They have devalued the value of the better players.”

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Pelley says he had spoken to both Rahm and McIlroy, and will take their views to the next meeting where suggested changes may be made.

“There was a long study of four different independent researchers on the OWGR and all of them came to the conclusion that the rankings did not reflect the performance of the players worldwide,” Pelley said. “As a result we implemented a new system and with any new system, regardless of what business you are in, you evaluate, you modify and you tweak.

“At the next board meeting we will have those conversations.

“Obviously two of our top players, Rory and Jon Rahm, had a difference of opinion on the OWGR rankings and that is what makes our game so wonderful - that we have freedom of speech from our top players.

“I talked to both and although they had differences of opinion, we will take those opinions to the board of the OWGR at our next board meeting.”

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