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Golf does not give the same status to the No. 1 player as college football does to its first team, for example. The formula for getting to first place in the Official World Golf Ranking is ridiculously complex. Since Tiger Woods, who spent a total of 683 weeks at No. 1, fell from his peak, a good few weeks can catapult a power player to the top. Woods was ranked No. 1 in 2014, and since then, 10 different players have topped the rankings back and forth. Who will be the next to join them? Here are 10 solid options.
Victor Hofland: He made it to No. 3 on the OWGR, and had it not been for John Rahm and Scotty Scheffler trading first place back and forth, he might have reached No. 1 already. The OWGR tracks player bests over the past two years, and in that time, Hovland has eight wins to his credit. He also finished second at this year’s PGA Championship, helping him to score more points than all but two of his victories. It’s very close.
Cam Smith: He would have almost certainly reached number one already had it not been for the fact that he jumped to LIV Golf, no longer getting ranking points despite the fact that he is winning tournaments there. His victories at the 2022 Open and Players Championship keep him ranked high so far. And if LIV makes it to the ranking points — or if Smith returns to the PGA Tour — he’ll be on board to rocket to No. 1.
Patrick Cantlay: His top five performances in the points classification are all wins, but many of them came in tournaments more than two years old. He’ll need to start advancing in the disciplines to fight his way through Ram and Scheffler.
Xander Schavelli: Like Cantlay, Chavell has a habit of winning big in the smaller tournaments but never coming in the big leagues. Schauffele won gold at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics; He will need to win some more important tournaments to gain ranking points and reach that first position.
Max Homa: A stratospheric rise saw Homa rise from 843rd in the world at the end of 2018 to 5th this year. Five wins in the past three years have helped his cause tremendously, but he will need another big push to break into the higher ranks of the world rankings.
Brian Harman and Windham Clark: These two paired up together because they each picked a great week to have a great week. In recent weeks, Harman won the Open Championship, and Clark’s US Open, giving them both their most important career wins by a wide margin. Of the two, Clarke is on an upward trajectory, but it is up to both players to make more big wins on the board in order to move up the rankings. And even if they don’t, the jackpot isn’t a bad consolation prize.
Matthew Fitzpatrick: Winner of the 2022 US Open and one of the stars of the Netflix golf series “Full Swing,” Fitzpatrick needs to rack up more wins before he moves into the small numbers. But the grit and nerve he showed in winning the US Open should catapult him up the rankings.
Tom Kim: One of golf’s fastest rising stars in 2022, he had two wins that season and followed suit in T2 at this year’s Open. He’ll need to clear his resume with a few more wins to get that rating, but if he can do that over the next year, he’ll zoom in.
Tommy Fleetwood: He has been the next great golfer for so long that many others have passed him on to greatness. Fleetwood, the reigning Ryder Cup champion, has yet to win a PGA Tour event, and until he does, he’ll be outside the top 5.