Top players are skipping Tiger Woods’ exclusive tournament in the Bahamas this year, and it’s hitting them where it hurts – in their world rankings.
The Hero World Challenge, which starts this week at Albany, has always been a sweet deal for elite golfers looking to boost their ranking points. But things are different this year.
Name
Events
Top 10
Money
Tiger Woods
378
199
$120,999,166
Only three of the world’s top 10 players showed up. That’s pretty unusual for this event.
Here’s where it gets interesting: The tournament’s field rating dropped to 117 points, down from 130 last year. It’s actually weaker than this week’s Saudi International event, which scored a 123 rating.
The rankings system got a makeover this year for smaller tournaments like this one. While this week’s winner will get 31 ranking points (just one more than Scottie Scheffler got last year), there’s a catch.
The new “points distribution curve” – fancy talk for how they hand out ranking points – means the bottom three finishers get nothing. Zero. Nada.
That’s a big change from last year. Just ask Tiger Woods. He finished 18th out of 20 players in 2022 and still jumped from 1,328th to 898th in the world rankings thanks to those 2.4 points he picked up.
Tiger’s not playing this year, but the changes to his tournament show how the professional golf landscape keeps shifting. What used to be a guaranteed rankings boost for a select few isn’t quite the sure thing it used to be.
