Each non-American player that makes it to the PGA Tour and then struggles, is propping up the rankings of every American who integrates seamlessly into American tournaments. But every American that plays terrible in the token 2 or 3 non-American events they play each year is a blip in career with few world ranking consequences.
Imagine the scene, a promising young male golfer has been at the top of the game in home country for 10 years. He has competed for and won a few of his national titles, starting from when he was a teenager. His family are in the middle of the middle classes – food is always on the table, there is a nice family vacation each year, but spending $500 on a new driver is a bit of a struggle every year. Let’s say this young golfer is from South Korea. He really enjoyed his last family trip to Vietnam but regularly going to the United States is too much and too far. He would love for his English to get better by being around native English speakers but that’s a pipe dream.
His golf keeps progressing steadily and he regularly competes at the top end of the elite amateur leaderboards and is starting to get some invites to pro events. He performs admirably. The token prize money he can now receive allows him to play golf more regularly but he still must hold down a part time job. Then he has a huge piece of luck and plays out of his skin at one of the top amateur events and wins by 5 shots. Koreans really love golf and the women’s game is the envy of the world (thanks Pak Se-Ri). With enthusiasm always comes corporate incentives and therefore sponsorship. Some of that money has trickled down from women’s golf in South Korea, to the men’s game.
The deal he is offered is nice. It’s puts some money in his back pocket but more importantly, his expenses will be covered to play professional golf full-time. Some American colleges are clamouring to sign him up and some of the offers are very enticing. American colleges have some of the best practice facilities in the world and deep-down, he knows if he wants to be a success in this game, he has to play well in The States. The college deal is similar to the sponsorship package he has been offered. In effect, it’s glorified expenses account to focus full-time on golf. However, for 3 years he will not be able to earn any actual dollars for himself. Then after that, he would hope for a good sponsorship offer to compete somewhere. But he has that offer now. It’s a no brainer to turn pro and play 3 years of expenses paid professional golf in South Korea and hopefully progress to other Asian events. He rejects college, turns pro and accepts the corporate sponsorship.
His progress through the South Korean events is exceptional. His bank balance is improving so he can start to give back to his parents that invested so much time and effort into him. His South Korean performances get him a few exemptions in Asian Development Tour events. He quickly jumps up from the Asian development tour to the main Asian tour. It’s big jump up but there’s a good group of South Korean players, with whom he’s forms some good friendships. For some people, golf is a 100% individual sport. But for others, there is so much downtime between practice rounds and tournament rounds, having good friends on the road is imperative. If nothing else, golf is a game where wisdom is gladly passed down and that is really helping out off and on the course. After a few years of doing well on the Asian tour he is getting close to being the top player. With that, comes exemptions to majors and a few European Tour and PGA Tour events. He performs admirably on the Euro tour, almost exclusively in the Asian based events but really struggles in the European-based events. An exemption to The Open Championship is incredibly exciting but it’s a type of golf that is incredibly foreign to him. He thought it he would like a few of the Australian events on the Melbourne sand belt courses but his performances in those events were also predictably poor.
The Asian tour felt like a real family to him. He obviously stayed close to the other Koreans but had forged a few friendships with players from other countries. I guess that’s inevitable when you hope to play with at least 4 other pros each week. One thing amazed him about the Australian pros though. Some were incredible on the Asian tour (Scott Hend!), but still seemed comfortable playing on Australian courses. It doesn’t take a genius to work out the reasons behind that. If you play one nation’s courses for the formative 15 years of your golfing career, you better be good on those courses, otherwise it is very unlikely that you will progress to international events.
Therein lies the problem for every non-American golfer. To play in America, you have to first be one of the best players in your home nation on whatever type of course your home nation has. Then when you get really really good, you may play one or two events a year in your home nation but have to now excel on a different type of courses which are generally comprised of players who have been exclusively playing those courses for their formative first 15 years of golf, but also their next 15+ years as a pro.
The Asian tour helps promote great young golfers from Asia and Australasia. Their tournaments move around the main golfing areas of the region. There is a good mix of events that favours local golfers, but also gives a chance for the cream to really rise to the top in other nations. The tour does a good job of distributing their tournaments across all those countries. But what happens when new nations appear on the golfing scene. Golf is still unfortunately an elite sport around the globe and giving over acres of lush green space so a few hundred rich folks can show how rich they are is, quite rightly, not a high priority in the majority of nations in the world. So when a pro, in a country such as Myanmar, only has 10 or 11 courses in the whole country, manages to make it onto the Asian tour, does he have in an-built disadvantage? The courses he has played on his whole life, are different to the courses he plays on the Asian Tour. He also has no home advantage in any tournament because there are no Asian tour events in Myanmar. Will his innate level of ability blossom when he moved onto bigger tournaments?
Or will each step on the way be that little harder for him? No obvious friendship group, no home comforts in any tournament, no friends to offer their home for a week so you can avoid another hotel dinner. Every course you’re playing is a new course with types of grass and climate that you’re not used to. Every tournament involves some struggle with language and therefore getting taxis, checking in to hotels, making appointments etc. The Thai golfer, Kiradech Aphibarnrat opened up about these struggles in a great interview.
“I think the tough and difficult thing for me, is to be the only one and single Thai player on tour. I don’t have any friends, I mean, Thai friends. So we keep speaking English, not in my language. And, to be honest, I feel a little bit lonely and homesick sometimes, my family is not here. Lucky I got my Thai caddie to fly in the last three weeks so I can communicate in Thai, I feel is more comfortable. I am looking forward to seeing some new generation to come over and play on Korn Ferry events. I hope they’re doing hard work and one day I hope to have some friends on tour. To be honest, I have already given up on living in the States. It just feels too difficult for me. 22 hour flight home, no family’s around. When you’re playing good, by yourself, you’re not celebrating with anyone. When you’re playing bad, staying by yourself again, you just can’t explain anything to anyone.”
It feels obvious that some players are pre-destined to have an easier time when competing in elite golf. Will some have to excel further from their base ability to be a success in this game because their base ability is too biased towards their home country? The world rankings and statistical analysis says this is simply because that player in his home country is simply not as good as the equivalent player who plays in bigger Asian golfing nation, such as Thailand, and is nowhere near as good as the top 500 players in the USA. If anything, the stats suggests OWGR underrates performances in America, and from a purely statistical point of view, I agree.
But let’s do a little thought experiment, what would happen if the 200th best player in the USA was asked to compete against Zaw Moe in his home country of Myanmar? According to our St1 rankings, that player is Bo Hoag, a Korn Ferry Tour player who has missed 6 of 9 cuts in 2023. In our rankings he is 520th with a St1 ranking of 3.86. Zaw Moe is 2706th with an St1 of 6.33. If both players continue to play at the same level that they have been playing to on their respective tours, Bo Hoag would have a 80% chance of beating him over a 72 hole strokeplay match. A 20% chance for Zaw Moe converts to a 4/1 chance. With a very generous bookies margin, you would be offered about 3/1. Would you take 3/1 on Zaw Moe to beat Bo Hoag in Myanmar? Damn right I would!
Clearly a bookie would never offer this price (please tell me if they do!). It is so obvious that there so many advantages for Zaw Moe when he plays in his home country against an American who may have never ventured further from his country than Cancún. Do the world rankings take this into account? Does it give allowances for non-American players having in-built hurdles to them competing in the top American events? Even if they get there, does it take into the account how much harder it would be for them to truly get on the golf gravy train and expand their team to include trainers, dieticians, personal assistants to truly devote as much of your time as possible, purely to getting better at golf? No, it doesn’t. Does this prove the rankings are empirically biased? No. This is pure conjecture which would be very hard to argue empirically because a ratings system that has an in-built bias, cannot suddenly lose that bias. That data does not exist.
All sports, to an extent, perpetuate the successful continuing to be so, sometimes through a simplest of mechanisms: wanting to be like the generation that came before you. The USA has the highest number of elite golfers in the world so it will create more elite golfers in the future in the same way that Jamaica will continue to create great sprinters and one city, Bekoji, in Ethiopia will continue to add more middle-distance Olympics medals than the whole of the USA. But the question is, if every major middle-distance running took place at 2800m in Bejoki, would the rest of the world complain it is giving them an unfair advantage? Or how about we spread track and field events around the world but have almost every major, such as the World Championships and Olympics, only in Bejoki? That’s not far from where we are in the golf rankings. Since switching to the new rankings system, the 19 events in the USA have taken over 55% of the world ranking points. While the 84 events dotted around the rest of the world share the rest. That is a fair distribution based on how the quality of golf on the PGA Tour vs the rest of the world. However, what’s interesting, is whether the American-centric PGA Tour, blocks the path of better players if they only had the same opportunity to get there as every young American golfer. Just imagine each German, Kiwi, Thai and Chilean pro had some a route to the PGA Tour without leaving their home country. If they could feel more at home on the PGA Tour, the hurdles to non-American golfers would gradually diminish and the quality of golf on the PGA Tour would improve. So rather than becoming a safe-haven for American golfers who very rarely compete on the world stage, the PGA Tour could become a better product.
Over the coming weeks, we are going to run a few experiments on the world rankings. Please subscribe to see the results!
