By mustang6560 on 2/2/11

Sports Illustrated Golf is not a fan of the Official World Golf Rankings. So they created their own ranking system.

Tiger Woods went a year without a victory. He won the Australian Masters in November 2009, then disappeared from golf for five months. He returned to tie for fourth at the Masters and the U.S. Open, but he also missed a cut, withdrew from the Players and didn't win another top 10 for the rest of the Tour schedule. Somehow, though, he remained No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking. He was finally passed on Nov. 1, by Lee Westwood, who had won a grand total of one tournament since ... November 2009.

I totally agree with the premise of what SI Golf is doing. It should not have taken Lee Westwood nearly a year to replace Tiger as the #1 golfer in the world. And further, how does Westwood - who only won one tournament in 2010 - deserve to be number one?

The way the SI Golf ranking works is each person will rank the top 10 golfers and will assign a corresponding point (person ranked No. 1 will get 10 points and person ranked No. 10 will get 1 point). After each staffer fills out their individual rankings, they will total the points to determine the top 10.

My only beef is the fact that staffers from SI Golf, Golf Magazine and Golf.com will be the people in charge of determining the rankings. What's to stop someone from letting their emotion or personal preference from getting in the way of an accurate ranking.

At the end of the day, it's just for fun and is not official. And to be honest, I tend to agree with their rankings. Here is their top 5:

1. Martin Kaymer
2. Graeme McDowell
3. Lee Westwood
4. Phil Mickelson
5. Rory McIlroy

Who do you think is currently the best golfer in the world?




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