+53
Michio
Matsumura
-188
-176
Kenny Perry
Katsumasa Miyamoto
+51
-166
John Senden
Shunsuke Sonoda
+42
Moving targets: There would be little change among top-ranked players in the
professors’ alternative ranking, but that wouldn’t be the case for lower-ranked golfers.
42 APRIL 30, 2012 ❮ GOLFWORLD.COM
tined the Greer-Barker email, “is not based
on mathematical science, but has evolved and
is regulated by constant expertise from those
closely in touch with the major championships and tours who
are represented on the Technical Committee and advise the
Board, which has the sole responsibility on making any chang-
es to the ranking structure.”
Greer and Barker point to the fact that the PGA Tour is
represented on the OWGR board and technical committee.
“The PGA TOUR has strong representation on the Board
and on the Technical Committee and would not counte-
nance such an imbalance,” their note reads. They rightly
point out that the current top 20 in the OWGR includes only
one player who is not a playing member of the PGA Tour.
Greer and Barker also point out that the Broadie-Rendleman system has not been presented for academic review,
but Broadie does not believe that will be an issue. “When we
publish the equations, everybody will be able to do it too,”
he says. “It’s not like we invented something, we just applied
known statistical methodology to this data.”
The PGA Tour’s Ty Votaw, executive vice president of
communications and international affairs, says the PGA
Tour is looking at the Broadie/Rendleman study. “We feel
the insights Dr. Broadie and Dr. Rendleman presented are
very interesting and worth further study, and based on the
results of the peer review of the professors’ work, we will
share that paper with the OWGR Technical Committee for
analysis,” he wrote in an email to Golf World.
