Lee Westwood is now officially the #1 golfer in the world, which I think also technically makes him the best player in the world to have never won a major.

Nobody knows how long his reign will last.  Woods, Mickelson, and Kaymer are all playing at the HSBC Champions this week in Shanghai and any of them could jump into the #1 spot with a win.

Jim Gorant, Senior Editor at Sports Illustrated, had this interesting take (which mirrors my own opinion pretty closely):

As for Westwood, I don’t think he’s worthy. Just doesn’t feel like a guy who has done enough [2 wins on the PGA tour in 12 years and no majors]. Phil is the disappointment here. From the Masters to the end of the season, all he had to do was win to be top dog, but he couldn’t get it done. It should have been him.

Damon Hack, Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated agreed:

To me, Vijay is the only guy who really took the ranking away from Tiger. He beat him straight up in Boston in ’04. I’m surprised Phil didn’t capitalize on his Masters win and salt away the ranking for the rest of the year.

Another interesting tidbit:  Westwood is the 4th player to ever grab the #1 ranking without a major to his name.  The others are Woosnam, Couples, and Duval.  They all went on to win Majors.  It took Woosnam a week and Duval about 2 years.  How long will it take Westwood or will he remain the only #1 ranked player in the world to never win a major?

(Image: Flickr/Eugene Goh)

Okay, okay.  He didn’t use those exact words.  What he actually said was:

“I don’t think it [the OWGR] means anything.  How could it mean a lot? Tiger [Woods] is No. 1 and hasn’t won a tournament all year”

“To me whoever is playing the best right now is the No. 1 player, not a bunch of computer rankings.”

The man has a point.  And as of Sunday night, the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) will have caught up to reality.  Either Lee Westwood or Martin Kaymer will be the new #1 player in the world.  I’ve expressed my reluctance to embrace a world #1 that has never won a major and only has 2 victories in 12 years on the PGA tour, so I’m hoping that Kaymer will pull through with the Top 2 finish he needs this weekend to grab the spot from Westwood.

via ArmchairGolfBlog.com

(image: memoflorez/flickr)

Lee Westwood took over the world #2 spot on Monday.  This weekend he is playing in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship and could take over the #1 spot with a 1st or 2nd place finish.

The world golf rankings have a tough job.  They’re trying to quantify the best golfer in the world.  In any given week you could argue that the PGA tour winner is the best player in the world at that specific moment.  This is especially true of majors.  However, when a journeyman tour pro breaks through with his first win, does anybody really think he’s a better player than Tiger, Phil or anybody else in the top 10?

The rankings attempt to address this issue by looking at performance over a longer period of time than a single week.  Specifically they measure a rolling 2 year period.  More recent weeks are given a greater amount of weight.

I think Westwood is a tremendous player.  However, he doesn’t have the record of a world #1.  He has never won a major and he has just 2 wins on the PGA tour – one this year and one in 1998.  Contrast that to Tiger’s 14 majors and 71 PGA Tour wins.  Something just seems wrong about the guy with 2 wins on tour displacing Tiger.

If he hasn’t been winning on the tour, then how exactly is he poised to become the #1 player?  Well, he did win once this year and had two top 2 finishes at majors; although he did miss the PGA Championship.  He also had two top 3 finishes at majors last year.   Simultaneously, Tiger and Phil have not been playing their best golf lately (which is more heavily weighted), and by sitting at home with an injury for two months, Westwood has essentially lost less ground than they have.

Next week we may have a new world #1, or we may not.  Phil certainly had plenty of chances this year (12 to be exact) and couldn’t get it done.  I’d be surprised if Westwood displaced Tiger on his first try.  But keep in mind that all of this has been made possible by Tiger having the worst season of his career.

That said, Tiger’s form seems to be coming back.  And if he plays like he did on Monday at the Ryder Cup, he will notch up a bunch of wins in 2011.  I suspect that if he does lose the #1 spot, Westwood’s reign will be short-lived.

As was speculated here last week, Lee Westwood has moved into the #2 spot in the World Golf Rankings.  The ironic thing is that while I agree with the shuffling after Mickelson’s and Westwood’s respective play this past weekend in the Ryder Cup, it was basically irrelevant to the ranking.  Westwood was going to move into the #2 spot regardless of what happened even though he hadn’t played in 2 months.

I understand it mathematically, but something still doesn’t sit quite right with me about moving up in the rankings by not playing any golf.

Photo by Rob Hayashida Sandbox8.com

In an effort to make the World Golf Rankings as relevant and as understandable as the FedEx Cup, the Golf Channel is reporting that Mickelson will lose his #2 spot to Lee Westwood when the new rankings are released on Monday.  This is especially entertaining because of all the discussion over the past 2 months about the opportunities for Mickelson to take over the #1 spot from Tiger.

Apparently, by simply being injured and not playing golf for 2 months, Lee Westwood will now move ahead of Phil.  The explanation is that given the 2 year rolling points period, by not playing, Westwood has lost less ground than Mickelson.  Makes perfect sense.  My pick for the next world #2 is Arnold Palmer.  He’s not playing at all anymore so he should be not losing ground faster than anybody.