Sports Illustrated Debuts SI World Golf Rankings

Sports Illustrated (SI) today announced the creation of the SI World Golf Rankings, a new ranking system that includes all major men’s professional tours and data-driven player results. The rankings will be continuously updated at SI.com/golf alongside in-depth stories, breaking news, championship coverage, and analysis from SI Golf.

The SI World Golf Rankings seek to address concerns about the widely utilized world rankings system and offer an alternative that reflects the importance of measuring results from the most immediate 12 months, whereas current world rankings include tournament results as far back as two years ago.

Leveraging data and a proprietary formula to evaluate player performance, inclusive of the competition across all tours, here is the current SI World Golf Rankings, as of February 22, 2023:

Jon Rahm

Scottie Scheffler

Rory McIlroy

Will Zalatoris

Patrick Cantlay

Cameron Smith

Max Homa

Xander Schauffele

Justin Thomas

Tony Finau

Collin Morikawa

Matthew Fitzpatrick

Dustin Johnson 

Cameron Young

Tom Kim

“As the benchmark for comprehensive sports coverage, we are thrilled to create the SI World Golf Rankings to give fans an alternative way to analyze players across global tours,” said Chris Pirrone, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Sports Illustrated. “We believe the rankings are a better reflection of the state of professional golf competition, are more robust and comprehensive, and provide a more accurate understanding of who the best golfers are right now.”

Partnering with Golf Intelligence, the rankings weigh 12 months of player results along with calculations for strength-of-field and course difficulty. All professional golfers will continue to accrue points in 2023 and LIV golfers receive points for events they played in 2022. While it will initially rank the top 100 players in men’s golf, it will soon expand to be larger and a women’s ranking is slated for release at a later date.

“Golf Intelligence has unique and proprietary data, including on every golf course layout, with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to refine strength-of-field metrics and continuously inform SI Golf’s new ranking system,” said Jim Stracka, President of Golf Intelligence.

The Arena Group first expanded Sports Illustrated’s golf coverage with the addition of Morning Read in 2022. The rankings serve as another investment in the golf space, with a team of leading golf insiders analyzing each Monday’s release of the SI World Golf Rankings.

LA GOLF is the presenting sponsor to launch the inaugural SI World Golf Rankings. Reed Dickens, LA GOLF Founder and CEO said, “The best players in the world are playing on multiple tours across the globe. These rankings represent an elegant solution, and LA GOLF is proud to be part of this evolution.”