Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Crowded at the top: No. 1 up for grabs on a weekly basis

ANTALYA, Turkey – In one of those mixed bag moments for a professional golfer, Justin Rose was asked to put his accomplishment in context following his runner-up showing at the BMW Championship in September that vaulted him to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking.

“When you talk about my career, this will be in the first three sentences,” Rose said at the time. “Up there with winning the 2013 U.S. Open and Olympic gold two years ago.”

Even in defeat, the Englishman was able and willing to relish a moment he’d waited for his entire professional career. It was also the most significant example in recent years of what it means to modern professionals to scale the world ranking.

There was a time when Tiger Woods was doing Tiger Woods things on a regular basis and being world No. 1 meant little to those who would aspire to ascend the mathematical ladder. It wasn’t that the achievement wasn’t worthy so much as it was unrealistic given the ridiculously high standard that Tiger was setting.

But then Woods endured a series of injuries and hardships, and began a free fall in the ranking to open the door to what has become a game of musical chairs.

Since May of 2014, when Woods dropped out of the top spot, there have been eight different players who climbed to No. 1 in the world, including current front-man Brooks Koepka, who overtook Dustin Johnson with his victory two weeks ago at the CJ Cup.

Rose, who spent just two weeks atop the world ranking, can reclaim the top spot with a victory this week at the Turkish Airlines Open, where he is the defending champion. He concedes that moving to No. 1 in the world with his also-ran at the BMW was bitter-sweet and if he were able to bounce back this week it would only add to the accomplishment.

“It would be a great double-whammy,” he said. “I said a while back that I wanted to get to world No. 1 by winning golf tournaments, and I got there by finishing second at the BMW. This would be a great place to knock off two big goals of mine, which is to get back to world No. 1, obviously, because once you get a taste for it, it’s quite nice, and secondly, to defend a title would be a special feeling, too.”



While winning this week in Turkey would add serious style points to the accomplishment for Rose, his climb in the world ranking has been a byproduct of machine-like consistency more so than regular trips to the winner’s circle.

In his last 30 worldwide events Rose has 23 top-10 finishes but just a single victory, the Fort Worth Invitational in May. Included in that list are two runner-up finishes in the FedExCup Playoffs and his third-place showing last week at the WGC-HSBC Champions.

It’s the kind of play that can inspire a perfectionist like Rose but not the type of dominant and prolonged performance that’s required for a player to separate himself from an increasingly crowded field and hold onto the top spot in the OWGR for an extended period of time. As Rose sees it, that cycle won’t change anytime soon.

“It’s nip and tuck,” Rose said. “There’s so many great talents out there and they are capable of great stretches of golf. To see someone have it for two, three years, might be tricky but I think certainly someone can win two or three times like that and build the lead for six months quite easily.”

This year there have been four different players at No. 1 in the world and the top four players in the ranking – Koepka, Rose, Johnson and Justin Thomas, respectively – are separated by just one average ranking point.

Moving to No. 1 in the world is impressive, but staying there is the real challenge. It’s Johnson’s 81 weeks (non-consecutive) at No. 1 that Rose immediately cited as an impressive accomplishment and he explained that the parity atop the game at the moment is the inevitable byproduct of the attention that Woods brought to the game during his prime.

“I think we are seeing the Tiger effect come through now with your Jordan Spieths and Justin Thomases, etc., etc., coming through to the top of the game having being influenced so much by Tiger,” Rose said. “The strength and depth now is pretty impressive, and there’s a lot of guys earning a lot of points.”

As the prestige of being world No. 1 continues to gain importance Rose should expect more company atop the ranking.