As ironclad as the trio atop the world’s golf ranking has been, the spots No. 4 through No. 10 have been interchangeable to the point where nobody feels safe — and three players have already experienced that bounce.
The PGA Tour enters its 10th week at Palm Harbor where those three names ranked Nos. 1-3— Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood — will be skipping the 2026 Valspar Championship.
Also taking the week off on the road to the Masters is the world’s newly-ranked No. 4: Cameron Young.
Young, who birdied the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass and held on to win The Players Championship, has shot up from No. 15 on the latest OWGR to No. 4. He’s the latest entrant into the top 10, joining Collin Morikawa and Chris Gotterup as those who started the year outside it.
Gotterup has won twice this year — at the the Sony Open to start the season and the WM Phoenix Open a few weeks later — and finished inside the top 20 at another two tournaments. Morikawa won at Pebble Beach before placing T-7 at the Genesis and landing a solo 5th at the Arnold Palmer in his next events.
That came before his sudden withdrawal from The Players after playing one hole on Thursday.
Sudarshan Yellamaraju world golf ranking
Yellamaraju is becoming a more familiar name. The PGA Tour rookie shot a 4-under 68 at The Players Championship on Sunday.
The final-round performance secured him a tie for fifth place, his first top-10 finish of his young career. It also netted him $925,000 from the $25 million purse.
Yellamaraju, who has made six out of seven cuts this year including three top-20 finishes, now ranks No. 145 in the world.
It’s quite the ascent for the 24-year-old Canadian who watched YouTube videos of pros to learn how to swing a club. He was No. 216 last week, and ended 2025 at No. 278 in the world.
“It’s not easy to have a coach kind of be there with you for however many hours in a day, right, every single day,” Yellamaraju told reporters Sunday. “My dad would be the one that would be pretty much there kind of seeing what he can do to improve in the game. It was a lot of trial and error, so we had to kind of learn and figure out what worked for us.”
Is Yellamaraju playing the Valspar?
Young and Yellamaraju both share an ascent this week in the rankings. They’re also skipping out on the final leg of the Florida swing.
Yellamaraju did initially commit to the Valspar, and subbing in for him is Kris Ventura.
Other Valspar withdrawals are world No. 9 Robert MacIntyre, who is out and being replaced by Andrew Putnam, and Keith Mitchell. Doug Ghim has come into the field as an alternate.