PDGA World Ranking System

world rankings 


PDGA Player Ratings indicate how well players have been playing on their PDGA event courses. And this ratings system works all over the world. The new PDGA World Player Ranking System blends PDGA Player Ratings with finish positions in a few major events where head-to-head competition plays more of a role in the rankings. To date, just a few events bring together the top men and women from around the world in direct competition. As more sponsorship money is generated and more countries produce players at a high level, there will be more events where top players from many countries compete. As this happens, the World Rankings will shift to using more and more event results in the calculations rather than relying primarily on player ratings.

The current World Ranking calculation includes men from North America whose rating is over 999 based on at least 12 rounds in B-tier and higher events in the previous 12 months. It also includes Non-North American men with ratings over 999 based on at least 8 rounds in sanctioned events. The top ranked man in each PDGA affiliated country regardless of rating is included only in the yearend ranking. The same process is used for women but their rating minimum is 900. Players must be current PDGA members to be included.


Men

Top Men May 2009

*Rating based only on B-tiers and higher for North American players

Women

Top Women

*Rating based only on B-tiers and higher for North American players

The major events counted in the ranking formula are the most recent Memorial, USDGC, Players Cup, Women's Nationals and the Open divisions at Pro Worlds. In the years they are offered as major championships, the Japan Open, European Open and/or Scandinavian Open will be included. Even though the Memorial is not a major championship, we wanted to use the biggest event earlier in the year so that more events could be included at different times during the year. Master and older players who meet the minimum rating criteria are included but must enter Open at Pro Worlds to get credit for this event.

The weights of each major depend on the number who enter and how recent the major occurred. In other words, the weight of an event will decrease slightly each ranking update during the year those results are counted. The rankings will be updated just after ratings updates during the year which currently means at least in February, May, July, September and December. Download the attached document to read more details on the system.

Note that some ratings in the table will look slightly different from the player's current rating because C tier ratings results are excluded. That may also be why some players with ratings over 999 did not make the list (too few rounds excluding C & D-tiers). The Adjusted Ranks for the Player Ratings (RR), Pro Worlds (PWR), USDGC/US Women (USR), Japan Open (JOR) and European Open (EOR) are based only on how the players in these rankings finished relative to each other. For example, if players who finished 10 thru 12 aren't in these world rankings, the world ranked players who finished 9th and 13th in that event will have adjusted ranks of 9th and 10th for that event.


World Rankings History