I'm glad world rankings has caught on. I love the idea of ratings but they can be flawed with instances like people only playing there home courses and only having a few rated rounds played. They are still a good indicator of how someone has played in the past. World rankings are, to me, more exciting. Telling someone you are ranked #12 in the world is more clear than saying you're rated 1020. It looks like now we have 3 different world ranking systems.

PDGA World Rankings (http://www.pdga.com/documents/2006/Rankings/Yearend2006WorldRankings-Men.pdf)
Marshall Street Disc Golf Rankings (http://www.marshallstreetdiscgolf.com/discgolfinfo_ranking_2007.html)
And the new Disc Golf World News Rankings (http://www.dgwn.com/rankings/)

They all are very complex and have good ideas behind them. The PDGA system uses special ratings in B tiers and above combined with finish positions at a few major events. Its updated every few months. Marshall Street ranks different events with points(minimum 14 to be considered) and compares wins and losses with other ranked players. The new DGWN rankings award points for finishes in A tiers and higher and has a minimum number of events with 18, and is updated every week.

I like the MSDGC Rankings the best. I feel you should have to play in at least 1 Major to be able to be considered one of the best in the world. I also like their 'Who's hot' list. The PDGA only considers 1000 rated players and DGWN divides your point total by 18 no matter how many events you've played. Therefore better players that aren't rated 1000+ or that havent played 18 events are penalized. I do like DGWN's idea of giving point values to finish places as opposed to Marshall Steet's win/loss system and the PDGA may be better with ranking non-US players, but MS has the best overall system in my opinion.

Whichever ranking has James McCaine as the number 1 masters player is my favorite and the most accurate.

I think it is good to have several different systems in place. It shows growth in the sport. Look at college sports, which have several different polls that establish rankings. While a lot of people point out the obvious flaws in having several subjective polls, I think having a few ranking systems can diversify the interest in the sport. People used to talk a lot about the Coaches vs. Media polls for college football and how bad it was to have two systems, but look at how much crap the NCAA gets about the BCS poll. I think if the rankings essentially mean nothing (as in, you don't win any sort of championship or prize based on your ranking), I think it's great to have several different ranking systems. It can only help.

what alex said! having only one "choice" encourages complacency and decreases innovation. at this stage in our growth having more options is better. all three should be applauded for moving the concept of rankings forward.

The rankings aren't actually competing since each has a different focus. The mission of the PDGA World Rankings are to provide a fair chance for all members in the World to be included by participating in Open at the highest level PDGA sanctioned events and/or having ratings that are high enough to be included.

The other two rankings are more US centric, include non-PDGA events, may include older data and use a less precise method (versus blending in ratings) by full reliance on finish positions which accord no more weight to finishing ahead of someone by three versus one shot. As a side note, Jeff Sagarin, the well known "ranker" for other sports, also relies on wins and losses against other teams/players. The Sagarin method falls short in several ways when a while back it was proposed as an alternative to the PDGA Player Ratings system which, in addition to ratings, also produces course ratings as part of the process.

I think the MS system has definitely developed into the most "feedback driven" system. As players make notes about players who are not on the list, Steve modifies the logic as arguments for a player win or lose his vote to reprocess information.

The PDGA system seems less concerned about all players and has made an imaginary line in the sand with the 1000 rated player rule. We all deserve ranking, and we all want ranking. Don't just limit it to those who have maintained a high round rating, which doesn't show how well they play against their competition, it only shows how well they play the course.

The ratings system already provides the populist ranking for all PDGA members with no requirement to play outside your local area, no matter what country, and still be included.

Any system that professes to rank players on a World stage without those players actually meeting in competition is flawed. As originally pointed out, Climo felt a step beyond ratings was needed to truly rank the best World players because at one point a few were rated above him that had never beat him in head-to-head competition. From a practical standpoint, until there's enough money such that top players from several countries can play together regularly, the current PDGA World Rankings system or any other system will only be prototypes for the future and a fun bonus feature for those at the top. There's absolutely no reason to make the effort to use an alternative besides ratings to rank male players below 1000 rating or females below 900. A case could be made to reduce the list even further since many of those on the current list have not even played in one of the 5 or 6 major events where finish position is counted.

I agree with Matt, I am 994 rated, yet, I am averaging 1016 golf for '07, with 3 wins, yet I gets no love cause, I'm 994

Kinda weak...

Your rating indicates you're ranked 246th. Maybe it will mean something when you break thru into the new World Rankings. BTW, Roger and I do these World Rankings free for the PDGA so it's not like you're missing a member benefit. If it's more hassle than it's worth, we'll just stop doing it.

Have you been in the four digits before TANK?

Man, I need to stop playing disc golf so my world ranking can go up like Ketz and King.

Don't play: skyrocket to top 10 women in the world.

No, 994 is my highest ever rating...

No, 994 is my highest ever rating...



...until the next update.

;)

Hopin to jump to about 1003

WHy are the ratings wrong on a lot of the new ranked players? It has like 5 people listed at 1000+ that are not but like 990 and I am listed two points lower than my rating says.

If you're talking about the PDGA World Rankings, they are based on B-tier and higher events. No C-tiers for North American players. There's also no double weighting and the time period is identical for every player, which is the 12 months prior to the rating update.

If you're talking about the PDGA World Rankings, they are based on B-tier and higher events. No C-tiers for North American players. There's also no double weighting and the time period is identical for every player, which is the 12 months prior to the rating update.



So the player basically has a new rating? Why not just show thier current PDGA rating and rank them based of thier performance at those bigger events. I see no need to have the ratings change.

The regular player ratings are mainly how a player does against the courses they played in competition during the last 12 months each player has played. The idea with World Rankings is for the system to represent more head-to-head play at the request of Climo. Unfortunately, we still only have a handful of events where enough worldwide players get together to compete such that their finishes against each other is enough data to determine rankings.

However, we still have ratings to fall back on for part of the calculation until we get more head-to-head events in the future. We decided to make the ratings a little more head-to-head by limiting them in North America to B-tier and higher where more top players are likely to face each other. In addition, we limited the time period to the same 12 months for everyone, unlike the way regular ratings are done, so all world ranked players have events in the exact same time period in their World ranking rating.