The rank outsider

Is Vijay Singh a victim of flawed ranking system?

This week Tiger Woods returns to the PGA Tour when he tees up at the Buick Invitational, soon after signing a five-year extension of his contract with the company.

This year, Tiger has played only once, at the season-opening Mercedes Open, which by the way he did not win.

Vijay Singh has already played four of the five events held this season and tees up for the fifth time at the Buick Invitational, and he already has one win this season.

The 41-year-old Fijian is also on one of the hottest streaks in modern golf with top 10s in last 12 events and he is now two more top 10s away from Jack Nicklaus' record of 14 straight top 10s in 1977. In his last nine starts, Vijay has also had three wins.

He is now 3.08 points (13.51 to 10.43) away from Tiger Woods in world golf rankings, the nearest anyone has come to Woods since the ranking system was adjusted. But hey, Tiger is no slouch, nor is he losing his touch. In his last 12 starts, he has eight top 10s and two wins.

As Vijay inches closes, the buzz is about rankings and the system it adopts. Currently, it seems the world ranking system penalises the players for playing too much.

There is talk of the International Federation of PGA Tours thinking about a proposal to base the rankings on a player's best 50 tournaments over previous two years.

But does that mean, if a player like Tiger plays only 40 or 42 events in a 104-week block, his divisor (number of events) will still be 50?

In the last 104 weeks, Vijay has missed the cut five times, and if three other finishes with lowest points were to be dropped, Vijay loses only 0.92 points, bringing his total of 604.78 down to 603.86 and his average for best 50 events would be 12.08.

But Tiger has played only 37 events in the last 104 weeks and collected 540.20 and if his divisor were to be made 50, then his average comes down to 10.804.

Now if we take only the best 40 events counting towards for Vijay, his points total would come down by just 11.32 points that brings his total down to 593.46 to be divided by 40 for an average of 14.84.

For Tiger, the total rankings points would be same, 540.20, so also divisor 40 (number of events) and hence, also the average would stay at 13.51.

So, who is No. 1?
Vijay has said that he will need to play well, not just this year, but also a good part of 2005 to have a chance to catch up or think of overhauling Tiger in rankings.

What he does not say "" probably for fear of creating yet another controversy "" is that Tiger will need to play not-so-well at the same time for a new player to be installed as No. 1 in rankings.

The current complex world rankings system is such that it stipulates a minimum divisor (number of tournaments played in the last two blocks of 52 weeks, that is two years) but talks nothing of an upper limit.

For instance, Tiger never really goes above 20 events which have world ranking points in a year, while Vijay plays far more. In 2003, Tiger figured in only 19 events which had points, while Vijay played in 28.

Though Vijay has more ranking points "" 604.78 "" as compared to Tiger's 540.20, the points are divided by 58 in the case of Vijay and just 40 in the case of Tiger. That puts Tiger's average of 13.51 and the Fijian's average is 10.43.

Just to show how far ahead these two are in terms of world rankings points accumulated over last two years, the next best is Ernie Els with 483.14 and then it is Davis Love III with 356.11. World Ranking points are a fair indication of how good the finishes have been, so Tiger and Vijay are rightly the top guns.

Vijay recently admitted, "I stopped looking at the rankings two years ago when he had a lead of some 10 points. No matter what we did, we weren't going to catch him. But now it's so close, it catches our attention. I'm looking at it, but it's just a glance now and then."

How does that compare with previous years. In 2000 when Vijay won the Masters, his record against Tiger in the other 16 events was one ahead for Vijay and in 13 events he finished lower than Tiger.

In two events, they were tied. In 2002, when Vijay was third on the money list, he finished behind Tiger in 12 of the 16 tournaments they both entered.

Since the beginning of the 2003 season, Vijay and Tiger have played in the same event 16 times. Vijay has been ahead of Tiger seven times and Tiger has finished above Vijay seven times. Twice they have been tied.

Now that Vijay knows how close he can come to Tiger, things have hotted up and that's why the talk of rankings and the system it adopts.

This is truly a battle of the titans.