In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes and the smoothness of Adam Scott’s golf swing.
After a run of poor form to start the year of 2024, he has had a resurgence since the month of July, including a great run in the FedEx Cup playoffs. He finished tied-2nd at the BMW Championship and tied-4th at the Tour Championship. This lead me to think: Adam Scott has been “good” for an awful long time, but how long has that been?
I dove into data from (the sometimes controversial) Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) to consider how Scott’s career trajectory compares to many of his peers……and naturally because I’m an Irish golf fan I found a way to end up talking about Rory McIlroy as well along the way….
From an initial study of the data, I settled on two measures of career consistency:
*The 13 week period with no ranking update during COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 was treated as a single week for this analysis
As you will see further below, I think the emergence of LIV golf complicates matters slightly. It will also make this kind of analysis much harder to do in the future, without the ability to put the performances of LIV golfers in context.
I downloaded individual ranking histories for a selection of golfers with careers of prolonged prominence during the OWGR era (mid 1980s - Present). They were downloaded from the OWGR website up until the week ending/starting 6th October 2024. A selection of 8 golfers were chosen that are outlined in the table below. Greg Norman is the only one without an active world ranking, although Fred Couples, Ernie Els and Vijay Singh are also not particularly active.
As an Irishman, I felt compelled to also examine the rankings of some Irish golfers. For a small nation, Ireland has contributed a lot to the golfing world. This has included a collection of major champions, Ryder Cup heroes and media personalities. The selection of players listed in the table below is fairly self-explanatory.
With the dataset established, the next thing to do is to examine the trajectories of the careers of these 15 players.
Upon viewing Adam Scott’s career trajectory on a graph with log y-scale, we can see the remarkable longevity of his career. He broke into the world top 100 in July 2001 and he remained there in the 23 years since. He then worked to establish himself in the top 50 through the 2002 season and has only fallen out of the top 50 four times during this period. Two of those were fairly sharp declines that occurred in 2009 and 2018, reaching low points of 76 and 82 respectively. Another was falling to a ranking of 51 for just one week in January 2022 and then lastly a more gradual decline throughout the 2023 and first half of 2024, reaching a ranking of 64, before his most recent upturn in results. While he has occasionally dropped out of the world top 50, it did make me wonder how this period of more than 23 years in the world top 100 compared to his peers.
As mentioned earlier, a collection of global superstars of the 1980s/1990s/2000s were chosen and I looked at their longest spells of consecutive weeks in both the world top 50 and top 100. Looking at this we can see that the weeks spent in the top 100 by Adam Scott has been bested by two golfers, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els. What is utterly baffling is that 1353 of Phil’s 1425 weeks in the top 100 was also spent in the top 50, entering the top 50 on 28th November 1993 and remaining there until 3rd of November 2019, spending more time in the top 50 than anyone else has spent in the top 100. He then fell out of top 100 on the 7th March 2021 bring to an end a run of weeks spent in the top 100. He then had a brief resurgence in his ranking on the back of his win at the 2021 PGA championship before starting a marked decline as the various machinations of the emergence of LIV golf took shape. Like him or loath him, you have to admire the golfing career of Lefty.
Similarly to Mickelson, the Big Easy rose to prominence in the early 90’s, achieving the various OWGR landmarks about a year before Phil. Els’s ranking also dipped prior to his last major success, the 2012 Open Championship, followed by a gradual decline in recent years. Again another remarkable golfing career, with a beautifully smooth swing (possibly even smoother than Adam Scott’s).
One can’t write an article about golf rankings without mentioning Tiger Woods. His era of extreme dominance in the late 90s and early 2000s just wasn’t quite long lived enough, with him dropping briefly out of the top 50 in late 2011 and then the major injuries that lead to his back surgery causing him to fall outside the world top 100 in March 2015, a few months before his longtime rival Els. Thankfully he was able to make his memorable comeback, culminating in his victory at the 2019 Masters.
One final player to mention from this cohort is Sergio Garcia. In a similar way to Scott, he also experienced some dips in performance that led to him falling outside the top 50, just once in the case of Garcia during 2010 and 2011. He shot to prominence in 1999 as a swashbuckling 19 year old, finishing in second place in the PGA Championship behind Tiger Woods with his famous shot from the tree roots at Medinah. There were some bumps along the road as he struggled with his putter and his temperament at times through the years, but his impeccable ball striking meant that he was always a mainstay in the upper echelons of the golfing world throughout all of the 2000s and 2010s. And he was ultimately rewarded with his sole major victory at the 2017 Masters after many near misses along the way. Similar to Mickelson, Garcia’s decision to make the move to LIV golf in 2022 lead to a precipitous fall in his ranking. Around the time of his famous outburst at the Well’s Fargo in May 2022 Garcia’s ranking had been hovering in around the 40s for much of the previous couple of years, but by November of that year he fallen outside the world top 100. That brought an end to an uninterrupted run of M weeks in the world top 100, dating back to July 1999. His recent T12 finish at the US Open this year, did serve to remind us of his tremendous talent and leave us wondering a major “what if?” about what trajectory his ranking would have followed if this seismic schism in the game of golf had not occurred. Also, sorry for forgetting to say Happy Birthday in January Sergio.
An interactive graph of all the golfers listed in the table above is available below.
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This Irish cohort has brought some fantastic golfing memories to the author (a mid-teen handicapper, who dreamed of being able to emulate them), with fantastic golfing achievements by all of them. Five different major champions, a Ryder Cup winner and Peter Lawrie.
Rory McIlroy rose into the world top 100 on the 19th of October 2008. Five weeks later he was inside the top 50 and there he has remained since then. In August 2009 his ranking plummeted to 29. After averting this crisis, he has spent the last 15 years inside the world top 20.
Shane Lowry has taken over from Padraig Harrington in recent years as the next highest ranked Irish golfer.
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In terms of the tables listed above, there are some potential notable dates in the future.
For Adam Scott and his top 100 streak, he will definitely surpass Sergio Garcia next week (1st December 2024). Similarly he will absolutely certainly pass Ernie Els in the following month on 12th January 2025. The difficulty will be in breaking the record of Mickelson, where he will need to maintain his level of play within the world top 100 until 21st January 2029.
Meanwhile for McIlroy and his top 50 streak, the next few players ahead of him will require some time to overcome. The first one being Vijay Singh’s spell of 925 weeks in just over 2 years time, which could possibly occur on 1st November 2026. After that Els could be surpassed on 8th August 2027. Just like for Scott, to achieve the monumental feat of beating the accomplishments Phil is particularly difficule. It would require Rory to remain in the world top 50 for another decade! If he was able to achieve this, then on the 14th January 2035 would become the players with the longest number of consecutive weeks spent inside of the world top 50.
Ultimately it is worth saying that neither of these golfers have had careers that have come anywhere close to the level of dominance of Tiger Woods. It’s just that Tiger’s career aligns with the old adage “The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long”. He was utterly dominant, but his injuries and personal issues meant that he was unable to sustain that over 20+ years. This tweet by Lou Stagner put that into context:
https://x.com/LouStagner/status/1836094817568227806
As a classic tormented Irish golf fan, I set out to write an article about Adam Scott and ended up talking just as much about Rory McIlroy as well. Both golfers have had remarkable careers, with golf swings that combine elegance and power in slightly different ways. To better the consistency and longevity of Phil Mickelson will be a challenge for them in the years ahead, but I’ll continue to be a fan of the two of them and wish them the best.
The OWGR website was crucial in extracting the data for this analysis. But I did find the interface clunky and cumbersome to work with, and there appears to be something weird going on in their data for late in the careers of Lawrie, McGinley and Clarke (see graph above).
Produced by Aimsir Spóirt
(generated using R Markdown)
