Will’s Official Weekly Golf Ranking, Vol. 2023.5

Brace yourselves, there was a shocking changing of the guard this week.

Need a recap on the WOWgr rules?

Vol. 2023.5

No. 1 – Rory McIlroy (Up 1) – Rory McIlroy won this week and Jon Rahm didn’t. As simple as that. Rory also beat Patrick Reed, which always helps.

No. 2 – Jon Rahm (Down 1) – Didn’t win this week.

No. 6 – Being obnoxious on Twitter (no change) – After a down year hiding out in Arizona and avoiding the spotlight, Phil Mickelson is back to his trollish ways on Twitter. Unfortunately, that is a large part of what the platform is these days, so he fits right in.

No. 12 – Larry Fitzgerald (Up 632) – Congrats on what will certainly be yet another victory in the celebrity portion of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am, Larry Fitz.

2020 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am winners Larry Fitzgerald and Kevin Streelman

No. 13 – Macklemore (Up 564) – Not sure why he became such a big part of Pebble Beach week but here we are. He’ll (hopefully) be the only one out there in Bogey Boys apparel.

No. 22 – Joseph LaMagna (Up 288) – On Thursday, Golfweek reported that 2023 will be the final year for the WGC Match Play at Austin Country Club. The event will be replaced by the Cadence Bank Houston Open, and an anonymous tournament director said the Tour will find a new spot on the schedule for a match-play event. As if he knew this would happen, Joseph LaMagna wrote for The Fried Egg this week about how the PGA Tour needs to adopt more match play and even integrate the format into the Tour Championship. Bravo, Joseph.

No. 31 – Golf fans (Up 12) – Welcome news for those who enjoy great golf writing, Kevin Van Valkenburg left ESPN and started with No Laying Up this week. Kevin is one of the best sportswriters out there. Good to have him in the golf space full-time.

No. 256 – Shane Lowry caddie stories (Down 200) – The 2019 Open champion split with caddie Bo Martin after a successful five-year run. To honor Bo’s departure, Dylan Dethier tweeted out a couple of his favorite Bo Martin moments. Take a look.

No. 284 – The fax machine (Up 842) – For whatever reason, Patrick Reed felt the need to send out a statement following the ball-in-tree incident in Dubai. I won’t rehash the absurdity of the statement itself, but sending out a statement via a screenshot of an iMessage is certainly one of the dumber methods one could use. We should all go back to faxes.

No. 531 – Jordan Spieth (Down 520) – The Golden Boy’s tumble down the WOWgr ranking has nothing to do with his on-course play and everything to do with his daredevil shot from the 2022 Pebble Pro-Am, video of which is resurfacing everywhere this week. The incidett actually caused Pebble Beach to change the way it maintains the eighth hole. When resort players started attempting to recreate Spieth’s shot, the staff decided to grow up the rough between the fairway and cliff edge. The result? Rough now stops balls from going into a hazard, one of TFE’s least favorite design features. “I think I really messed things up by hitting that [shot] because I don’t really know the solution,” Spieth said.

Couldn’t they have added a note to the scorecard saying, “Resort is not responsible for your idiocy on the cliffs nor any medical or funeral bills incurred”?

We don't know why you tried it either, Jordan