One of the more interesting ways to evaluate who had a great year in golf is to look back at where golfers were in the Official World Golf Rankings at the beginning of 2017 and compare that to where they are now.
For some golfers this shows how steep the rise was. For others, it tells a different story. For everyone, there is no such thing as stasis. You either got better in 2017 or you got worse, and despite the flaws of the OWGR, it's difficult to manipulate them to this extent. They tell a story.
Let's look first at those who are currently still in the top 200 in the world (so still relevant) that also fell off the map this season.
| Golfer | End 2016 Rank | End 2017 Rank | Fall |
|---|---|---|---|
Jim Furyk | 37 | 183 | -146 |
Thongchai Jaidee | 54 | 192 | -138 |
Ryan Palmer | 75 | 193 | -118 |
Chris Kirk | 74 | 187 | -113 |
Brandon Stone | 72 | 180 | -108 |
Danny Willett | 11 | 114 | -103 |
Graeme McDowell | 82 | 185 | -103 |
Andrew Johnston | 86 | 181 | -95 |
Daniel Summerhays | 73 | 165 | -92 |
Scott Piercy | 36 | 122 | -86 |
No real surprises here. Willett had a lousy year, and he was probably the headliner of this group. Furyk played 18 events and had just one top 10. It might be more surprising that Bubba Watson didn't make this group. He fell from No. 10 to No. 85 over the course of 12 months (we'll get to that shortly).
Now let's look at the biggest risers.
| Golfer | End of 2016 Rank | End of 2017 Rank | Rise |
|---|---|---|---|
Patrick Cantlay | 1,866 | 38 | 1,828 |
Julian Suri | 1,137 | 63 | 1,074 |
Tapio Pulkkanen | 1,039 | 167 | 872 |
Brian Gay | 759 | 198 | 561 |
Erik Van Rooyen | 636 | 141 | 495 |
Chan Kim | 561 | 76 | 485 |
Seungsu Han | 515 | 80 | 435 |
Andrew Landry | 564 | 172 | 392 |
Sungjae Im | 522 | 149 | 373 |
Chesson Hadley | 448 | 79 | 369 |
Cantlay was the underrated story of the year. He didn't miss a cut, won an event and now looks like he could be on the 2018 Ryder Cup team. Again, he was No. 1,866 in the world this time last year! Steph Curry is currently No. 1,925 after playing in a Web.com Tour event this year!
Another way to look at this is by percentage gained in ranking. So, it's a little unfair to Dustin Johnson that he had a ceiling on how much he could rise in 2017 given that he started out at No. 3. So I slapped together a formula that basically tells what percentage of possible spots toward No. 1 in the world did you gain (or lose) and turned that into a percentage.
The formula is (end of 2016 rank-end of 2017 rank) divided by (end of 2016 rank-1). An example: Bryson DeChambeau ended 2016 at No. 120 in the world. He ended 2017 at No. 99. His formula would be (120-99)/(120-1) or 18 percent. He had a possible 119 spots he could have moved up and he moved up 21. A solid but not spectacular year.
Here's the top five gainers.
| Golfer | End of 2016 Rank | End of 2017 Rank | Percent Gained |
|---|---|---|---|
Dustin Johnson | 3 | 1 | 100 |
Patrick Cantlay | 1,828 | 38 | 98 |
Jon Rahm | 137 | 4 | 98 |
Julian Suri | 1,137 | 63 | 95 |
Xander Schauffele | 299 | 25 | 92 |
Justin Thomas and Pat Perez were just on the outside of this list, too. That makes sense, and it probably provides a clearer picture of who played the best relative to what we thought they were coming into 2017. It's not a perfect model, obviously, but the results match up with who had great years relative to their other years.
If you flip it around, it tells a similar story.
| Golfer | End of 2016 Rank | End of 2017 Rank | Percent Lost |
|---|---|---|---|
Danny Willett | 11 | 114 | 1,030 |
Rory McIlroy | 2 | 11 | 900 |
Bubba Watson | 10 | 89 | 878 |
Jim Furyk | 37 | 183 | 406 |
Adam Scott | 7 | 31 | 400 |
Ah, there's Watson. Others just outside the top five included Russell Knox, Jimmy Walker, Patrick Reed, J.B. Holmes and Henrik Stenson. This doesn't necessarily mean these players had terrible years (although it wasn't great for Watson and Willett), but that compared to where they were to start 2017, they didn't maintain what we thought they would do.
