Can you name every player to spend 400 weeks or more in the Official World Golf Ranking top 10?

15/12/2023 17:41

Only 14 men have been ranked in the top 10 of the Official World Golf Ranking for longer than 400 weeks cumulatively – but can you name them all?

Following the early dominance of the PGA TOUR by players such as Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson, Johnny Miller, Tom Weiskopf, Billy Casper, Ben Crenshaw, Hubert Green and Hale Irwin, one only had to look at the US PGA TOUR Money List to decide the best players in the world. Gary Player of South Africa was very much the exception to the rule at that point.

However, in the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s, many more international players began challenging that position.

Seve Ballesteros, Greg Norman, Bernhard Langer, Nick Price, Isao Aoki, Graham Marsh, Tommy Nakajima, Sandy Lyle and Nick Faldo were competing and winning internationally. There came a need for a Worldwide Ranking system. The R&A was also looking to improve their exemption criteria for The Open Championship.

Mark McCormack was aware of a World Ranking system that Tony Greer had been working on. After extensive research and discussions with the R&A and Sony, the first SONY RANKING was launched at the 1986 Masters, with the R&A as the sanctioning body using the World Ranking as an exemption category for the Open Championship.

Now, after nearly 37 years, the OWGR is still used as a measure of eligibility for the Major Championships, PLAYERS Championship, World Golf Championships, and the Olympic golf competition.

In addition, it is used in part to determine the International Team for the Presidents Cup and European Ryder Cup team, and as a tool by many Tours for events worldwide including the Olympics.

While being No.1 is hugely important, a real sign of a class player is their ability to remain in the top 10 for long stretches.

In all, 14 men have been ranked in the top 10 of the OWGR for longer than 400 weeks cumulatively. But the question is, how many of them can you name inside 10 minutes?

If you haven’t already, sign up for a Planet Sport account to access hints for those tricky answers, to reveal the ones you've missed, and to register your score on the leaderboard.

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