From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The McCormack rankings were unofficial world golf rankings published in Mark McCormack's World of Professional Golf Annual from 1968 to 1985, and were a forerunner of the current Official World Golf Rankings. Unlike their replacement they were not used to select fields for tournaments, and served no real purpose other than as a talking point.

The rankings were the first that had been compiled that took account of results from all the world's major professional tours, from The United States to Asia. The system rewarded players for performances in tournaments played over a three-year period, with more points awarded for more recent achievements, and more points given for performances in major championships and tour events with strong fields than for those in other tournaments. They also reflected McCormack's philosophy that victory should be strongly rewarded, wherever in the world it took place - winners of tournaments received additional bonus points.

The first player to lead the rankings was McCormack's client Jack Nicklaus, and he continued to lead them for almost all of the 1970s decade. He would be succeeded as number one by Tom Watson, who in turn was succeeded by Seve Ballesteros. Had McCormack's rankings of the time been based on results over just the most recent two years, like their modern counterpart, Gary Player would have been number one in 1969 instead of Nicklaus. All the other year-end number ones, however, would have remained as they were on the three-year system.

The first ranking list, taking account of results from January 1966 to December 1968, included five American players in the top ten (Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Billy Casper, Julius Boros and Frank Beard) and five non-Americans (Gary Player, Bob Charles, Neil Coles, Peter Thomson and Kel Nagle). By 1976, the ranking list was almost totally dominated by American players - Nicklaus, Hale Irwin and Johnny Miller were the world's top three, and only two of the top ten (Gary Player and Graham Marsh) were non-Americans. However, by the time of the final "unofficial" ranking list, published in 1985, the top three players in the world - Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer and Greg Norman - were all non-American, although the leading American players, Tom Watson, Lanny Wadkins, Mark O'Meara and Curtis Strange, were ranked just behind them.

In the years the rankings were published, the highest position attained by a British player was sixth - by Tony Jacklin in 1972, and Nick Faldo in 1984.

In 1986 McCormack's system was taken up by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews and became the Sony Rankings. At first the Sony Rankings were only used by the R&A to select the field for The Open Championship, but in 1995 they were endorsed by all of the principal men's professional tours (five at that time) and renamed the Official World Golf Rankings. Over the years the rankings have been used to select the field for an increasing number of important tournaments.