Robopz

How getting caught cheating actually HELPED a players career, and why, in my opinion, all tours under the @OWGRltd should honor suspensions from from any other owgr tour: I’ve been working on a story about how Tours across the world handle cheating for over a year (The full story is still a work in progress but one of the incidents is very relevant this week) It all started in February of 2025, when Ryan Ang was DQ’d from a Webex Players Series Mixed event. According to multiple people I spoke with a player in Ang’s group saw him drop a ball out of his pocket on the 17th hole, claiming it was his original ball. The player told officials in scoring and the official allegedly went out to the 17th and found his original ball. I messaged with Ang after the incident and although he didn’t directly admit it, he said he made “a bad mistake”. He was suspended from the Aussie Tour, but the Tour went to great lengths to keep the incident out of the press and on the DL as much as possible. According to the players I spoke with, that included calling a player meeting and encouraging them to not speak about it. (I’ve learned in my reporting that this is sadly not uncommon on major tours across the world and is the main point of the full story I’ve been working on) A little over a month later Ang played on the Asian Dev Tour, I assume they knew nothing of the incident in Australia. Then Ang, from Singapore played a full schedule on the China Tour. (Again, assuming they knew nothing of the incident in Aussie) And played well, making 12 of 15 cuts including 4 top 10s. The DQ and subsequent suspension had basically no effect on his career, in fact in ended up helping him get into a DP event. Ang likely would have likely never played the China Tour last season had he not been suspended from the Aussie Tour, but did after his suspension. This week Ryan Ang is playing on the DP World Tour, based on his Order of Merit finish last season on the China Tour, again something that likely wouldn’t have been possible if he had played the full season in Aussie. The length of his suspension in Aussie is unknown, however he was listed in a field earlier this year (he didn’t play) so I assume it’s over. He opened with an even par round today on DP and is right on the cut line.

This is why @MarchMadnessMBB is so good. You don’t get this in the NBA.

@LenHochberg @YourGolfGuru Bhatia making the trip to Hero India Open next week...

@YourGolfGuru Good question. Surprising. It's Florida, which helps. Everyone preps for the Masters differently and for some they want to take two weeks off beforehand but not three. Bhatia WDed at almost the last minute. He was playing a lot, including TGL

⛳️ No Scottie Scheffler - yet. Early commits for next week's Houston Open. Not as loaded as the Valspar, but pretty good: Cameron Young Brooks Koepka Chris Gotterup Rickie Fowler Jake Knapp Ben Griffin Sahith Theegala Shane Lowry Si Woo Kim Sam Burns Jason Day Min Woo Lee Wyndham Clark Tony Finau Will Zalatoris Sungjae Im Billy Horschel

@DempsterMartin @TheMasters You definitely need to get that kid a Masters Gnome... which he'll never be allowed to touch... ever... !!! 🤣

Not long now until @TheMasters and seems appropriate that Wee Harry is trying out his cute gift from last year's event⛳️⛳️⛳️

@jerichsen66 @david_verity @steveonthetee @DataGolf I don't disagree with that in general. But it appears OWGR still deems it "near major enough" to warrant the set 80 points. I kinda wish OWGR would make that move, as it would probably entice PGAT to get the event back up to at least 144 where it belongs.

@david_verity @Robopz @steveonthetee @DataGolf When there was a Flagship event on each tour, one could justify the Players getting a set amount of points. When that was removed, the 80 points for The Players should have been also.

Real question here. Why does the winner of the Players get 80 OWGR points? Is it “just math” or is it adjusted in a non mathematical way? @jerichsen66 @Robopz @DataGolf

Good graph. Easy to understand Takeaways... • @DataGolf rates majors higher in value than @OWGRltd or Conrad in comparison to regular events on all tours. • DataGolf and OWGR rate all majors at equal importance. Conrad rates the Masters at 80% of the other three. (not on above graphic) • OWGR and Conrad rate PGAT and KFT events fairly similarly. So does DataGolf, but at their lower major/regular event scale. • Conrad significantly overranks all non-PGAT/KFT events on every tour significantly higher in comparison to OWGR & DataGolf. LIV events even moreso.

Win Points comparison between OWGR/DataGolf/Conrad Golf Ranking shown as % of Major Championship Win

S.H. Kim faces return to South Korea even if he qualifies for the Masters apnews.com/article/kim-ko…

PGA Tour 20-Somethings off to a good start in 2026 vs 2025 Players in their 20s have won 8 of 10 events so far this season, compared to 3 of 12 to start last year. It's too early to say this is a trend. It could be, but as likely it's just a cycle like 2025 in which 30s guys had a great start... yet by season end the 20s and 30s groups ended up with the exact same 23 wins each. And then there was Justin Rose... The only 40+ winner on tour last year, and so far in '26. Remarkable. • Top - 2026 vs 2025 YTD • Bottom - 2025 Full Season

Valspar Championship Field by Priority Order. Pretty good field considering all the big events around it. Estimated at 48 pts to the winner. Really good mix of quality winners. As always... I won't be updating this further... so check with @DataGolf or @RobBoltonGolf for further updates...

Big time update to the top of Cam Young's profile. 5-4-4-2 ranking line. The Players silver and gold in the career achievements column is a nice look too.

@BobHarig @LudvigTracker This is all way too much for me to wrap my head around... Every fix I come up with for one part of it, breaks one or two others...

Then the question is who steps up to be Tier 1? I’ll guess Torrey, Phoenix, Valspar, Nelson, Colonial, Canada. Detroit, Greensboro. That is assuming they all want to do it. And it’s not knowing what the purses will be. They’ve had trouble getting buy in from all current sponsors for $20m purses. Do they lower them? Does the SSG money factor?

Regarding Q#3 in this article... I enjoyed another great PLAYERS last week... but it begs a couple of questions about the PGAT's future. Q1: If the PGAT's future aim is to have 14-16 Signature events, with fields made up of all the best 120 PGAT players... then what makes the PLAYERS special anymore? Q2: When you try to make everything extraordinary, don't you run the risk of making everything ordinary instead?

Another thing nobody's focusing on... PGAT finally got the "if you earn your card, you get to play" thing mostly fixed this year. Its a quazi-split track now, but to do even that much, they had to cut 35 full exempt cards and demote 20 medicals. We now have 150 full exempt. To pull off this 14-16 Sig events of 120 (full 2-track system)... you have to relegate off at least another ~30 full exempt cards to track-2, and that's with no MQs, SEs or Medicals eligible for Track-1 events. If you include any of them, you need to lop off another 10-20 full exempt cards.

I think the goal is to have all of these top guys play the 20-22 events they normally play within tier 1. With larger fields the idea of “two” tours is actually lessened. Many not eligible for signature events now will be eligible for the new Tier 1. Tier 2 has to be a rung below and the system for movement between them will be interesting

They virtually all become alternate event level fields, but with a new name (track 2) in hopes people won't realize what we're really gonna have is 10 "Puerto Ricos" during the regular season. That was always my argument on the BENEFIT of only 72 in the Sigs, and only 8 Sigs... A few "regular" events like Cognizant get screwed... but the others are still able to cobble together some pretty good fields, many with decent marquee names... But with 14-16, 120-player Sigs... everything else gets screwed by design.

@LudvigTracker @Robopz I think the bigger question is if you have 120 signature fields with a 100 player exempt cutoff, who is playing in the tier 2 events?

@BobHarig @LudvigTracker Maybe Players was same size field... but has always been by far the most premium field... Sounds like that would no longer be the case in this new plan... except there's likely gonna be a lot more top player "skips" if they try 14-16 Sigs.

@LudvigTracker @Robopz Prior to this year, the Players was basically the same field size as every other pga tour event. It’s the venue, the purse. And I’m wondering if exempt status for other events will change

@tak6tak @BobHarig @scofie The +/- is from week 5 til now. He was #41 last week... the win moved him from 41 to 33.

@Robopz @BobHarig @scofie How does Byrson win and nkt move

Not a lot of OWGR help for LIV guys this week... 13 players earn points (cuz of 6-way tie for 8th) Detry closer to Masters, but nothing else very meaningful... These are provisional rankings w/o this week's PGAT and DPWT results factored in... so all will almost certainly be lowered a bit.

I'm planning to do that after next week... but in the meantime... in case you might want to check some yourself... here's a schedule of unallocated points for places beyond 10th place for the 4 LIV events to date. To be clear... if LIV were getting full points... these amounts would be added to each players current OWGR total depreciated points.

@Robopz @scofie Would you be willing to do a simulation of LIV w/o the artificial cutoff at T10 and just award pts to full 85% of field w/ small field scale? It would be nice to see how that decision truly impacts rankings.

@TheRealMugatu @BobHarig @scofie That's correct. Bryson's "ranking issue" is he's got a lot of high points on his resume from good play in past majors that are depreciating as fast as he's adding new points. He's earned 30 new points this year so far... but has lost 31.8 via depreciation...

@Robopz @BobHarig @scofie Bryson just won an event and hasn’t risen in the OWGR? Am I reading that correctly? Was 33rd before they got points, won in Singapore and is still 33rd?

These graphics got some love last week. First we have Brooksie's Ark. The money earned by players as a result of the extra spots when Koepka is in the field. Note that this week's spots are tentative pending future withdrawals.

I can't speak for them, but OWGR has always treated Players as a "near major". But objectively... it really wasn't much of an issue the past couple of years, cuz Players was near 80 anyway:(78/79+). But with the now reduced field, it's gonna be tough to get over 75-ish in the future. I wouldn't mind the fixed 80 going away, but if so, they should also remove the 80 cap, just in case it rates over 80 someday... (which is very possible if they went back to a 144 field)

@Robopz @steveonthetee @jerichsen66 @DataGolf Out of interest, I get why Majors are set at 100. But I thought the flagship event set points for each tour went away at the last OGWR changes. Why should the players still get a st amount?