Golf Is Truly An International Game

Americans are famous for their lack of knowledge about the rest of the world. It’s one of many reasons the people from across both ponds think less of us than we think they should. However, golf may be somewhat of an exception. What golfer hasn’t heard of Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Sergio Garcia or any one of a dozen other international players… and there is a good reason for that phenomenon. This week’s ranking of the top fifty golfers in the world places only sixteen Americans in that group. Of course, three of those sixteen are the first three, Tiger Woods, Jim Furyk and Phil Mickelson, and five of those sixteen are in the top twenties.

According to the rankings the number two power in the world is Australia with a total of nine players, two of which are in the top ten and three in the top twenty. Third is South Africa with six players, one top ten and four top twenties. The inventors of the great game, the Scots/ English, rank fourth with five players (one Scotsman and four English), no top tens and only two top twenties, followed by the Swedes with four players with one in the top ten.

If you’ve been watching the majors you know that both Argentina and Spain have two players each. Likewise, our Canadian friends up north have two players, and unlike the ladies’ Tour, which is dominated by Koreans, the men’s Tour only has one.

It’s a bit of a surprise, because they are such rabid golfers, but the Irish have only one player in the top fifty; Padraig Harrington is the number six ranked player in the world, which is exactly the same number for the country that claims the number seven player in the world, Vijay Singh from Fiji.

Certainly golf doesn’t come close to soccer in the number of players participating around the world, and I guess it really doesn’t challenge soccer in the number of countries participating either, but it makes you proud to know that the top ten players in golf represent seven different countries and that they have 850,000,000 frequent flyer miles collectively.


World Rankings


1 Tiger Woods
2 Jim Furyk
3 Phil Mickelson
4 Ernie Els
5 Adam Scott
6 Padraig Harrington
7 Vijay Singh
8 Sergio Garcia
9 Geoff Ogilvy
11 Luke Donald
12 Choi Kyung-Ju
13 Rory Sabbatini
14 Steve Stricker
15 Justin Rose
16 Zach Johnson
17 Retief Goosen
18 Trevor Immelman
19 Angel Cabrera
20 Paul Casey
21 Niclas Fasth
22 Stewart Cink
23 Scott Verplank
24 David Toms
25 Stuart Appleby
26 Nick O'Hern
27 Andres Romero
28 Charles Howell-III
29 Arron Oberholser
30 Richard Green
31 Aaron Baddeley Aus
32 Ian Poulter
33 Brett Wetterich
34 Woody Austin
35 Robert Allenby
36 Stephen Ames
37 Richard Sterne
38 Rod Pampling
39 Tim Clark
40 Anders Hansen
41 Boo Weekley
42 Colin Montgomerie
43 Davis Love-III
44 Jose M Olazabal
45 Robert Karlsson
46 Mike Weir
47 John Senden
48 Carl Pettersson
49 Hunter Mahan
50 Chris DiMarco