Rory McIlroy joins Elite Company atop OWGR Rankings amidst hot stretch

Once again, Rory McIlroy is having a fantastic start to his season. This recent hot stretch has gotten him into an exclusive and elite group of those who have sat atop the OWGR rankings.

If you haven’t noticed, Rory McIlroy has been playing dominating golf once again. He made news last year to start off the PGA Tour season with a stretch of six straight top-six finishes, in which he capped it off with a win at the Players Championship.

Whether or not he can defend his title is a story for a different day. What I wanted to look at was the fact that once again, Rory has started off just as hot as he did last year. Only, this time, it led to him joining some elite company in the history of those who have sat atop the OWGR rankings.

Let’s look at the stretch of golf that Rory McIlroy has been playing before we get to the very elite group that he has joined. Going back to his first event of the season, Rory has not finished worse than T-5th in an event, winning once during the stretch. He has played fairly often too, competing in six different events. It’s an incredible stretch, and slightly outstrips the stretch he put together last year in which he had a six-event stretch with all top-six finishes.

If you take a look at his 2019-20 tournaments, you can see how he has finished in each event.

It’s just an incredible run and not something that you see very often. To be able to play in that many events in a row, and never have an off week, or even an off round, is an all-time accomplishment, and something that every golfer strives for.

This run has cemented his place atop of the OWGR standings. He holds a sizeable lead over Jon Rahm, who is the only one that is close at all to Rory McIlroy. This marks 100 weeks atop the OWGR leaderboard for Rory, which is a mark that very few golfers in history have held.

Now, it should be said that the OWGR rankings have only been around since 1986, so you won’t see a bunch of the greats from the prior era’s when talking about the history of the rankings.

Until Rory hit his 100th week atop the leaderboard, there were only two men that had done it over the last ~35 years. Greg Norman held the top spot for 331 weeks. That’s over five years atop the leaderboard. He didn’t do it all at once, but it is still impressive to think that he is only one of three to have the #1 spot for 100 weeks or more, and he has done it for that long of a period.

Well, it would be impressive, if not for the man who holds the record, and it’s a record that is unlikely to be broken.

Tiger Woods has held the top spot for 683 weeks. That’s just over 13 years atop the OWGR rankings. Rory could, theoretically, catch Tiger and surpass his record. It’s highly unlikely though. Rory, already 30 years old, would need to stay atop the rankings for another 11 years. He would still then be short by a few months.

We should be appreciative of Rory and what he has done and is doing during this hot stretch of golf. There are a lot of talented golfers on Tour, and Rory has been the most consistent of them.

With the solid lead that he has over Rahm paired with him heading to the Players Championship looking to defend his title, Rory McIlroy is set to sit atop the OWGR rankings for the foreseeable future.