Despite not playing as much golf as one might expect of a world leader, Lee Westwood has maintained his position at top of the world golf rankings for the 3rd week in a row. In fact, the only change in the entire top 10 ranked world golfers was the two Northern Irish players, Graeme McDowell and Rory McIlroy, who swapped positions to leave McIlroy down in 10th and McDowell up to 9th. Having finished 4th at the Australian Masters at the weekend, Tiger Woods has also stayed put, remaining in 2nd place behind the English world leader.
Outside of the leader board, Lee Westwood has won his 10th European Tour title by closing the UBS Hong Kong Open with a 22 under par aggregate of 258, causing him to leap 3 positions up the rankings, to world number 11! A single step higher for Poulter will make him the 4th Englishman in the top 10 ranked world golfers, along with Paul Casey, Luke Donald and, of course, Lee Westwood. Although that will bring England level with the USA in terms of the top 10, we mustn’t get too cocky as, after Poulter, the rankings are devoid of any English players until Justin Rose and Ross Fisher at 28 and 29.
New world number one Lee Westwood remains confident and, after his performance in Shanghai, who can blame him?
In his first round as world number one, Lee Westwood delivered a magnificent 66 – including 3 birdies in 4 holes – to be beaten only by a 65 from Francesco Molinari. Considering Westwood hasn’t played for 3 weeks, this is impressive work from the Englishman, especially considering his game plan was “just to go out there and enjoy myself and see what happened”. Despite a trio of birdies in the middle holes, Tiger Woods finished behind Westwood with a 68, though seemed happy with the result; “I hit a lot of good shots and also putted well.” the world number two stated.
Not everybody is convinced of Lee’s dominance of the world rankings, however. Nick Faldo, for example, has questioned the validity of naming a world number one who is yet to win a major title. In response, Westwood declared Faldo’s comments to be “Fairly obvious”, explaining that “the previous world No 1 players...have all won major championships. It would be nice to join that club as well”.
Westwood is clearly being realistic about his rise to the top of world golf. When asked about the rankings, he has said “it’s one thing getting there but it’s another thing staying there”.
After 281 weeks at the number one, Tiger Woods drops down to second place in the official world rankings.
Tiger lost out to English player Lee Westwood, who spent today "bumbling around Sainbury's" and "shopping for some rubber gloves and mashed potato" as officials calculated his win of top spot.
But Tiger Woods isn't disappointed, he told The Guardian Newspaper:
"You have to win in order to become No1 in the world and you have to win a lot to maintain it. That's just the way it goes."
Tiger Woods' last win was November 2009, days before the media frenzy regarding his private life. Woods took a five-month break from golf after his confessions of extramarital affairs, which led to him divorcing wife Elin Nordegren.
Now it's been reveled that tickets to see Tiger Woods play in Australia aren't selling with tickets still available for the Australian Masters, which saw tickets sell out in advance six weeks in advance last year.
David Rollo, speaking for Golf IMG Australia said the diminished ticket sales are nothing to do with Tiger's extramarital affairs, but rather, are due to this being the second year running that Tiger has visited Australia.
Rollo said "It was the first time he'd been here in 11 years [last year] and at that time I guess there were people who thought he may not be here for another chance to see him."
The official top 10 world rankings:
1 - Lee Westwood (ENGLAND) 8.29 points
2 - Tiger Woods (USA) 8.13 points
3 - Martin Kaymer (GERMANY) 7.98 points
4 - Phil Mickelson (USA) 7.83 points
5 - Steve Stricker (USA) 7.20 points
6 - Jim Furyk (USA) 7.09 points
7 - Paul Casey (ENGLAND) 6.14 points
8 - Luke Donald (ENGLAND) 5.70 points
9 - Rory McIlroy (N IRELAND) 5.44 points
10 - Graeme McDowell (N IRELAND) 5.43 points
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