Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Golf/Archive 9

Highest OWGR in template
I am looking to create a "Highest OWGR" placing in golfers' templates. I will only include golfers who have joined tour since 1986. What do you think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oogglywoogly (talk • contribs) 03:18, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Superficially seems like a sensible idea since OWGR often includes the number (eg http://www.owgr.com/Ranking/PlayerProfile.aspx?playerID=12920 says "BEST OWGR POSITION: 9"), although it doesn't tell you when it was. The big problem is: how to keep it up to date. OWGR changes every week and they don't publish a weekly list of golfers who have reached their highest-ever ranking. So this would need checking by hand, something that's probably not going to happen on a weekly basis. If we went for it we would want to include a date (for active players): eg Highest OWGR 9 (as of 23 September 2019), so that readers would know whether it was up to date or not. A few points:
 * 1. If we do go for it, I'm keen that we keep the data in a separate place - not in the player's page. Infobox snooker player does this for "Current ranking" where the current rankings are stored as Infobox_snooker_player/rankings. This would help us keep tabs on the data. I'm happy to give this a go, if we decide on something.
 * 2. We should restrict ourselves to only those who got sufficiently high in the rankings, perhaps the top 50 or 100 (or even less to start with). An article that says that someone had a highest rankings of 654 (or whatever) is just stats and of little interest to anyone. (Last time I checked there were some 8,000 players in the OWGR - everyone who has played in an OWGR event in the last two years, but only some 2,000 of those have got any ranking points in that period)
 * 3. Is it important that we include the "Highest OWGR" consistently? Would it matter if we included the field for one player but didn't have the field for someone who got much higher? In other words: are we doing it ad hoc or going for completeness? Completeness would be difficult. A complete list exists for those who got to the top 10 but not below that.
 * 4. It would nice to have the date when the player first reached that ranking: Highest OWGR 9 (on 10 April 2016, as of 23 September 2019) but this is getting too long (unless we go for a two line option) and the date is not readily available anyway.
 * 5. We have to decide where to put it in the infobox.
 * 6. As noted, there's a minor issue relating to those who played before 1986. Having "Highest OWGR 20" (or whatever it is) for Jack Nicklaus would be just confusing.
 * 7. I'm assuming that we're only considering the men at this stage. We have nearly 3,000 male golfers using this template. Clearly quite a lot of those are pre-1986 and wouldn't be covered. Nigej (talk) 05:56, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Oogglywoogly asked me about this on my talkpage, so I'll copy my response here.


 * I think having highest ranking and current ranking in the infobox of each player would be good. The current ranking would take a lot of updating though, unless you follow the method used by national football teams e.g. England national football team. If you could set that up (i.e. automatic updating), that would be brilliant. Also you should be clear about what to do about players who started their career before the OWGR were introduced. I suggest putting together a plan addressing the above and raising it on the WP:GOLF talk page.
 * Jopal22 (talk) 09:04, 24 September 2019 (UTC)


 * To show what I'm thinking (about keeping the data in a separate place) I have created a test version of the Infobox golfer template at Infobox golfer/sandbox which uses data in my User:Nigej/sandbox (you'll need to click on "Edit" to see it). The results can be seen at Infobox golfer/testcases which compares the output from the current and test version of the template. Note that Woods and Norman have "Highest ranking 1 (683 weeks)"/"Highest ranking 1 (blah blah blah)" at the end (on the right-hand of the pair) which is the text following their entries in User:Nigej/sandbox (you might need to "purge" Infobox golfer/testcases sometimes). I have just stuck the field at the bottom for now - easiest for me to do. You can do your own tests by changing "{{Infobox golfer" to "{{Infobox golfer/sandbox" and clicking "Show preview" on other player articles (please don't save). Nigej (talk) 10:26, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
 * One bug I've noticed is that because the "name" field for Lee Westwood says "Lee Westwood {{post-nominals|GBR|OBE}} " it doesn't match the "Lee Westwood" in User:Nigej/sandbox. Various ways around this - could simply use the article name instead of the name field to do the lookup. Nigej (talk) 13:38, 24 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Not a bad idea to add the "Highest ranking" but the devil is in the details. An "as of" date for active golfers would be a necessity IMO. The question is what date or time period to show, if any, with the ranking. Possibilities: date first attained, last date at that ranking, number of weeks at that ranking (probably only for #1s). Finding the dates is relatively straight forward, from a player's OWGR page (again using Danny Willett as an example). The highest ranking is in the upper right of the page. If you click on the "Ranking Graph" below the "Form Table", you get a graph of their ranking over time. You can narrow the time window using the sliders at the bottom to concentrate on the period of highest ranking. Then if you hover over the highest ranking, you get a pop-up with the ranking and date: for Danny – "Ranked #9 on April 09, 2016" for start and "Ranked #9 on August 06, 2016" for the last #9 ranking. Note that these dates are a day off the actual rankings are dates Sunday Apr 10 and Sunday Aug 7. Straight forward but tedious. To Nigej's points
 * 1. Agree - keeping it in one place make updating easier.
 * 2. I'd say start with top 10 for which most of the data is available (thanks to your work on List of male golfers who have been in the world top 10), then expand. Set a limit at top 50 or 100 or 200.
 * 3. Any player that has the OWGR template on their page could potentially be added but caution for older players.
 * 4. See above.
 * 5. I'd say either at the end of the "Career" section or in the "Achievements and awards" section, probably at the top after WGHOF entry.
 * 6. For #1s the list can be complete. The highest ranking is not given for some golfers anymore, e.g. Nick Price, but the ranking graph is still available but only goes back to 1989.
 * 7. Unfortunately, the women's rankings pages are not nearly as complete as the men's so I don't think they could be included, except maybe for the #1s.


 * Adding the current ranking would only be doable if it could be highly automated. Tewapack (talk) 21:06, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

This is Oogglywoogly. Here is my response:

- I think we should start with golfers that have been ranked in the top 10. Perhaps just golfers who peaked in 1980s and 1990s. I do prefer "completeness" and would like all golfers who have peaked in the Top 100 or Top 200 to eventually have a "Highest OWGR Ranking." It may take awhile but I think it can be done. A "highest ranking" exists for most ATP tennis players on their wikipedia.

- I think it should be at the end of their "Career" section rather than "Awards and Achievements." The highest ranking isn't an award and isn't necessarily a great achievement for all.

- I was thinking of just doing men at this point. Maybe we can move on to women later.

- For dates I like the idea of including the first and last week for highest ranking though I think this really is only important for #1s. Perhaps, if the player peaks for multiple weeks but all in the same month we can put include the month in the field.

Oogglywoogly (talk) 02:31, 25 September 2019 (UTC)Oogglywoogly

Template:Infobox golfer/testcases
Encouraged by the responses above, I have produced something more concrete. For all the 107 golfers who have reached the top-10 I have produced mini-templates showing what the highest ranking line in their infoxbox might look like. See Infobox golfer/testcases section "Test highest ranking" (remember to "purge" the page if that section is missing). This is basically taken from List of male golfers who have been in the world top 10. The date is the first occasion the player reached that ranking (mdy for USA and CAN, dmy for the rest) I have used a somewhat different style for those who have reached number 1 - there is a second line with the number of weeks they have been at number 1. For Koepka I have also added ", as of September 22, 2019", since he is the current number one. For those who have reached 2 to 10, I have added a second line eg (as of September 22, 2019) but only for those who reached their highest position in the last 5 years. Currently all 107 golfers are there but we may wish to remove the line from some golfers (eg Tom Watson). Three golfers have a * after their rankings (including Watson) as per List of male golfers who have been in the world top 10 "* The available data for 1986 is incomplete and this number may be incorrect. The number given is the player's highest known position." For others we may feel it gives a false impression since the peak of their career was before 1986. I have added a reference after the date to the OWGR data for that week (since it is in List of male golfers who have been in the world top 10) where available, but this can go if people think its excessive. Have also added a couple of hypertext links: "ranking" links to OWGR while the "1" for those who got to number 1 links to List of world number one male golfers.

Anyway, all just examples and open to any questions and comments, and to any mistakes you find. (I have a (hopefully complete) list of those who got to 11 or 12 and may add those later) Nigej (talk) 07:48, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Have added the 11s and 12s. Nigej (talk) 13:03, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you Nigej. Good work! I like what you have done and don't have many problems with it. I do have some questions/points though...

- Should we have the last week these players were at number #1 too? With players like Fred Couples or Nick Price the current information is enough I think (date of first week at #1 and number of weeks at #1). But with players like Norman and Woods I think we could also put the last date they were at #1? It might give a better sense of their dominance.

- For other golfers should we also put the first and last date they reached their peak? For example, Ronan Rafferty reached peak #16 for one week in 1990 and matched that peak for exactly one week two years later. I would suggest putting both weeks their and it gives a more accurate sense of his quality of play.

- I agree with the points about Watson and Nicklaus. I think having their "peaks" at something like #4 and #17 are definitely misleading. Perhaps we could place their McCormack peak ranking next to their peak OWGR ranking? And perhaps do that with others that earned both a McCormack and OWGR ranking?

Oogglywoogly (talk) 23:20, 25 September 2019 (UTC)Oogglywoogly
 * I have added the last date for the number 1s (to show what it might look like) with data from List of world number one male golfers. I've used the word "last" currently, but "ending", "lastly" or "to" are also options.
 * As to the general point about adding the last date. Personally I'm not convinced it really adds much and there's a danger here of "over-egging the cake": "keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article (an article should remain complete with its summary infobox ignored).". In the Ronan Rafferty example we can simply add your point to the text somewhere. In addition the field is growing to two or three lines, when one line is best. We could, of course, have more fields: "Highest ranking", "First date of highest ranking", "Last date of highest ranking" but, again, this is taking something fundamentally simple (a single number - their highest ranking) and making it more and more complicated.
 * Using the McCormack peak ranking is indeed an option for some players. Worth thinking about. Nigej (talk) 04:54, 26 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Stop I think a step back would be good to reconsider before going any further. Aside from adding additional clutter and massive maintenance overheads in the infobox. Who is going to regularly updated this information on all the hundreds of current players' articles? Most will not be updated for months if not years, or ever, until they win something - most will not. This discussion has also been solely focused on the men's professional rankings with little regard (if any) for women's professional rankings (briefly mentioned by Tewapack) and even amateur rankings. 51.6.155.94 (talk) 12:25, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I think you've entirely missed the main point of this thread, which is how to avoid the danger you talk about. In my first comment I said "The big problem is: how to keep it up to date". and also my point 7 was "I'm assuming that we're only considering the men at this stage.". The major reason for storing the rankings in a separate place (as proposed) is to aid maintenance. We will not need to "regularly update this information on all the hundreds of current players' articles" - just maintain this one file. Nigej (talk) 12:44, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Not really. The main point of the thread is discussing the addition of a largely meaningless statistic to the infobox. Aside from current and former world number ones, (peak) rankings are rarely if ever reported other than a sidenote after a win and/or players breaking (back) into the top-50 to qualify for majors/WGCs, etc., so I think it is a bit undue to place added prominence to it, except for said current/former number ones. 51.6.155.94 (talk) 13:24, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Fair comment, but a completely different one to the first point you made. Nigej (talk) 13:45, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, quite true. Wouldn't be adding anything if I just repeated myself, but had another thought so decided I'd throw it out there. 51.6.155.94 (talk) 14:01, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

It seems that we have refined the issue to a few points:

1. Is this proposed field relevant? Having originally made this proposal I obviously feel so but not everyone agrees. It would be good to hear from everyone involved.
 * I have a different take to that of the IP user above. As he notes, world number 1s are widely reported and also whether a player is in the top 10 or top 50. We not really in the business of maintaining a long list of current rankings but a player's peak level is, I think, something of interest. Of course, no one is particular interested whether so-and-so reached number 25 or 28 but the inclusion of eg "Peak ranking: 25" does, I feel, give an indication of their playing level at their peak. (having "Peak ranking: top 10" or "Peak ranking: top 50" seems unnecessarily vague when we know the exact number) Nigej (talk) 08:51, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
 * There really shouldn't be anything in an infobox that is not covered in the article, so to put it another way... Peak ranking is currently not mentioned in many relevant articles (if any, other than the No.1s & the odd No.2). Most articles don't even mention rankings at all. It isn't really anything more than statistical trivia. Being interesting, as statistics often are, is not enough to make it important & encyclopedic. 51.6.155.94 (talk) 13:23, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm left wondering what you make of the infobox in Dean Cosker which you recently edited. Nigej (talk) 18:38, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm sure the format of the cricketer infobox has been discussed at length at various times by those editing cricket articles & the merits of the data items considered for inclusion & decided upon by consensus. To quote from a recent discussion there when someone suggested another stat be added: "The general consensus seems to be that we have too much information in the infobox rather than not enough". A sentiment that might also be considered here. Anyway, MOS:IBX applies everywhere & should not be ignored simply because it is inconvenient; all the statistical info should also be in a section of the main body of the article (it wouldn't be that difficult to duplicate & expand details); like everyone who edits here, I'm not inclined to fix everything I touch, even if I had the time. 51.6.155.94 (talk) 20:44, 27 September 2019 (UTC)


 * I seem to recall suggesting this about five years ago when I first joined the Wikiproject. I don't remember why it didn't get implemented at the time, especially since it seems like several of the most active golf editors are in favor of it now. pʰeːnuːmuː  →‎  pʰiːnyːmyː  → ‎ ɸinimi  → ‎ fiɲimi  20:39, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

2. How viable is this proposed automated process for updating a golfer's "Peak OWGR" on Wikipedia from OWGR's website? My apologies if this has been answered but if a clear and concise answer could be provided below that would be great.
 * (not a full answer but to give an idea of the scale of the maintenance issue assuming we restrict ourselves to those who've ever reached the top 50) We are currently maintaining a list for anyone who's ever reached the top 10 (List of male golfers who have been in the world top 10) although we do not currently put this information into their infobox), so we are left with the 11 to 50 range. So far in 2019 we have 30 golfers in this category (who have been in top 50 in 2019 but never in the top 10): An Byeong-hun, Abraham Ancer, Kiradech Aphibarnrat, Lucas Bjerregaard, Rafa Cabrera-Bello, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Emiliano Grillo, Justin Harding, Tyrrell Hatton, J. B. Holmes, Billy Horschel, Charles Howell III, Im Sung-jae, Kevin Kisner, Satoshi Kodaira, Marc Leishman, Li Haotong, Shane Lowry (golfer), Kevin Na, Joaquín Niemann, Thorbjørn Olesen, Pan Cheng-tsung, Eddie Pepperell, Andrew Putnam, Chez Reavie, Cameron Smith (golfer), Kyle Stanley, Matt Wallace (golfer), Bernd Wiesberger, Gary Woodland. Shouldn't be too many more in the rest of the year. Whether we would check all these 30 each week I'm not sure, but given the proposal that we have an "as of" date in the infobox, it wouldn't particularly matter if they were updated somewhat less regularly and certainly an annual checkup would be very feasible. Nigej (talk) 08:51, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm surprised List of male golfers who have been in the world top 10 exists - seems like a lot of unnecessary work for what is essentially statistical trivia of little importance. 51.6.155.94 (talk) 13:23, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

3. Assuming it is viable there is one more major issue. Most retired golfers from the 1980s and 1990s do not have an OWGR peak on the OWGR's website (unless they have randomly played an OWGR event recently). This will be more difficult to add. How should we proceed?

Also regarding what I feel to be minor issues:

- I agree with Nigej that we only need one week for the golfer's "peak OWGR." My apologies if I complicated things before.

- I don't think we need to focus on women's and amateur rankings right now. We have enough to discuss.

- Perhaps we should start with golfers who have peaked in the Top 50. This might make it easier.

Oogglywoogly (talk) 02:21, 27 September 2019 (UTC)Oogglywoogly

I know Nijeg responded below and it looks like we're moving forward. However I wanted to give a response to IP: 51.6.155.94 about the main issues he brought up.

You mentioned that the MOS:IBX rules must be adhered to. I checked all the #11-50 golfers mentioned by Nijeg. 27/40 entries have their highest (at some point) OWGR ranking somewhere in the text, usually after their latest win. So while ignored a decent amount, it is nonetheless usually mentioned.

You mentioned how highest OWGR is rarely mentioned by the media other than a "sidenote" after a victory. While it is usually only mentioned after a player wins it doesn't strike me as irrelevant. Cameron Champ won yesterday on the PGA Tour. An article here https://progolfweekly.com/winners-circle-cameron-champ-claims-victory-at-the-safeway-open/ and here https://www.golfchannel.com/news/cameron-champ-jumps-100-spots-career-high-official-world-golf-ranking. The second one notes that this is his highest ranking ever. And Champ's highest OWGR is the subject of the entire second article. Also, a player usually doesn't receive a lot of media attention at all except when they win. Should the entire Wikipedia entry therefore only focus on their wins?

You also mentioned how this is adding irrelevant information to the infobox. The golfer's infobox usually includes family information (spouse, children) that is not included for other sports. It also includes all of their best performances at major championships, usually which are anonymous top 25s that receive no media attention whatsoever. Meanwhile, the "professional wins" category is overly capacious and includes just about everything; Padraig Harrington's 31 "professional wins" includes his 2 Open Championships and 6 Irish PGAs. The "highest OWGR" category seems much more valid than a lot of what's already there.

In general I feel like it is a good barometer to determine how good a player can be over the course of their career. I feel like there is nothing quite like it. The PGA Tour's Money List (and now FedExCup) and European Tour's Order of Merit (and now Race to Dubai) are nice but do not fully capture how good a player can be. The FedEXCup and Race to Dubai standings can be misleading because they give exponentially higher points at the end of the season. The Money List and Order of Merit are better in my opinion in determining year long consistency but have their shortcomings. Both of these metrics are only a year long (and used to be significantly shorter in the 1980s and part of the 1990s) and only compare the golfer to his peers on that tour. The OWGR is 2 years long and compares the golfer against everyone. That is also important because Wikipedia, unlike the PGA Tour or European Tour's website, it an encyclopedia that is inclusive and includes entries for all top golfers across the world. In general I just don't think there is anything else like it out there. It is the most parsimonious way of distilling loads of information (top tens, wins, money list, etc.).

Finally I think I don't think it is, in general, misleading. There are some examples (e.g. Camillo Villegas, Notah Begay) who reach the top 10 or top 25 in a particular 2 year window but then are barely in the top 100 again. Perhaps a "Highest Average Ranking" over the course of one's career would be better for players like that but nothing like that exists. Other than maybe Villegas or Begay are there other examples of highest OWGR that you find misleading?

Oogglywoogly (talk) 02:58, 1 October 2019 (UTC)Oogglywoogly


 * I'd say 27 out of 40 is far below the threshold for "usually" and the vast majority of articles don't even mention owgr ranking at all. Ranking is sometimes mentioned alongside a victory but not as often as you seem to think, especially outside of the PGA Tour. Of course there is a systemic bias towards the PGA Tour in how the rankings are calculated. It is also a mistake to focus on winners; most players ultimately never win, or win very rarely, and for these players their rankings will almost certainly never have been reported in the media. The rankings certainly do a job and can be a good indicator of the difference between players at any given time (at the top end; not so much once you go outside the top 20 or so), but beyond that they are contrived and reading anything more into them is fraught with problems. You say FedEx Cup/Race To Dubai points are skewed, but OWGR are even more so. For example, alternate events are awarded the tour minimum regardless of strength of field; Limited field events (<30 players) are awarded ludicrously high points, especially for those finishing at the back end of the leaderboard (often more than a top 5 finish in a full field event in Japan, say). WP may be inclusive, but there it is also not a collection of indiscriminate trivia, and for players who haven't reached the upper echelons of the rankings, that is exactly what this is. It is absolutely not an accurate reflection of their career or high point, as a much lesser player could be massively boosted by a freak result one week (think Shaun Micheel for an extreme example). One could argue that most players highest ranking is misleading as it often just reflects a golden run of form rather than sustained performance, or more often just a single unusually good showing one week. Take Cameron Champ; two wins (in relatively poor tournaments on the favoured PGA Tour) massively boost his ranking despite countless missed cuts, which have been his more usual performance level so far. 51.6.155.94 (talk) 13:28, 1 October 2019 (UTC)


 * It was actually 27 out of 30 golfers (40 ranking places) - so, yes, "usually". Tewapack (talk) 23:12, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Stage 1
Notwithstanding an objection from an IP user, there seems to be agreement to at least give this idea a go. The merit of the proposed approach is that, if at some point it is decided that it is not working, the field can be removed by blanking the "highest ranking" file (as a temporary measure) or removing the field from the infobox golfer (as a more permanent measure).

The first stage is to change the Infobox golfer template to that at Infobox golfer/sandbox. The main change is to add:
 * label21    = Highest ranking
 * data21     =

Some later fields have been renumbered to make room for this field (21). The new line is at the bottom of the "Career" section. There will be a search of the file Template:Infobox golfer/highest ranking. Lines in this file are of the form "|Golfers Name=Text". A search is made in the file, trying to find a match between the "name" field in the infobox and a "Golfers Name" in the file. If a match is found then "Text" is returned and this text is the right hand side of the field. If no match is found there will be no line produced. There is one complication: sometimes the "name" field contains additional text, eg for Lee Westwood it is "Lee Westwood ". Text from the first "<" is stripped away, leaving "Lee Westwood".

Infobox:Golfer is a protected template, so I will have to make a request for the change to be made in the talk page of the infobox. This can take a day or two. At this stage we don't have to worry about the form of the "text" field. We can firm this up later. We just need to be happy with where the new line is and with the left hand side, which is fixed ( Highest ranking ).

I'm assuming "Stage 2" will involve (1) defining any restrictions - seems to be some agreement to restrict ourselves (at this stage) to those who've reached the top 50, and (2) firming up on the form of the "text" field. Nigej (talk) 19:35, 30 September 2019 (UTC)


 * If (when) this change is made, it is quite likely that editors will start use the highest ranking field on articles of women or amateur players. As such, until a solution is agreed for those articles, I strongly suggest unlinking the word "ranking" (link to OWGR). 51.6.155.94 (talk) 21:31, 1 October 2019 (UTC)


 * We seem to have agreed to restrict ourselves to the OWGR top 50. I'm assuming that we will have "test/review" period after implementation when this is a firm restriction. Other entries will be removed. We may agree other things in the future (either to get rid of it or add to it) but I think that's for another day. Clearly if (when) we add the women, we would either need to remove the link or link to two different articles depending on whether it was a man or a woman. Implementation for amateur rankings is highly unlikely in the nearish future. Having said all that, I'm not averse to removing it if that was agreed, although my preference is to leave it as proposed. Nigej (talk) 05:52, 2 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but you miss the point Whatever is agreed here (between less than 5 editors) regarding usage is largely irrelevant to the rest (the vast majority) of editors; they don't read documentation.. Once the value is active, it is there for all articles, not just male professionals. Use of the template should be as simple & clear as possible and not require constant fixing/cleanup from those few "in the know". If someone were to add the number 1 to Lorena Ochoa or number 2 to Paula Creamer, that should be acceptable, and there should not be any reason to remove it. It would only be the link that was "wrong" because it sends the reader to an unexpected destination. It is always possible for editors to link the value itself, e.g. No. 1] ], or [[List of world number one male golfers|No. 1] ], if that is really desired. This is how it is done with [[Template:Infobox tennis biography, which is the only other example I can think of where there are mens/womens/other rankings. 51.6.155.94 (talk) 09:36, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It is there for all articles, but only by editing the Template:Infobox golfer/highest ranking file. This is completely different to the tennis system where the data is put directly into the article. As noted above the system is more comparable to the current snooker rankings which are stored in Template:Infobox snooker player/rankings. Also Module:SportsRankings is used for various national current rankings, where eg Module:SportsRankings/data/FIFA World Rankings contains all the data. Nigej (talk) 08:54, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

NB. In label21 I have changed the "OWGR" to "Official World Golf Ranking" since OWGR is a redirect. Nigej (talk) 05:54, 2 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Perhaps a WP:Tooltips that links to both Official World Golf Ranking and Women's World Golf Rankings would be more useful. Tewapack (talk) 14:11, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

We are live on this now. As of this instant only the data for Shaun Micheel exists but I plan to add more soon, once I've done some checking. Check out Template talk:Infobox golfer for the discussion about this, which focused on whether we should be using wikidata for this sort of stuff. The field currently uses Highest ranking but I'm happy to make a further edit request in the next few days once we've decided what we want - should be straightworward. Nigej (talk) 05:55, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Stage 2
I'm planning on adding some text at the top of Template:Infobox golfer/highest ranking to the effect that we are in an interim phase where we are considering the merits and practicality of the highest ranking field and that we are currently restricting ourselves to those who've reached the top 50 of the OWGR. I'm expecting us to add most of these fairly quickly (see User:Nigej/sandbox for a first stab at the list of players). I'm thinking that we can review where we are in the new year when we've seen how the weekly update goes and how much effort is required. We also need to firm up on the format of the text in the highest ranking field. Nigej (talk) 05:58, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

I have added a short section to Template:Infobox golfer/doc direcitng interested parties to Template:Infobox golfer/highest ranking where I have added some firm instructions. I have reinstated the earliest list: complete list of those who have reached at least 12 + major winners since 1986 (hopefully complete).

Seems to me that we have (at least) two issues to resolve:

1. Form of the text. I have made a stab at this. Points to consider (i) I have put a link like this 1 for number 1s (ii) For number 1s there is a second line showing the number of weeks they have been number 1 (iii) For the current number 1, Brooks Koepka, I have added "(29 weeks, as of September 29, 2019), but I haven't included the "as of" date for any other number 1s (iv) For non-number 1s I have added "(as of September 29, 2019)" (or 29 September 2019) only for those golfers who reached their highest ranking since the start of 2015 (see eg Bubba Watson) but not for anyone who reached their highest ranking before that date (see eg Henrik Stenson). My logic being that the "as of" date is useless for older golfers (certainly for Payne Stewart). Is 5 years a suitable cutoff for this "as of" date? (v) the final date they were at the ranking or the number of weeks they were there are not included (except number of week 1 for number 1s) (vi) I'm thinking we should perhaps use date in the text, especially for the "as of" date. 29 September 2019 produces 29 September 2019 and would make the weekly updating easier since there'd only be 1 style, not 2 (vii) data for 1986 is not complete and we have some golfers whose peak ranking is unclear. I have commented out 3 of these for now that reached the top 10, eg Calvin Peete. The same issue will happen for some golfers where we know they reached the top 50 but can't absolutely say what their peak ranking was (eg Denis Watson who reached at least 29 http://dps.endavadigital.net/owgr/doc/content/archive/1986/owgr30f1986.pdf). We have 3 options for these situations: leave the peak ranking out, include the peak ranking we know (with some sort of disclaimer), include a more vague statement like "Top 10" or "Top 50". Of course many of these golfers were at their peak before the rankings started (eg Jack Nicklaus.

2. As a longer term issue, we need to review the commitment to update the data, the effort required and indeed the accuracy. I suggest that we look againat this aspect in the new year, when the system has been going for a few months. At that stage we can also consider how to proceed in terms of the women golfers. Nigej (talk) 08:46, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Is it necessary to specify the week of the highest ranking as opposed to just the year or the month? pʰeːnuːmuː  →‎  pʰiːnyːmyː  → ‎ ɸinimi  → ‎ fiɲimi  18:52, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I guess not, since the reference gives the extra details. It would save space too I guess (eg Shaun Micheel: "February 8, 2004" or "February 2004" or "2004") Other sports I looked at do give an exact date. Nigej (talk) 19:04, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I'd stick to the exact date. Tewapack (talk) 20:24, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Problem with refs
The references provided for the infobox data only verify what the ranking was on the date given; they do not verify the more important piece of information - that the ranking given is the highest ever attained. For the vast majority, the only reliable source available will generally be the OWGR profile page, and even then only when they have a profile page which gives that information - for most older/former/retired players it does not. I have only checked a very small sample (less than 10) but most do not have valid references for the highest ranking; see Billy Mayfair, Steve Elkington, Justin Leonard, Loren Roberts. It would be WP:OR if someone is collating & determining the highest rankings from historical weekly rankings. I've not spent a whole lot of time searching, but I haven't found any reliable source (there is golfrankingstats, but I have reservations about that) to verify most of even these 4 examples. 51.6.155.94 (talk) 21:39, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned above, the data is available on the player's OWGR page if you click on the "Ranking Graph" and narrow the search window to the peak ranking. Tewapack (talk) 22:47, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The highest ranking must be explicitly stated to avoid WP:OR problems & it's a stretch to say it's in a graph, since the information provided there must be manipulated & analysed to determine the highest ranking. It also wouldn't resolve the issue of the provided reference not verifying the ranking given as being the highest. 51.6.155.94 (talk) 14:23, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Personally I wouldn't say that delving into the innards of a web site and extracting data, or making trivial deductions from the data, was original research; more like donkey work. But what you say is clearly true, the reference given only confirms that the golfer reached at least that ranking. Various options come to mind. As you noted earlier, an ideal solution would be to provide references in the article text. An alternative would be to remove the date and use the OWGR page for golfers whose peak ranking is noted there (the more recent golfers). For those where it is not noted (the earlier ones) we could say "Top 10" or "Top 50". Nigej (talk) 05:39, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
 * If OR is indeed not an issue (maybe worth asking at the relevant noticeboard), then the graph seems to be the most suitable source for use as a reference, as it does (despite requiring manipulation/deductions) confirm both the highest ranking and the date(s). As it's really just the ranking we're after, the date probably doesn't really need to be noted in the infobox. 51.6.155.94 (talk) 20:24, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Is anything being done to remedy this problem? 51.6.155.7 (talk) 10:05, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * As another IP user noted earlier, one solution is to include suitably referenced information in the articles. Nigej (talk) 10:50, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Take a look at Paul Azinger, I've added a ref to his OWGR Ranking Graph which verifies both the peak ranking and the date. Short term, a similar ref could be added for everyone to Template:Infobox golfer/highest ranking. Long term, I'd suggest noting the peak ranking in the article text, if it isn't already there, and moving the refs from the infobox to the text (deleting the refs from Template:Infobox golfer/highest ranking and adding a comment that the refs are in the article). That way the refs are in the article and not in the highest ranking file which works but is a bit wonky. Tewapack (talk) 15:57, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * or perhaps a direct link to the graph at http://www.owgr.com/en/Ranking/RankingGraphPage?playerID=20 rather his home OWGR page. All 400 golfers in the list use the OWGR template (in the External links section) so the playerID for each player is readily available. Nigej (talk) 16:27, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * If we use the link directly to the ranking graph, I don't see a way to click back to the player's main OWGR page, which for recent players, explicitly states the peak rank. The advantage to the ranking graph is that it states the player's name whereas the player's main OWGR page doesn't for older players. Tewapack (talk) 17:21, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

First stab at top 50
Tewapack and I have had a binge and added 399 golfers to the Template:Infobox golfer/highest ranking that all reached the OWGR top 50. A number are commented out: Tom Watson (golfer), Andy Bean, Calvin Peete, John Mahaffey, David Ishii, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Hubert Green, Masahiro Kuramoto, Dan Pohl, Howard Clark  (golfer), Graham Marsh, Jim Thorpe  (golfer), David Graham  (golfer), Don Pooley, Denis Watson, Tateo Ozaki, Naomichi Ozaki, Roger Maltbie, Chen Tze-chung, Doug Tewell, Gordon J. Brand, José María Cañizares, Gary Koch. These are golfers from the 1980s. Either the player was near their peak in 1986 (where the available data is incomplete) or they were past their best and giving a peak ranking is confusing (eg Jack Nicklaus and Tom watson who were number 1s in Mark McCormack's world golf rankings). The list (currently at User:Nigej/sandbox) is almost certainly not complete. It was generated mostly from end of year top 50s. Probably some who were only briefly in the top 50 will have been missed. Let me know if you find anyone missing (or add them yourself). Still only partly checked, so some work required there. Nigej (talk) 09:48, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Good work with the world rankings guys. Works well in the infobox. Think I'd probably remove the date next to the highest ranking if it were me just to make it less cluttered, but up to you guys. Particularly like that the references are auto included also to keep everything transparent. Hope it is not too much of a pain to update going forward! Jopal22 (talk) 21:26, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
 * How come Victor Dubuisson is double dated (date he reached highest, and current date) when other players don't seem to be? Jopal22 (talk) 21:37, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Currently those who reached their highest ranking in the last 5 years have the "as of" date appended. Earlier ones don't. It is assumed that older golfers are unlikely to ever reach that level again (and that is clearly true for golfers from the 1980s/1990s). It would be better to have something based on their current ranking perhaps, so that it is only included for those currently somewhere near their highest ranking, but that is not readily available in the data file, whereas the date of highest ranking is. As it is someone like Dubuisson (who highest ranking was in 2015 and who is currently 418) has it included while Ryan Moore (golfer) (who highest ranking was in 2014 and who is currently 84) doesn't. Not the best but I think the Patrick Cantlay change this week shows the merit of the "as of" date (given that weekly updating is not guaranteed to be too quick - since it depends on the effort of volunteers). Open to suggestions, that don't involve too much maintenance. Nigej (talk) 06:06, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * First weekly change (6 Oct 2019): Updated world number 1 weeks: Koepka, 13 risers in top 50, including 1 re-entry, only Cantlay reached new high (changed high ranking/date/reference). Updated "as of" dates using global edit in external editor (since all "as of" date are the same). Nigej (talk) 06:11, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Completeness
I would like almost all golfers who have turned pro since 1986 and have a Wikipedia profile to have their highest ranking included on their template. I think we have established that the highest ranking in general is valuable. I believe it is valuable for those outside of the top 50 too. It has been mentioned that we should not include a peak ranking for golfers at a peak ranking of #645 or #1807 because it is trivial. I believe this is true. However golfers like that don't have Wikipedia pages. Only golfers who have had a decent amount of success (usually at least top 200 in the world at some point) have Wikipedia pages. Therefore almost all of those golfers should have highest ranking noted on their template.

I said "almost" earlier though; there are some caveats. I'm not sure if amateurs who have just turned professional should have a highest ranking because it will be misleadingly low (e.g. Victor Hovland). It will be a pain to constantly update. Also, the "straddlers" (golfers who played after 1986 but peaked or may have peaked before 1986): I believe that all golfers who had a McCormack ranking at some point should have that peak ranking on their template. I also believe that golfers who had both a McCormack and OWGR ranking should have both peak rankings on their template.

Now if we want to go about this there are some questions. Is there a systemic way to do this? Can we easily populate highest OWGR for these golfers outside the top 50 from the ranking graph? Also, there are many retired, non-active golfers whose highest ranking is not listed on their OWGR page. Should these rankings be added manually?

Oogglywoogly (talk) 22:06, 9 October 2019 (UTC)Oogglywoogly
 * A few numbers: we have about 3,600 golfers using infobox golfer of which about 2,960 are men. Only about 1,410 of these men have the OWGR template in the "External links" section. Obviously many men pre-date the OWGR system but other, more recent, golfers do not have the OWGR template when they should. Roughly 2,000 of the men have been born since 1950. Obviously some of these were notable as amateurs, so I'm thinking the number covered by the OWGR system is about 1,800. But see eg Ty Tryon whose peak ranking was 520 or Mithun Perera (peak 370), as examples of those who probably shouldn't have their peak ranking noted. Nigej (talk) 19:06, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

To Nigej, Tewapack, Jopal22 Ok, so we've already added the highest ranking of several hundred golfers (maybe around 500?) so it looks like we just have 1,300 relevant ones left. I think this can be done. Even if it needs to be done piecemeal I think it is manageable. I can guarantee I will add at least several hundred of these rankings. With dozens of golf editors and a limitless amount of time I see no reason why this cannot be accomplished. What do you think?

Oogglywoogly (talk) 22:42, 15 October 2019 (UTC)Oogglywoogly
 * A bit of an update. There is still an ongoing discussion/development on the use of the Wikidata system to replace the one implemented. The merit would be that the data could be updated weekly and then used directly when someone looks at the article. In my system there is an overhead in that, whenever someone looks at any of the the 3,600 articles with the golfer infobox, there is a search for the name of the golfer in the data file. I have rejigged the file a little to make it more efficient but it is still an overhead. I am also in the process of generating a complete list of those who've made the top-100. Currently I have about 330 names for those who have reached 51-100 to add to the 400 who have reached 1-50. I'm thinking the 1-50 list is probably complete. We had articles for all but two of these. I have created Rikuya Hoshino, a Japanese golfer who reached 94 a few weeks ago, leaving just Seungsu Han missing. Seungsu Han (aka Seung-su Han, Steve Han), is an American of Korean origin who plays mostly in Japan and reached 78 in early 2018. Nigej (talk) 17:09, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I have generated the top-100 list by cutting and pasting from the pdfs on the OWGR website, generally every 10th week (weeks 1,11,21,etc). This works from 1996. Before that I've used some OCR (which is much more effort). I've then used some wizardry to generate the list. To try to find those who've fallen between the cracks I've done some google searches eg "site:www.owgr.com "BEST OWGR POSITION: 100" which produces the name Romain Langasque who reached exactly 100 for one week (2019 week 29) who was missed by my every 10th week search. This works well for recent golfers but earlier golfer do not have the "BEST OWGR POSITION:" text in their article so some earlier ones will be missing. Quite a lot of effort but perhaps worth it as a one-off exercise. Nigej (talk) 17:36, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Found number 401. Brad Bryant reached 50 for 1 week. Have to eat my hat now. Nigej (talk) 13:00, 17 October 2019

Nigej how have things progressed with adding numbers 50-100? I do not see them added yet. Oogglywoogly (talk) 22:32, 24 October 2019 (UTC)Oogglywoogly
 * I've added 51 to 60 (76 new entries, eg Alexander Björk). I'm thinking that the list is basically complete (always bearing in mind that I might well have made mistakes). 60 is used by the U.S. Open (golf) for their qualifying. Worth noting the issue of weekly updates: clearly it requires more effort as the number of golfers covered increase. Still planning to get to 100. Nigej (talk) 06:34, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Now added 61-100. Found 328 in the range 51 to 100 to add to the 401 (1 to 50), making 729 (some commented out for reasons noted above - mostly golfers from the 1980s). 1 article missing (Seungsu Han) as noted above, the other 728 articles exist and have the infobox golfer. Probably a few missing who popped into the top-100 for a brief period, especially pre-2000. 729 is 40% of the ~1,800 articles we have that are male pro golfers who've played since 1986, so a decent start. Nigej (talk) 18:12, 29 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you Nigej for your hard work! This must have taken an extraordinary amount of time. It is much appreciated. I do have a number of questions/comments but most are fairly tedious. Most importantly, I was wondering if we could add the remaining 1,000 or so post-1986 golfers with Wikipedia pages who have an OWGR. I guess the big issues are:


 * - Is this technically feasible? I assume the process would be the same as adding the top 100 to the template. But are there additional technical impediments that did not manifest themselves in the top 100?


 * - It has been mentioned that some golfers' (e.g. Ty Tyron, Mithum Perrera) OWGR is trivial and therefore should not be mentioned. I actually don't agree. With Tyron his very low peak OWGR (it was mentioned it was something like #525) is, I think, accurately indicative of his weak professional career. It should be there. Similarly, with Mithum Perrera I don't see why his peak OWGR should not be mentioned. He has been a pro since 2011 and the sample size is sufficient enough to justify a peak OWGR ranking. I do agree that golfers with a small sample size and have only played a few developmental events should not have their peak OWGR on their Wikipedia page as is trivia. But - most importantly - those players don't have Wikipedia pages to being with. Only notable golfers have Wikipedia pages.


 * Oogglywoogly (talk) 04:19, 7 November 2019 (UTC)Oogglywoogly
 * I am in the process of collecting together a list of those who've been in the top 200. During this process I have found a few more that made the top-100 but were missed by original search. Looks like there will be about 500 or so in the 101-200 range. Going beyond 200 is more problematic. The OWGR site has weekly rankings since the start of 1987 that cover the top 200 (expanded to the top 300 only since 2008). So if we go beyond 200 we must rely entirely on the information in the players OWGR page without (in general) the possibility of checking that data against the ranking list produced at the time. It seems that (for older rankings) the rankings in the players OWGR page have not been generated by extracting the rankings from the original rankings list but by a back-fitting exercise - regenerating the rankings. This occasionally causes problems since the back-fitting is not 100% perfect and doesn't always produce exactly the same ranking as the original list. One example relates to Payne Stewart. He was removed from the rankings from 21 Nov 1999. Whoever has done the back-fitting has made of mess of things. He has been given no rankings points for the two years before this (see eg http://www.owgr.com/en/Events/EventResult.aspx?eventid=2105) so that he does have no ranking points on 21 Nov 1999. However this means that his rankings in the two years before his death are all wrong. http://dps.endavadigital.net/owgr/doc/content/archive/1999/owgr25f1999.pdf shows that he was ranked 11 after his 1999 US Open win, but http://www.owgr.com/en/Ranking/PlayerProfile.aspx?playerID=200&year=1999 has him at 324. This has a knock-on effect for most of the other players in this period. eg Justin Leonard was 12th after the 1999 US Open but http://www.owgr.com/en/Ranking/PlayerProfile.aspx?playerID=5603&year=1999 has him at 11 (and Tsukasa Watanabe was 200th but http://www.owgr.com/en/Ranking/PlayerProfile.aspx?playerID=432&year=1999 gives him at 199. My main point is that it is very dangerous to rely entirely on the data in the player's OWGR page without being able to confirm it from the contemporary rankings. The other issue relates to the effort and accuracy of keeping the data up to date. In summary: my own view is that 200 seems a natural limit given the data available. In addition OWGR uses 200 for its assessment of the strength of the field (http://www.owgr.com/about). Personally I'm not 100% convinced that going beyond 100 is a good idea. Nigej (talk) 10:00, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Some remain unconvinced that going beyond 10, 20 or 50 was a good idea, but that ship seems to have sailed. I'd be interested to know how much time needs to be invested on a weekly basis to keep things up to date for the top50/top100/top200? (I don't see this task being automated?). 51.6.155.29 (talk) 18:13, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
 * You have made a good argument that we should limit it to 200. I agree with that. However, I don't see the shortcomings of adding 101-200. Will there be additional technical impediments? Right now it looks like you are doing a good job with updating peak OWGR on a weekly basis. (I see Victor Perez added from last week.) Why would adding 101-200 be any different?


 * Oogglywoogly (talk) 03:48, 11 November 2019 (UTC)Oogglywoogly
 * There's no technical difficulty in going to 200. The data is there. As to effort: This week took me about 15 to 20 minutes, which personally I don't thnk is too bad. I've wasted way more time than that today doing useless things. Process is (1) go to http://www.owgr.com/ranking (2) update weeks for Koepka (3) 15 of the 100 improved their ranking from last week (green arrow) so only they need checking. 8 of these were new highs, 7 existing players: Imahira, van Rooyen, Perez, Kitayama, MacIntyre, Waring, Hébert and 1 new to the top 100: Schwab. The highest ranking needs changing for the 7. Schwab needs a new entry. The 7 need to have their reference changed to this week - but it is the same all 8 (except for the dmy/mdy style), so can basically just cut and paste (4) copy whole file to Notepad, do global replace of "2019-11-03" to "2019-11-10" and copy back (5) save and do some checking, especially Schwab. Nigej (talk) 16:49, 11 November 2019 (UTC)


 * That's not too bad, but of course there were very few changes this week with the PGA Tour on a bye and very few of the top 100 in action. Probably get a better indication next week. However, doing a quick scan of past rankings, on a normal week we should expect 25 or more players moving up. (FWIW, beyond the top 100, there is much greater volatility.) Presumably this would push the work required up to well over half an hour per update. The concern being, the more the overhead there is, the less likely it is that anyone would reliably pick this up if you were to stop (after all, there are only a handful of active WP:GOLF contributors). To that end, has the process been documented for when someone else needs to pick it up? As the process relies on "changes since last week", in order to take account of any missed weekly updates it should probably say: "get hold of all weekly ranking sheets since the last update", rather than "look at the current ranking". 51.6.161.113 (talk) 19:38, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The logical conclusion from your point is that we should abandon the golf project completely because we rely on a handful of editors. Nigej (talk) 20:49, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes I will abandon WP Golf and work on WP articles about 19th century English authors. Was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein a retelling of her honeymoon with Percy Bysshe Shelley? Maybe if I dig hard enough I can find some reliable sources to back up a conclusion one way or another....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 21:35, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the sarcasm & logical fallacy. When initiating something that requires weekly manual maintenance to avoid becoming wildly out of date/inaccurate/irrelevant/defunct, it would make sense to keep that maintenance task to an absolute minimum, but instead the scope is ever increasing. This increase in workload is inversely proportional to its value and any improvement to WP. There is a lone contributor doing all the work on this, and it would seem unwise to assume others would step up in their absence. 51.6.161.113 (talk) 23:01, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
 * i still think you're being overly pessimistic. You're argument does imply that we shouldn't create articles for current players because we can't guarantee that they will be maintained. It is true, of course, that we need to be sensible. However, I'm of the view that this stat is encyclopedic and of interest to our readers. See recent article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/golf/50340084 "Chris Kirk (right) is now the world number 303, having climbed as a high as 16th in the rankings". If we look at tennis, they have, for instance, Category:ATP Tour navigational boxes and Category:WTA Tour navigational boxes. 150+ templates which need weekly updating and I'm left wondering whether Top Peruvian male singles tennis players really is of sufficient interest to warrant a weekly update. They also have to update the rankings for all active players each week (singles and doubles, current and highest). Our highest ranking parameter seems decidedly modest in comparison. It is true that I can do the updating because I am a man of leisure, but I'm confident that others will step up to plate should I abandon the updating. And if not, it can readily be removed. Nigej (talk) 09:31, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The method used includes a "correct as at date", therefore even if it isn't updated it should be clear to the reviewer at what date the information is correct up to. Jopal22 (talk) 09:37, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Another logical fallacy. There is a world of difference between articles that are edited & maintained by casual editors (including unregistered ones) and maintaining a semi-hidden statistic - the casual editor will be happy to update a single article they have interest in but not so much a datafile. The debate is not about highest ranking itself but about where the line is drawn; maintenance task aside, peak rankings outside the top 50 are rarely mentioned (and usually only for breaks into the top 100 - the actual number is secondary and as such further progress is generally overlooked unless/until 50 is reached) and those outside the top 100 are almost never reported on. There seems to be a desire to expand the scope to the top 200, but it already seems excessive at 100. (Sorry but for many reasons, the WP:TENNIS comparison has no validity) 51.6.161.113 (talk) 11:03, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

51.6.161.113: I am sympathetic to some of your reservations but largely agree with Nigej that you are being overly pessimistic. Below are my responses:

- You seem to be worried that Nigej may abruptly stop updating Peak OWGR. I don't see it. He is an incredibly reliable editor and is perhaps the best golf editor we've ever had. He has 57,000 edits (yes 57,000) and has created hundreds of pages over the past 13 years. I just don't think he is going to abandon the project abruptly.

- Now of course he can't do it forever and maintaining a datafile is a lot of work. I agree it is more difficult than updating text. When he stops, however, I think there is a good chance that someone else will take over as there are a lot of technically competent people on wikipedia. Also, while it is impossible to know for sure if someone will take over the standard your have created (certainly about the future) is equally impossible.

- If someone doesn't take over we just do it piecemeal. I don't think this is a big problem because, as Jopal22 mentioned, it has an "As of" date so the Peak OWGR may be out of date but not necessarily inaccurate. Meanwhile, most big jumps in Peak OWGR come with a win. Golfers' Wikipedia page is always updated after a win which does includes a decent amount of effort (adding to - or even creating - the win table, adding to "Professional Wins" in the template, editing text). Changing the peak OWGR and "as of date" does not require much more effort.

You also have reservations about expanding to the top 200. My response is below:

- You have questioned whether the "top 200" is a valid concept. There are not a lot of references in the media to it but they do exist. For example, CBS Sports references how the top 200 barometer signifies that a golfer is still "relevant." Golf Digest has an article about Ho-Sung Choi; it references how finally reaching the top 200 was a big milestone in his career. This website notes how OWGR creates their Strength of Field category based on the top 200.

- Nigej noted that from 1987 - 2008 (i.e. the majority of OWGR's existence) the OWGR only ranked the top 200.

- Lastly, we are already halfway there. It seems a bit odd to stop at the top 100 when OWGR has historically measured the top 200 and only the top 200. Meanwhile, almost all post-1986 golfers on Wikipedia will have peaked within the top 200 so we are excluding very few.

Now I do admit there is more volatility from # 101-200 and many of those golfers will ultimately peak in the top 100. Maybe for active players perhaps we can just update the top 100 but for retired post-1986 golfers we can include their #101-200 peak. I personally don't really care if a young developmental tour player just peaked at #161 or whatever as it very likely doesn't represent his ultimate peak.

Oogglywoogly (talk) 05:47, 18 November 2019 (UTC)Oogglywoogly


 * Any responses from 51.6.161.113 and Nigej?


 * Also, I noticed some typos in one sentence in the third paragraph above. They aren't huge but may lead to some confusion so I have produced the grammatically correct paragraph below. Corrections are in italics.


 * "Now of course he can't do it forever and maintaining a datafile is a lot of work. I agree it is more difficult than updating text. When he stops, however, I think there is a good chance that someone else will take over as there are a lot of technically competent people on wikipedia. Also, while it is impossible to know for sure if someone will take over the standard you have created (certainty about the future) is equally impossible."


 * Oogglywoogly (talk) 06:18, 22 November 2019 (UTC)Oogglywoogly
 * Sorry for delay responding but back in action now. Sometimes life means we can't guarantee to be 100% reliable but many of us do return after brief periods of inaction. As you say it would be possible to have different criteria for retired golfers than for active ones but whether that's a good thing I'm not sure. I'm still planning to produce a )reasonably complete) list of those who've made the top 200. Still planning a review of where we are and where we might go in the new year. Nigej (talk) 16:09, 28 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Sounds good. Let's touch base in January.
 * Oogglywoogly (talk) 02:32, 2 December 2019 (UTC)Oogglywoogly

Top 200
How should we move forward? Do we just add #101-200 for retired post-1986 golfers?

Oogglywoogly (talk) 22:28, 8 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywoogly
 * Will respond in a couple of days, if that's ok. Nigej (talk) 15:27, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Ok.

1974 Los Lagartos Open
I am suspicious if Roberto de Vicenzo actually won the Los Largartos Open in 1974. We know that Jacklin won the tournament in February 1974 because their is a primary source for it (Glasgow Herald). It does say on the PGA Tour's website that de Vincenzo won the tournament in 1974 (presumably much later in the year, like Nov or Dec). However I am unsure for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is because this is the only year that the event would have been held twice in the same year. The event was held for 11 straight years, it appears always in Feb or March, and then suddenly for the last edition they move it to the fall??? Meanwhile, we don't have a primary source for it; the only source we have is the PGA Tour's website. Usually the tour's website is pretty good but here I am suspicious. First off, it does not list any details of this victory under "1974 season," only next to one bullet point among a list of all of the hundreds of events he won. The other four Los Largartos events he has won have brief descriptions. I get the sense that the tour may have accidentally added a Los Largartos victory, perhaps getting confused amidst all of the events that he won (including all of the Los Largartos wins). There was also another event entitled the Los Largartos Grand Prix held around this time - maybe they are getting confused with that. Thoughts?

Oogglywoogly (talk) 00:58, 8 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywooogly
 * https://www.pgatour.com/players/player.05163.roberto-de-vicenzo.html calls his wins "Los Lagartos Open"; its http://www.worldgolfhalloffame.org/roberto-de-vicenzo/?tab=achievements that uses "Lagartos Grand Prix". The Los Largartos Grand Prix seems to have been a later event (see Luis Carbonetti 1979) but a google or newspaper search turns up no primary sources, so presumably it didn't attract American or Brits. Whether there was a Los Largartos Grand Prix that de Vicenzo won in 1974 is impossible to tell. One thing that is clear is that his 4 earlier wins were not in the Largartos Grand Prix, the event was called the Los Largartos Open or Los Largartos International Open or similar. I'd be inclined to remove the final entry from Los Lagartos Open (second 1974) and change the first four entries in Roberto De Vicenzo to say "Los Lagartos Open" instead of "Lagartos Grand Prix", removing the link for the fifth one. We have a redirect from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lagartos_Grand_Prix&redirect=no to Los Lagartos Open but that can be deleted if we ask. Nigej (talk) 09:28, 8 January 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree; the "5th" win does not appear to be the same tournament as the earlier 4. As noted in an earlier discussion, the WGHoF website is surprisingly poor when it comes to accuracy of tournaments won and their names. I seem to remember finding lots of useful information on the Federación Colombiana de Golf and various related websites (e.g. host clubs) in the past. 51.6.161.113 (talk) 21:06, 8 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes, I feel that one of the websites inaccurately noted that de Vicenzo won that year and the other copied it. It seems we have developed a consensus that de Vicenzo did not win that year. Should we change it?
 * And yes it seems that his wins description on his wiki page is inaccurate. He won the Los Largartos Open, not Los Largartos Grand Prix, four times in 1965, 1966, 1968, and 1969. That should be changed. (Perhaps a new wiki page could be created for the Los Largartos Grand Prix to help distinguish the events.) Also, the re-direct should be eliminated as they are obviously two distinct events.


 * Oogglywoogly (talk) 22:18, 8 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywoogly


 * It just came back to me! The Los Lagartos Grand Prix was a tournament in Argentina (held at Los Lagartos Country Club, Pilar, Buenos Aires), whereas the Los Lagartos Open was a tournament in Colombia (held at Club Los Lagartos, Bogota). 51.6.161.113 (talk) 22:31, 8 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes the Los Largartos Grand Prix was definitely a different event. I was thinking of creating a separate wiki page for it but I don't think it'll work. No reliable sources come up when I try to google it. Even on wikipedia only a few winners names come up (e.g. Carbonetti, Franco). It just looks like it doesn't have enough media attention to justify notability.


 * Regarding de Vicenzo's 1974 "victory"... I think we should delete it. I think we have enough misgivings to warrant the deletion.


 * Oogglywoogly (talk) 01:57, 10 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywoogly


 * This confirms the 1969 win was his last in Colombia: . As such, I have made the changes. 51.6.161.113 (talk) 11:42, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

So, from existing WP articles, we have the following winners of the Argentine tournament:

Yes we have some of the victors but not most of them. And we don't have any reliable third party sources for the tournament - we need three or four. If you want to make a wiki page out of this that is up to you but I wouldn't advise it.

Oogglywoogly (talk) 01:44, 14 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywoogly

Tournament names
moved Desert Classic to The American Express because of the new sponsored name. Isn't standard practice to use an unsponsored name as long as one is available? It seems like we went through this last year with the Fort Worth Invitational. pʰeːnuːmuː →‎  pʰiːnyːmyː  → ‎ ɸinimi  → ‎ fiɲimi  19:12, 26 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes. Even though the PGA Tour (and some broadcasters) tend to refer to all past editions by the current (sponsored) name, we should always continue using the generic (unsponsored) name whenever possible. Sometimes this can become difficult when the generic name changes, which does happen quite frequently, but there is usually a fairly obvious choice. Both names (and any significant other ones) should be mentioned (in bold) in the lead section; e.g. The State Tournament, (currently) known as the Big Bank Championship for sponsorship reasons, ... 51.6.161.113 (talk) 20:47, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I went ahead and moved it back. pʰeːnuːmuː →‎  pʰiːnyːmyː  → ‎ ɸinimi  → ‎ fiɲimi  06:53, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Malaysian Dunlop Masters
I was wondering if you have more information on this event. I was looking a to make a page about it.

I have a primary source for the 1974 event. Also it states on Simon Owen's wiki page that he won the event in 1978. Owen was a fairly well known player (finished runner-up at the British Open that year) but I cannot find any primary sources for his win or anything else on this event. Do you have anything?

Oogglywoogly (talk) 02:48, 14 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywoogly


 * See: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/42270875/standardspeaker/ which https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Search?ST=1&AT=search&k=%22Chen%20fires%20sizzling%2064%22 and https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/250162273?searchTerm=malaysian%20masters&searchLimits=l-decade=197|||l-year=1978 confirms is the same event (mention Dunlop). Clearly Chen Tze-ming won by 15 strokes but Simon Owen took the money. Generally little coverage of this event in the western press. Nigej (talk) 11:39, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
 * https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=8OY9AAAAIBAJ&sjid=jEgMAAAAIBAJ&pg=4783%2C806825 Yutaka Suzuki won in 1977. Nigej (talk) 12:34, 14 January 2020 (UTC)


 * https://www.where2golf.com/golf-tournament/malaysian-masters.asp has odd details. Nigej (talk) 18:55, 14 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you! This will help me make a page of it. I have some questions though:


 * 1) I cannot find any information about Yutaka Suzuki's victory on the Glasgow Herald link you provided. Where is it?
 * Down and right. Mentions "Britain's Paul Downes ..." Nigej (talk) 07:51, 17 January 2020 (UTC)


 * 2) I have a direct quote from Owen where he states he won the 1978 Malaysian Dunlop Masters. In addition, it says he won the event on his wikipedia page (albeit without a citation). Now I definitely still believe these primary sources where it says Chen won. But is it possible that Owen could also be considered the champion because he got the first prize money?
 * No, we wouldn't include it as a win, unless there were clearly separate professional and amateur sections which wouldn't be the case here. Worth noting in the tournament article though. See eg Shane's Lowry's win in the Irish Open (golf) for one possible style. In the 1962 Jeyes Tournament there were separate "sections". Generally a player's own list of their wins should be taken with a pinch of salt since they have a vested interest in inflating their achievements. Nigej (talk) 07:51, 17 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Oogglywoogly (talk) 03:41, 17 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywoogly
 * There is this too: Volvo Masters of Malaysia but whether it is in anyway related is impossible to tell. Nigej (talk) 08:01, 17 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I believe I have enough to make a page now. Some final questions/comments:


 * 1) Yes, players sometimes inflate their achievements but I've never heard of a player state they won a specific event when they didn't. Seems a bit odd. I will make sure to note that Owen picked up First Prize money.


 * 2) The looks like the other events you list (Malaysian Masters and Volvo Masters) are not related to the Dunlop event. If I find evidence that they are related I will be sure to note that.


 * Oogglywoogly (talk) 21:37, 17 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywoogly

1975 Western Province Open
With much assistance from Nigej (thanks!), we have been compiling & cross referencing the early Sunshine Tour seasons from various sources (at User:Wjemather/Sunshine Tour), it would appear that the final 3 Western Province Opens were as below. I can find no evidence for an edition being held in 1975, although our article states Allan Henning as the winner with a score of 288 (but typically, no sources!) – I'm thinking it could be a misreading of the scores in this source (top of 3rd column).

Does anybody know any different? 51.6.161.113 (talk) 18:41, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I had come to the same conclusion. Seems to be a mistake. Nigej (talk) 18:51, 18 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Likewise I have no evidence that Henning won the 76 event or that there was a 1976 event. This sort of thing seems to be a trend on these pages...

Oogglywoogly (talk) 21:13, 18 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywoogly

New pending page
People may have comments on this or be interested in it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_talk:Ben_Silverman_(golfer)

--2604:2000:E010:1100:1D06:C657:E7B:7CFE (talk) 09:00, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Highest ranking in golfer template
See WT:GOLF to get up-to-date on the issue. I promised a review of the issues in the new year, which is now.

Current situation
The system has been running for about three months with the list currently restricted to those who have ever reached the top 100. Some who have reached this, have their entries commented out (for reasons see earlier discussion). The list is complete (as far as I can tell): 745 golfers. The following table summarises the weekly changes since moving to the top-100:

Koepka, as world number 1, has his number of weeks increased by 1 each week. As you can see an average of 25 or so need checking each week and an average of 6 need updating. A new golfer enters the list every two weeks or so.

From my perspective the system seems to working relatively smoothly but I'd be pleased to receive any comments on the system as currently implemented. Nigej (talk) 18:07, 20 January 2020 (UTC)


 * As per my earlier comments, the weekly ranking lists that are being used as references do not support the given ranking as being the highest achieved. This needs to be addressed. 51.6.161.113 (talk) 19:01, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Possible extension to top 200
I have generated a list of those who've reached the top 200 but never the top 100. These are in User:Nigej/sandbox (might be a bit out of date). About 530 of these, not exactly household names. Whereas we have articles for all of those who've got to the top 100 there about 50 of these with no current article. The list is not complete because I have only checked every 10th week or so, but is likely to include nearly all those who got near the top 100. Obviously the weekly updating would be roughly twice as much effort. Any thoughts? Nigej (talk) 18:07, 20 January 2020 (UTC)


 * If they have a Wikipedia page then they are fundamentally notable players. I don't see why their peak OWGR would be any different.


 * That being said I only really want to update retired #101-200 players. There is way more volatility between #101-200 and many of those will ultimately peak in the top 100. For retired players it gives a greater sense of their quality of play over the course of their career. For example, when I see the peak OWGR for Brian Claar or Dicky Pride or Brian Henninger it doesn't seem off. For active players, a lot of these #101-200 guys are at the beginning of their career - their peak OWGR just isn't particularly representative of their quality of play. Also, a lot of them may be stuck in developmental tours where it may be difficult to earn many OWGR points anyway. In addition, it will a lot less work if you just do the retired players.


 * Oogglywoogly (talk) 20:47, 22 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywoogly


 * Just a point of note on the OWGR ranking itself – it is not an equitable system and outside of the very elite is a very poor measure of quality of play at any time during a player's career, especially historically when the rankings calculation favoured US-based players even more than it does now. Outside of the top-100 (even outside top-50) players are very rarely competing in the same events with the "elite", so it becomes more reflective of the tour/tournaments being played than the true standing of the player (not everyone wants to live & play in the US), with lesser US-based players (like the 3 you mention) benefiting the most. This disparity increases substantially further down the rankings as tour minimum points allocations start to apply. 51.6.161.113 (talk) 09:59, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

The Players Championship being given the "List of" treatment
Does anyone here think that the Players Championship should have a companion "List of" page, the same that each of the major pages have? Johnsmith2116 (talk) 21:36, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I'm not a fan of the articles we have at the moment which seem to simply repeat information in the main article, eg List of The Open Championship champions, with some rather uninteresting tables at the end. I could see some logic if the main article, The Players Championship, was overly large and the list of winners was removed from the main article. Personally I'd be inclined not to bother. Nigej (talk) 21:59, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree with Nigej, I find the tables in the main article better than the lists.Jopal22 (talk) 22:08, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Likewise; I've never been a big fan of "List of..." articles in this context as they tend to be a magnet for original research and indiscriminate statistical clutter. 51.6.161.113 (talk) 13:53, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I definitely agree that the list should be retained in the main article. It's never made sense to me that you can't find a list of Super Bowl or World Series winners on those articles, since that seems like the main reason that someone would look them up in the first place. pʰeːnuːmuː  →‎  pʰiːnyːmyː  → ‎ ɸinimi  → ‎ fiɲimi  20:02, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm reminded of the Ryder Cup where the results were hived off some years ago into List of Ryder Cup matches. Perhaps the results ought to be brought back in with some of the historical stuff hived off, since as you say the results are what people expect to find. Nigej (talk) 20:24, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah. Winners lists are always the quickest and easiest things to split out when looking to reduce article size, even if it makes the least sense. It's much more work splitting out other sections, e.g. "History of..." (for the Ryder Cup, I'd include "notable editions" in that), as a good concise summary needs to be written. 51.6.161.113 (talk) 11:22, 19 December 2019 (UTC)


 * It seems odd that the other majors have a "list of" page but the Players doesn't. Deep Fried Eggs (talk) 23:03, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * The Players is not a major. 51.6.161.113 (talk) 10:02, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

1976 General Motors Open
Same deal here as de Vicenzo's last "win" at Los Largartos. Gary Player allegedly won this event in 1976 but we have no primary source. The only source - like de Vicenzo's case - is the PGA Tour's website. And this time it's only a press release, not even the player's page. Like the Los Largartos situation, it seems like the PGA Tour got confused among all of Player's victories at this event (and perhaps, like de Vicenzo, all of his wins in general). Further weakening the source's credibility, the press release appears to get the name of the event wrong in multiple examples.

The other sources we use for the General Motors Open are the Glasgow Herald and the Age. I intended to look through the November and December 1976 issues of these papers. Unfortunately the late 1976 issues of the Glasgow Herald are not available on Google News. However the Age is accessible and I could not find any information on this alleged event. (Incidentally I did find an article on Player winning the South African Open during this era). We should probably delete this. Thoughts?

Oogglywoogly (talk) 02:08, 14 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywoogly
 * If you go to Player's Sunshine Tour page (you can via his Wikipedia article, ext links) and look through Career Highlights you'll find the 1975 win but nothing later. Probably the 76 win is the same event. Very common to refer to 1975/76 season as 1976. Nigej (talk) 09:02, 14 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes, very usual for Nov/Dec wins to be classified as the following year on the Sunshine Circuit due to the wraparound season, so that win is likely to be in Nov/Dec 1975. I'm working through the schedules at the moment (having found a decent source for them) – should get to 75/76 later this week. 51.6.161.113 (talk) 22:13, 14 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Having finished piecing together snippets from p.1944 of The Allied Book of South African Sport & Sports Records, there is no General Motors event listed after the General Motors International Classic early in the 1975/76 season (Dec 1975). As such, I'd have to say it's probably an error in the other sources (which incidentally includes Players own website!) caused by how seasons are referred to by year, and the "1976 General Motors Open" is the same tournament as the "1975 General Motors International Classic". 51.6.161.113 (talk) 12:16, 16 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you for this information! I have deleted his 1976 win from the General Motors page and from his own page.


 * To prevent this confusion from happening again I think it is much more sensible to refer to Australian and South African wins by season rather than calendar year. For example, see my recent edits to the "Professional Wins" totals for Walter Godfrey (golfer) and Graham Henning.


 * Oogglywoogly (talk) 03:30, 17 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywoogly


 * I disagree on using season instead of year. If the year is known, use it, if not then the season is OK. Both tours have used both calendar year and seasonal year schedules. Tewapack (talk) 04:14, 17 January 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree – we should definitely be using the year whenever possible, and that is what the vast majority of publications use (even if they get it wrong occasionally!). That being said, there may be some merit in adding the season (in parentheses) for clarity or when it differs from the year played. 51.6.161.113 (talk) 15:45, 17 January 2020 (UTC)


 * It seems a very odd that they primarily refer to calendar year since the seasons are not organized like that. Nonetheless, if that is what they do we must follow it. Do either of you have published materials from the Sunshine and Australasian Tours where they refer to calendar year rather than seasonal?


 * Oogglywoogly (talk) 21:27, 17 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywoogly
 * Surely the Australian season is currently based on the calendar year and has been for some time. Q-school being played now https://pga.org.au/qualifying-school/?class=aus for the new season. Nigej (talk) 21:45, 17 January 2020 (UTC)


 * See the tour’s order of merit lists on there pages. Tewapack (talk) 22:07, 17 January 2020 (UTC)


 * It looks like it. Just seems odd they would construct their seasons like that given there is usually such a huge gap of non-play between March-October.


 * Tewapack, is there a way we could some use your primary source information about the Australian Tour from 1973-2006? I know what you have is a physical document but we may be able to use it somehow.


 * Oogglywoogly (talk) 23:42, 22 January 2020 (UTC)Oogglywoogly


 * FYI, the Sunshine Tour also tried a calendar based schedule for a few years (2007–2015) before reverting to seasonal. 51.6.161.113 (talk) 10:07, 24 January 2020 (UTC)