What Is an Elo Rating in Golf?

If you follow professional golf, you're probably familiar with the Official World Golf Ranking OWGR. It's the system the sport has relied on for decades to rank players across professional tours and determine who qualifies for things like the majors.

That's all well and good for professional players but what about the average joe? What about your weekend warrior who's practicing at the range trying to improve their game for their next round with their mates?

That's where elo.golf comes in.

Using the same ranking system as used in the world of chess we've been able to rank not only professional players but also the general public

What is the Elo rating system?

The Elo system was invented by physicist Arpad Elo in the 1960s to rate chess players. The core idea is simple:

1. Every player starts with an initial rating or their initial points.

2. Then as you play head-to-head matches against other players you'll win or lose points based on whether you won, lost or drew the match.

3. When two players compete, the one with the higher rating (aka more points) is expected to win. The bigger the difference in their ratings the more they are expected to win.

4. If the higher-rated player wins, they take a small amount of points from their opponent. If the lower-rated player pulls off an upset, they can take a lot of points from their opponent.

The beauty is that great players need to be careful as a loss to a lower ranked player could really pull them down. Similarly for lower ranked players a big upset could push them up the rankings!

Over time, every player's rating converges on a number that accurately reflects their current skill level — no committees, no subjective weighting, no politics. Just maths.

How does Elo work for golf specifically?

Golf isn't a one-on-one game like chess, in a golf tournament you're normally playing against an entire field that could be over 100 players.

But in every golf round, whether professional or casual there's a game within the game.

The game of competing against your tee time playing partners.

In professional golf they call this 3-ball or 2-ball matchups. In amateur golf it's just you teeing off at the same time as your mates and seeing who gets the best score.

We've done this tee time analysis on years worth of PGA tour data to rank the best players in the world.

And we've opened this up to the general public to start submitting their scorecards and getting ranked themselves.

Why use Elo rankings over the OWGR?

Elo rankings are dynamic. They change daily as matches occur. This gives you a more live, current understanding of the players skills.

The best players still get to the top but a good player needs to keep their good form going to stay there.

Additionally Elo Golf automatically caters for things like time of day weather conditions. Perfect conditions in the morning but rainy and windy in the afternoon? Elo Golf handles this by only comparing you against the player you tee off with.

Can the general public use Elo too?

Absolutely. That's one of the most exciting parts. Elo can rank you whether you're playing the Masters or a Saturday morning four-ball at your local public course. You just play golf as normal, submit a scorecard and you're done.

We break up rankings into "leagues". There are professional leagues and public leagues. Anyone can compete in the public leagues and get points. Even Tiger Woods could submit a scorecard.

What's more, submitting a scorecard is entirely free. Our goal is to inspire people to play more golf and meet more people so next time you play, submit a scorecard and start building your rating!