In the most recent issue of Disc Golf World, we unveiled the Disc Golf World Rankings, showing the top 25 men’s open players. In the article we also promised to provide weekly updates here at DGWN.com.

True to our word, we are ready to go live with the week 14 rankings. The results will be updated every Monday. As a bonus, we decided to take it up a notch and provide rankings for the top 100 players. Women’s rankings are in the works and will be included soon.

The top 100 is the brainchild of box scores guru John Chapman. In the DGW article Chappy explains his methodology:

The new DGW rankings employ a different methodology than Chuck Kennedy’s PDGA Rankings, which use player ratings as a primary factor. The DGW rankings don’t make use of player ratings at all. Instead, we’ve made our rankings based on the results from PDGA Major, National Tour, and SuperTour results from the past two years, as well as other large events (such as Southern Nationals Championships and the Marshall Street Championships). Here are the main principles: A-Tier wins are worth 30 points, NT wins are worth 40 points, and major wins are worth 70 points.

We only took results from the open division, so you’ll probably notice a lack of masters players here. In order to get ranked high in the DGW Rankings, you need to be playing in the toughest division.

The top 40 percent of players in the field will score some points, but the points drop fairly quickly, sort of like a tournament payout.

A “strength of field” factor is applied to each event as well. Not all SuperTours are created equal. The Charlotte Open may have had a tougher field than the Eric Yetter, for example, so someone who wins the Charlotte Open will garner more points than the Yetter winner. This is determined by the number of top players in the field.

Recent results are weighted heavier than older results. The most recent six months are double-weighted, the next oldest six months are weighted one and one half times, 13-18 months ago weighted singly, and the 19- to 24-months-old tourneys are weighted by one half.

The men’s and women’s point totals (when we have them) won’t mean anything in comparison to each other. Where the PDGA player ratings are roughly equivalent to one shot per 10 points of rating, our numbers are just an index of comparison. They have no special meaning other than that.

Also, there is a minimum number of events (currently set at 18). What I mean by this is that each player’s index is determined by the total number of points earned, then weighted according to how long ago the tournaments occurred, divided by the total number of tournaments played. If that player has fewer than 18 tournaments (major, NT, or A-Tier) in the last two years, we will divide his total points by 18 to get his ranking index number. This means that a player who competes in just a few events is less likely to be ranked as high, even though he did very well in the events he played. This also means there aren’t as many international players on this list. I expect that will fix itself over time as more and more A-Tiers are played internationally. Those are the rankings in a nutshell. Enjoy
-John Chapman

Link to Rankings