Rory McIlroy to return to World No.1 next week
Published: Last updated:
Rory McIlroy is set to reclaim the World No.1 ranking spot next week, without even picking up a golf club
Brooks Koepka’s streak of 38 weeks at the top of the World rankings ends next week, as Rory McIlroy will reclaim that mantle for the first time since 2015 – despite neither of them playing this week.
McIlroy is currently just 0.1898 points behind Koepka, but his average points (the points which determine a players ranking), will go up after this week, seeing him return to the top spot.
Simply put, average points are worked out over a two year cycle, meaning McIlroy’s MC from the 2018 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am will no longer be counted after the weekend, and his average will go up.
It comes just a couple of weeks after McIlroy’s T3 at the Farmers Insurance Open, where a win would have seen him overtake Koepka. Jon Rahm also had his own chance as recently last week if he had been able to win the Waste Management Phoenix Open, but instead settled for his sixth top 10 in a row. Rahm, the current World No.3, is also not playing this week.
It will be McIlroy’s eighth stint as World No.1, having first reached it after the 2012 Honda Classic. His longest stint was 54 weeks, from August 2014 to August 2015.
“I think it’s always cool when you attain that ranking for whether it’s the first time ever or the first time in a while,” McIlroy had said prior to the Farmers.
“It’s a pretty cool feeling. I don’t think it irks me or gets me annoyed if I’m not holding that position. If I go about my business and I try to do the right things all the time, if I play well enough for a sustained period of time, hopefully I get there.”
