ORLANDO, Fla. – At last week’s mandatory meeting at PGA National, players were told that the better they performed on the course, the higher they would climb on the newly created and wildly esoteric Player Impact Program list.
But the final product, which was released to the public Wednesday, strongly suggests otherwise.
Atop the list, to no one’s real surprise, was Tiger Woods. Never mind that he didn’t hit an “official” shot in 2021 or that he remained largely hidden behind the walls of his gated community since a horrific car crash in late February. Despite his inactivity and seclusion nearly everyone at last week’s meeting agreed that Woods, the engine that has powered golf through the last two decades, deserved every one of those $8 million he was awarded for winning the PIP.
Some, however, see a program awash in secrecy and complicated formulas – the PIP score is compiled from five criteria, Nielsen ratings, Google searches, MVP Index, Meltwater Mentions and Q-Rating – that has little, if anything, to do with a player’s performance on the course.
“I was floored when I saw that,” said one player early Wednesday at Bay Hill. “They [the Tour] told us the better you play the better your ranking but look at that list.”
Beyond Woods – and Phil Mickelson at No. 2 on the PIP after declaring a far-too-early victory in December, but that’s a column for another day – the list includes Rory McIlroy (third), Jordan Spieth (fourth), Bryson DeChambeau (fifth), Justin Thomas (sixth), Dustin Johnson (seventh), Brooks Koepka (eighth), Jon Rahm (ninth) and Bubba Watson (10th).
Three players from the top 10 didn’t win a Tour event in the PIP window, which ran from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31 – Woods, Johnson and Watson – and Watson wasn’t particularly competitive in ’21. Although he had three top-10 finishes during the calendar year, one of those (T-8 at the Zurich Classic) was a team event and he was never in serious contention. He didn’t even qualify for the final two playoff events.
But Watson does appear to check all the right boxes on social media with a Twitter account of 1.8 million followers and he published a book, “Up and Down,” in the fall.
By comparison, Patrick Cantlay has made it clear he has no interest in social media (his Twitter account has just 32,000 followers) and yet won three times in ’21, was voted the Tour’s Player of the Year and has become one of the circuit’s most outspoken players on a wide range of topics. He wasn’t among the top 10 on the final PIP list.
In an e-mail to players, the Tour outlined how each PIP score was compiled using those five categories. “Year-to-date data for each measurement criterion is gathered and aggregated” and “the raw data for each category is checked and normalized.”
Some, like McIlroy who is one of the four player directors on the policy board, seem to have a good grasp on exactly what all that means.
“You look at the 10 guys that are on there, and they’re the 10 guys that have been at the top of the game or have been around the top of the game for a long time,” McIlroy said. “Everyone’s seen the five metrics that go into it and how everyone ranked in those metrics. I feel like it’s a pretty self-explanatory system.”
But the breakdown of each category does create a new set of questions. Woods ranked first on Tour in Google searches, Meltwater Mentions and eighth in Q-Score. He ranked 43rd in Nielsen ratings, which is the only category that can be tied directly to a player’s performance on the course, for an overall score of .9664. Mickelson’s overall score was .9307, which was .0273 better than McIlroy in third.
A breakdown of the PIP standings and the category ranks for the top 10: pic.twitter.com/h7PoZ6UuVa
— Golf Central (@GolfCentral) March 2, 2022
Full-field tee times from the Arnold Palmer Invitational
Only slightly less surprising than Watson’s position on the list was Johnson at No. 7. The former world No. 1 has 873,000 followers on Twitter and isn’t particularly active on social media other than the ubiquitous sponsor and tournament support. He also, by his own lofty standards, didn’t have a great season, going winless in a calendar year for the first time since 2014.
Johnson topped out in Meltwater Mentions, which is based on a player’s “earned media” or “number of unique news articles that include a player’s name,” and was fifth on Tour but was 22nd in Nielsen, which was the third-lowest Nielsen score among the top 10.
The Tour has explained that “negative” press would be filtered out of the PIP equation but what’s defined as “negative” remains a moving target. Was Woods’ car crash in February, and the monsoon of coverage it generated, part of the algorithm? What about DeChambeau and Koepka’s high-profile social media spat, which dominated headlines throughout the summer?
Woods’ status as the social and traditional media centerpiece remains unchallenged in golf and even Mickelson, who has come under heat in recent weeks for his criticism of both the Tour and the Saudi-backed super league, is still among the game’s top influencers. As Jon Rahm said Wednesday, “I know I’m not going to beat Phil and Tiger – Tiger got to win the PIP by hitting three shots in a 3-second video.”
But the inaugural PIP list creates many more questions than answers.
The program was created to reward the game’s stars and there has always been an impressive level of support for that concept. As for how, exactly, that should be done, isn’t nearly as clear.
