OWGR: Will Zalatoris rides first win to No. 9, Dustin Johnson falls out of top 20
In one weekend, Will Zalatoris notched his maiden victory on the PGA Tour, usurped Scottie Scheffler for the No. 1 spot in the FedExCup Playoff rankings and bulldozed his way into the top 10 of the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time in his career.
The 25-year-old Wake Forest product jumped from No. 14 to No. 9 in the world following his exciting playoff win against Sepp Straka at the FedEx St. Jude Championship.
The move initiated a domino effect, knocking Nos. 9-13 all down a spot. U.S. Open winner Matt Fitzpatrick was one of those dominos, dropping out of the top 10 to No. 11. Meanwhile, Tony Finau took a step back to No. 14 after jumping from No. 16 to No. 13 thanks to back-to-back Tour wins earlier in August.
Inside the top 10, the only other movement came from Jon Rahm and Xander Schauffele, who swapped places. Rahm is now No. 5 while Schauffele has dropped to No. 6.
Dustin Johnson dropped out of the top 20, from No. 18 to No. 21, while rookie Joohyung “Tom” Kim rose two spots to No. 19.
Almost all the LIV defectors took a slight hit to their ranking, but most notable of the group was Patrick Reed, who competed in an Asian Tour event in order to try and gain some world-ranking points. He tied for 31st in Singapore and actually fell from 46th to 49th in the world. Meanwhile, Lee Westwood is close to dropping out of the top 100 after falling five spots from No. 93 to No. 98.
Coming off top-10 finishes at TPC Southwind, Sepp Straka jumped 26 spots to No. 43, Trey Mullinax 38 spots to No. 130, Lucas Glover 49 spots to No. 82, Brian Harman 11 spots to No. 36 and Andrew Putnam 26 spots to No. 118.
In case you missed it, the OWGR moved to a modernized, field rating-based system last week. You can read more about it here.