Women's World Golf Rankings

The Women's World Golf Rankings, also known for sponsorship reasons as the Rolex Rankings, were introduced in February 2006. They are sanctioned by 12 women's golf tours and the organisations behind them: Ladies Professional Golf Association, Ladies European Tour, Ladies Professional Golfers' Association of Japan, Korea Ladies Professional Golf Association, WPGA Tour of Australasia, Epson Tour, China Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour, the Ladies European Tour Access Series, Taiwan LPGA Tour, JLPGA Step Up Tour, KLPGA Dream Tour, and Thai LPGA Tour and also by The R&A, which administers the Women's British Open and the United States Golf Association which conducts the U.S. Women's Open.
On December 2025, the Annika Women's All Pro Tour would be added to the Rolex Rankings, starting in April 2026.
The idea of introducing a set of women's rankings similar to the Official World Golf Ranking was developed at the May 2004 World Congress of Women's Golf, and was first planned for 2005, but then put back to 2006.

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Calculation of the rankings

The rankings are based on performances on the eight major tours over a two-year period. Amateur players are eligible. The system for calculating the rankings is similar to that for the men's Official World Golf Ranking. Players receive points for each good finish on the relevant tours, with the number of points available in each event depending on the strength of the field, as determined by the competitors' existing rankings. The only exceptions are the five LPGA majors and all Epson Tour, CLPGA and LETAS events which have a fixed-point allocation, presently 100 points for the majors. Rankings are weighted as to the time elapsed over the two years, making the recent results more important.

Original formula

When the rankings were first introduced in February 2006, a player's ranking as calculated in the above description was divided by the number of events played, with a minimum required events of 15 over the previous two years. In addition, players were required to play in a minimum of 15 eligible events over the previous two-year period to be included in the rankings.

Formula revisions

On August 2, 2006, the Rolex Rankings Board and Technical Committee announced following its bi-annual meeting two changes to the ranking formula.

The elimination of the minimum event requirement. Players would no longer be required to participate in 15 qualifying events to be included in the rankings and could be included after playing in as few as one qualifying event. This change would also have the effect of permitting amateurs who had played well in one event to be ranked.
The introduction of a minimum divisor. Where previously a player's point total was divided by the number of events she played over the previous 104 weeks, now the player's point total would be divided by the greater of the number of events played or 35. Thus, players with 35 or more events over the previous 104 weeks would continue to use the actual number of events played as the divisor, but players with fewer than 35 events would use 35 as the divisor.

Many commentators saw the latter change as directed at Michelle Wie, who at the time was ranked second in the world despite having competed in only 16 women's professional events in the two-year period. However, the chairman of the Rolex Rankings Technical Committee defended the change as one designed to make the women's rankings more comparable to the Official World Golf Ranking for men, which use a minimum divisor of 40 events.
On April 16, 2007, another modification in the formula was introduced. Instead of points being awarded on an accumulated 104-week rolling period, with the points awarded in the most recent 13-week period carrying a higher value, points began to be reduced in 91 equal decrements following week 13 for the remaining 91 weeks of the two-year Rolex Ranking period rather than the seven equal 13-week decrements previously used. This modification did not have an immediate impact on the rankings.

Criticisms

When they were introduced the rankings attracted considerable criticism on two grounds. First, it was widely felt that members of the LPGA of Japan Tour were ranked too high, since few of them had competed successfully outside Japan. Second, the minimum of 15 events needed to qualify for a ranking was widely seen as having been selected purely to enable Michelle Wie to be highly ranked because she had played exactly that number in the preceding two years, while every other highly ranked player had played many more events. If the women's rankings used the same system used for the men's rankings – that is a minimum number of events of one but a minimum denominator of 40 to calculate the average points per tournament – Wie would have been just outside the top 10. But under the women's ranking system where only players who had played a minimum number of events were included, if the minimum number of events had been set higher than 15, Wie would not have been ranked at all.
The August 2006 revised formula addressed the second criticism. The technical committee that administers the rankings urged patience with regard to the first criticism, since the continuing "strength of the field" weighting of tournaments may correct the issue without any technical changes being made.

Significance of the rankings

The rankings are used by each of the sponsoring tours to determine eligibility criteria for certain events. For example, 40 of the 144 places in the Women's British Open are currently awarded on the basis of the rankings—10 to LET members and 30 to LPGA members. Four of the 12 places in the European Solheim Cup team are allocated on the basis of the rankings. For the U.S. Solheim Cup team, the top two players on the rankings not already qualified make the team.
Since 2013, the rankings at the end of each LPGA Tour season in odd-numbered years have determined the eight countries that will compete in the following year's International Crown, a LPGA-sponsored team event scheduled in even-numbered years and first held in 2014. More specifically, the countries whose top four players have the highest cumulative rankings are invited to compete. The individual participants from each qualified country are determined by the rankings immediately prior to the ANA Inspiration in the year of the event.

Current top ten

Rank	Change	Player	Country	Points
1		Jeeno Thitikul		12.18
2		Nelly Korda		7.03
3		Minjee Lee		5.56
4		Miyū Yamashita		5.44
5		Charley Hull		5.39
6		Lydia Ko		5.05
7		Yin Ruoning		4.39
8		Kim Hyo-joo		4.10
9	1	Kim Sei-young		4.06
10	1	Mao Saigo		4.04

Change column indicates change in rank from previous week.

Notes

World number ones

No.	Player	Country	Start date	End date	Weeks	Total weeks
1					60	60
2					158^	158
3					7	7
4					1	1
5					3	3
					1	2
					3	10
					1	4
					9	11
					1	5
					15	25
6					109	109
7					4	4
8					59	59
					21	25
					14	73
9					19	19
					19	92
					85	104
10					2	2
11					19	19
12					1	1
13					23	23
					14	106
					3	5
				28 October 2018	10	11
					18	23
					5	16
14					12	12
					4	20
					100	112
15					17	17
					2	114
					12	29
					39	154
16					2	2
					2	31
					21	125
					4	35
					7	163^
					2	37
17					4	4
18					2	2
					5	9
					2	4
					19	28
					71	108
	*			Present	26	28

Total weeks at No. 1

Rank	Player	Country	Weeks	Order	Majors
1			163	14	2
2			158	2	2
3			125	9	3
4			109	6	5
5			108	15	2
6			106	8	7
7			60	1	10
8			28	17	2
8	*		28	16	0
10			25	3	2
10			25	7	2
12			23	13	1
12			23	10	2
14			20	12	2
15			19	11	2
16			11	4	0
17			5	5	2
18			4	18	1

Year end No. 1

Year	Player	Country
2006	Annika Sörenstam
2007	Lorena Ochoa
2008	Lorena Ochoa*
2009	Lorena Ochoa*
2010	Jiyai Shin
2011	Yani Tseng
2012	Yani Tseng*
2013	Inbee Park
2014	Inbee Park
2015	Lydia Ko
2016	Lydia Ko*
2017	Shanshan Feng
2018	Ariya Jutanugarn
2019	Ko Jin-young
2020	Ko Jin-young*
2021	Nelly Korda
2022	Lydia Ko
2023	Lilia Vu
2024	Nelly Korda
2025	Jeeno Thitikul

Weeks at No. 1 by country

Rank	Country	No. of players	No. of weeks	Players
1		5	333	Jiyai Shin, Inbee Park, Ryu So-yeon, Park Sung-hyun, Ko Jin-young
2		4	166	Cristie Kerr, Stacy Lewis, Nelly Korda, Lilia Vu
3		1	158	Lorena Ochoa
4		1	125	Lydia Ko
5		1	109	Yani Tseng
6		1	60	Annika Sörenstam
7	*	2	51	Ariya Jutanugarn, Jeeno Thitikul
8		2	27	Shanshan Feng, Yin Ruoning
9		1	11	Ai Miyazato

Year-end world top 10 players

Year

No. 1

No. 2

No. 3

No. 4

No. 5

No. 6

No. 7

No. 8

No. 9

No. 10

2006

Historical rankings

Annika Sörenstam of Sweden topped the first set of rankings, which was released on Tuesday 21 February 2006. Paula Creamer ; Michelle Wie ; Yuri Fudoh ; and Cristie Kerr took the other places in the top 5. The top one hundred players in the initial rankings came from the following countries:

25: South Korea
23: Japan
21: United States
6: Australia, Sweden
5: United Kingdom
4: Taiwan
2: France
1: Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Philippines

Rank	Player	Country	Points
1	Annika Sörenstam		18.47
2	Paula Creamer		9.65
3	Michelle Wie		9.24
4	Yuri Fudoh		7.37
5	Cristie Kerr		6.94
6	Ai Miyazato		6.58
7	Lorena Ochoa		6.10
8	Jeong Jang		4.91
9	Hee-Won Han		4.49
10	Juli Inkster		4.11

Rank	Player	Country	Points
1	Annika Sörenstam		17.41
2	Lorena Ochoa		9.87
3	Karrie Webb		9.39
4	Paula Creamer		8.13
5	Cristie Kerr		8.04
6	Juli Inkster		7.75
7	Michelle Wie		6.83
8	Jeong Jang		6.09
9	Yuri Fudoh		5.98
10	Ai Miyazato		5.79

Breakdown by nationality

A breakdown of the year-end top-100 by nationality.

Country	20 25	20 24	20 23	20 22	20 21	20 20	20 19	20 18	20 17	20 16	20 15	20 14	20 13	20 12	20 11	20 10	20 09	20 08	20 07	20 06
	32	30	32	31	30	35	40	39	41	40	39	39	41	38	37	36	35	31	32	26
	18	16	21	20	15	12	14	11	10	10	11	14	17	18	22	22	20	21	23	24
	16	18	14	18	22	23	20	24	22	22	21	18	19	17	15	18	22	23	20	23
	5	8	6	5	5	3	3	4	3	3	2	1	3	1	1
	5	5	4	3	4	4	3	3	5	3	2	3	1	3	3	5	5	4	4	4
	4	4	4	4	3	2	1	2	2	1	2	3	2	5	4	3	4	7	4	6
	4	3	2	1	3	3	3	2	2	2	2	2	1	1	2	1	2	2	1
	3	2	3	4	3	5	4	4	3	2	3	3	1	1	2	3	2	2	3	2
	2	1	2	2	1	1	1		1	1	2	3	2	1	1	3			2	3
	2	1	1	1	3	2	1	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2		1
	1	2	1
	1	1	2	1	1	2	2	2	2	3	2	3	3	3	2	2
	1	1	1	2	1	1				1	1	1	1	1	1	1
	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	2	1									1
	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1		1							1	1	1	1
	1	1		1	2	2	2		1	2	1	1				1
	1	1
	1
		1	1	1	1
		1	1					1	1
		1			1		2	2	2	2	3	2	3	2	4	3	3	4	3	3
			1	1						1	1	1	1	1	1	1	2	1	3	1
			1			1	1	1			1			1	1
				1	1													1
				1
					1	1														1
									1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
											1	1		1					1	1
											1	1								1
													1	2	1		1	1		1
																	1	1	1
																			1
																				1