Quiz – Can You Name All The Male Golfers Who Have Been World No. 1?

Can you name the World No. 1 golfers?

The first of the World No. 1 golfers was named in the first Official Golf World Ranking which was in the week before the The Masters of 1986. The man behind devising the system of rankings, Tony Greer, remembers that it “landed like a lead balloon” in the US because the top three players were European.

However the R&A adopted it for qualification for that year’s Open Championship, with the top 40 players on Official Golf World Rankings gaining exemption for that year’s Open Championship.

What the R&A started, others then copied and now the US Open and the The Masters also give exemption to the top 50 on the world rankings – as does The Open now, having upped the limit from the original 40. The top 50 in the world also qualify for three of the World Golf Championship events, and the rankings also determine Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teams.

The first rankings were decided by performances over the preceding three years with a system of weighting which gave greater emphasis to the more recent performances. Originally points in the preceding year were multiplied by 3 and those from 1 to 2 years ago doubled. In 1987 this was tweaked so that points in the previous 52 weeks were now quadrupled rather than trebled.

In 1996 the ranking was changed to consider only performances over the preceding two years, with points for the most recent year doubled. The methodology for calculating the Official Golf World Rankings has continued to be tweaked. 

In March 2022 Scottie Scheffler became the 25th different person to be the World No. 1 golfer. Can you name the previous 24 World No. 1 golfers? You have six minutes to do so. You need only enter the player’s surname to answer.

We have plenty more golf quizzes for you to test your golfing knowledge against. Or of you fancy a further test of your knowledge of golf’s world rankings, how about taking on our quiz on the first Official World Golf Ranking. Or perhaps you may wish to challenge your friends to see if they can match your score on this quiz?