Tiger Woods Faces World Ranking Threat, May Drop Off OWGR by 2026
Source: Pixabay
Tiger Woods is still grappling with injury and has not returned to play since The Open Championship 2024. If he spends another season without competing, the world golf legend will face an unwanted career milestone.
Tiger Woods has now reached the lowest point of his career in the Official World golf Ranking (OWGR), and the situation could get much worse.
He first entered the OWGR at 730th place in 1994. His 12-stroke victory at the 1997 Masters brought him into the world's top 10 for the first time, and just two months later he was ranked number one.
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In nearly 30 years as a professional, Woods has achieved 110 victories, including 82 PGA Tour titles, sharing the record with Sam Snead, plus 15 major titles.
He also spent 683 weeks at the top of the world rankings, more than double the number of Greg Norman in second place.
No one will ever come close to that record. For comparison, the current world number one, Scottie Scheffler, still needs another 546 weeks to match Woods.
That means he would have to stay at the top for about ten and a half years.
But since his car accident in 2021, Woods has struggled to find his best fitness and form.
He has only made the cut three times since then: the 2022 Masters, the 2024 Masters, and the Genesis Invitational.
In early 2025, he suffered a torn Achilles tendon, and his return to competition remains unknown.
As a result, Woods, who turns 50 in December 2025, has plummeted to 2,590th place in the OWGR, the lowest ranking of his career.
Moreover, Woods has not hit a single competitive shot since The Open Championship 2024 at Royal Troon, where he shot 77 in the second round and missed the cut by 12 strokes.
With no return date to the course set, there is a significant possibility Woods will disappear from the OWGR list entirely.
The OWGR has confirmed Woods will become unranked in the 29th week of 2026, the week of the 154th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. This is because the OWGR system uses a two-year calculation period.
It means simply, if Tiger Woods does not play in any OWGR-affiliated tournament before The Open 2026 – whether it be one of the four majors, a regular PGA Tour event, or his debut on the Champions Tour – then for the first time since 1994, Tiger Woods will not have a world ranking.
Not because he lost, but because he didn't play.(todays-Golfer.com)
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