List of world number one male golfers

The following is a list of golfers who have been top of the Official World Golf Ranking (originally known as the Sony Ranking), since the rankings started on April 6, 1986. As of December 15, 2024, Scottie Scheffler is the number one ranked golfer.

The rankings are calculated each week based on finishing positions in individual tournaments (i.e. not pairs or team events) over a "rolling" two-year period with a maximum of 52 tournaments and a minimum divisor of 40 events. During 2018, nearly 400 tournaments on 20 tours were covered by the ranking system. All players competing in these tournaments are included in the rankings. In 2023, 24 tours factored into the world rankings.

A total of 25 different golfers from ten countries spanning four continents have been ranked world number one. Five countries; the United States, England, Australia, Spain and Germany have had multiple world number ones. The United States has had nine golfers ranked number one, the most of any country.

Tiger Woods has spent the most consecutive weeks (281) and most total weeks (683) at the top of the rankings, and Tom Lehman the fewest total weeks, having spent just a single week at the top in April 1997. Three golfers have spent an entire calendar year atop the rankings: Nick Faldo (1993), Greg Norman (1996), and Woods (2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009). Lee Westwood and Luke Donald are the only world number one golfers to have not won a major championship.

Number one ranked men

Note 1: In the first column, each number signifies the first time that golfer was ranked number one.

Note 2: In the "Cumulative total" column, each boldface number signifies total weeks as of the most recent time that golfer was ranked number one.

Bernhard Langer was the first golfer to be ranked world No. 1.

Greg Norman spent the most weeks atop of the world rankings in both the 1980s and 1990s.

Nick Faldo is one of only three players to have held the world No. 1 ranking for an entire calendar year, doing so in 1993.

Vijay Singh was the only golfer other than Woods to be ranked world No. 1 in the 2000s.

Dustin Johnson's 135 weeks spent atop the world rankings are the 3rd most of all time.

Rory McIlroy was the world No. 1 for 95 weeks in the 2010s, the most of any golfer.

*	Current number one player as of December 15, 2024

#	Country	Player	Start date	End date	Number of weeks	Cumulative total weeks	Ref.
1	West Germany	Bernhard Langer	April 6, 1986	April 26, 1986	3	3	^[1]
2	Spain	Seve Ballesteros	April 27, 1986	September 13, 1986	20	20
3	Australia	Greg Norman	September 14, 1986	November 21, 1987	62	62
	Spain	Seve Ballesteros (2)	November 22, 1987	November 28, 1987	1	21	^[2]
	Australia	Greg Norman (2)	November 29, 1987	October 29, 1988	48	110	^[3]
	Spain	Seve Ballesteros (3)	October 30, 1988	November 5, 1988	1	22	^[4]
	Australia	Greg Norman (3)	November 6, 1988	November 12, 1988	1	111	^[5]
	Spain	Seve Ballesteros (4)	November 13, 1988	March 25, 1989	19	41	^[6]
	Australia	Greg Norman (4)	March 26, 1989	April 1, 1989	1	112	^[7]
	Spain	Seve Ballesteros (5)	April 2, 1989	August 19, 1989	20	61	^[8]
	Australia	Greg Norman (5)	August 20, 1989	September 1, 1990	54	166	^[9]
4	England	Nick Faldo	September 2, 1990	October 13, 1990	6	6	^[10]
	Australia	Greg Norman (6)	October 14, 1990	February 2, 1991	16	182	^[11]
	England	Nick Faldo (2)	February 3, 1991	April 6, 1991	9	15
5	Wales	Ian Woosnam	April 7, 1991	March 21, 1992	50	50
6	United States	Fred Couples	March 22, 1992	March 28, 1992	1	1
	England	Nick Faldo (3)	March 29, 1992	April 4, 1992	1	16
	United States	Fred Couples (2)	April 5, 1992	July 18, 1992	15	16
	England	Nick Faldo (4)	July 19, 1992	February 5, 1994	81	97
	Australia	Greg Norman (7)	February 6, 1994	August 13, 1994	27	209
7	Zimbabwe	Nick Price	August 14, 1994	June 17, 1995	44	44
	Australia	Greg Norman (8)	June 18, 1995	April 19, 1997	96	305
8	United States	Tom Lehman	April 20, 1997	April 26, 1997	1	1
	Australia	Greg Norman (9)	April 27, 1997	June 14, 1997	7	312
9	United States	Tiger Woods	June 15, 1997	June 21, 1997	1	1
10	South Africa	Ernie Els	June 22, 1997	June 28, 1997	1	1
	Australia	Greg Norman (10)	June 29, 1997	July 5, 1997	1	313
	United States	Tiger Woods (2)	July 6, 1997	September 6, 1997	9	10
	Australia	Greg Norman (11)	September 7, 1997	January 10, 1998	18	331
	United States	Tiger Woods (3)	January 11, 1998	April 11, 1998	13	23
	South Africa	Ernie Els (2)	April 12, 1998	May 9, 1998	4	5
	United States	Tiger Woods (4)	May 10, 1998	May 16, 1998	1	24
	South Africa	Ernie Els (3)	May 17, 1998	June 13, 1998	4	9
	United States	Tiger Woods (5)	June 14, 1998	March 27, 1999	41	65
11	United States	David Duval	March 28, 1999	July 3, 1999	14	14
	United States	Tiger Woods (6)	July 4, 1999	August 7, 1999	5	70
	United States	David Duval (2)	August 8, 1999	August 14, 1999	1	15
	United States	Tiger Woods (7)	August 15, 1999	September 4, 2004	264	334
12	Fiji	Vijay Singh	September 5, 2004	March 5, 2005	26	26
	United States	Tiger Woods (8)	March 6, 2005	March 19, 2005	2	336
	Fiji	Vijay Singh (2)	March 20, 2005	April 9, 2005	3	29
	United States	Tiger Woods (9)	April 10, 2005	May 21, 2005	6	342
	Fiji	Vijay Singh (3)	May 22, 2005	June 11, 2005	3	32
	United States	Tiger Woods (10)	June 12, 2005	October 30, 2010	281 (record)	623
13	England	Lee Westwood	October 31, 2010	February 26, 2011	17	17	^[12]^[13]
14	Germany	Martin Kaymer	February 27, 2011	April 23, 2011	8	8
	England	Lee Westwood (2)	April 24, 2011	May 28, 2011	5	22
15	England	Luke Donald	May 29, 2011	March 3, 2012	40	40
16	Northern Ireland	Rory McIlroy	March 4, 2012	March 17, 2012	2	2	^[14]
	England	Luke Donald (2)	March 18, 2012	April 14, 2012	4	44	^[15]
	Northern Ireland	Rory McIlroy (2)	April 15, 2012	April 28, 2012	2	4	^[16]
	England	Luke Donald (3)	April 29, 2012	May 5, 2012	1	45	^[17]
	Northern Ireland	Rory McIlroy (3)	May 6, 2012	May 26, 2012	3	7	^[18]
	England	Luke Donald (4)	May 27, 2012	August 11, 2012	11	56	^[19]
	Northern Ireland	Rory McIlroy (4)	August 12, 2012	March 24, 2013	32	39
	United States	Tiger Woods (11)	March 25, 2013	May 17, 2014	60	683 (record)
17	Australia	Adam Scott	May 18, 2014	August 2, 2014	11	11
	Northern Ireland	Rory McIlroy (5)	August 3, 2014	August 15, 2015	54	93
18	United States	Jordan Spieth	August 16, 2015	August 29, 2015	2	2
	Northern Ireland	Rory McIlroy (6)	August 30, 2015	September 5, 2015	1	94
	United States	Jordan Spieth (2)	September 6, 2015	September 12, 2015	1	3
	Northern Ireland	Rory McIlroy (7)	September 13, 2015	September 19, 2015	1	95
19	Australia	Jason Day	September 20, 2015	September 26, 2015	1	1
	United States	Jordan Spieth (3)	September 27, 2015	October 17, 2015	3	6
	Australia	Jason Day (2)	October 18, 2015	November 7, 2015	3	4
	United States	Jordan Spieth (4)	November 8, 2015	March 26, 2016	20	26
	Australia	Jason Day (3)	March 27, 2016	February 18, 2017	47	51
20	United States	Dustin Johnson	February 19, 2017	May 12, 2018	64	64
21	United States	Justin Thomas	May 13, 2018	June 9, 2018	4	4
	United States	Dustin Johnson (2)	June 10, 2018	September 9, 2018	13	77
22	England	Justin Rose	September 10, 2018	September 22, 2018	2	2
	United States	Dustin Johnson (3)	September 23, 2018	October 20, 2018	4	81
23	United States	Brooks Koepka	October 21, 2018	November 3, 2018	2	2
	England	Justin Rose (2)	November 4, 2018	November 10, 2018	1	3
	United States	Brooks Koepka (2)	November 11, 2018	November 17, 2018	1	3
	England	Justin Rose (3)	November 18, 2018	November 24, 2018	1	4
	United States	Brooks Koepka (3)	November 25, 2018	January 5, 2019	6	9
	England	Justin Rose (4)	January 6, 2019	March 2, 2019	8	12
	United States	Dustin Johnson (4)	March 3, 2019	April 6, 2019	5	86
	England	Justin Rose (5)	April 7, 2019	April 13, 2019	1	13
	United States	Dustin Johnson (5)	April 14, 2019	May 18, 2019	5	91
	United States	Brooks Koepka (4)	May 19, 2019	February 8, 2020	38	47
	Northern Ireland	Rory McIlroy (8)	February 9, 2020	July 18, 2020	11^[a]	106^[a]
24	Spain	Jon Rahm	July 19, 2020	August 1, 2020	2	2
	United States	Justin Thomas (2)	August 2, 2020	August 8, 2020	1	5
	Spain	Jon Rahm (2)	August 9, 2020	August 22, 2020	2	4
	United States	Dustin Johnson (6)	August 23, 2020	June 19, 2021	43	134
	Spain	Jon Rahm (3)	June 20, 2021	July 10, 2021	3	7
	United States	Dustin Johnson (7)	July 11, 2021	July 17, 2021	1	135
	Spain	Jon Rahm (4)	July 18, 2021	March 26, 2022	36	43
25	United States	Scottie Scheffler	March 27, 2022	October 22, 2022	30	30	^[20]
	Northern Ireland	Rory McIlroy (9)	October 23, 2022	February 11, 2023	16	122
	United States	Scottie Scheffler (2)	February 12, 2023	February 18, 2023	1	31
	Spain	Jon Rahm (5)	February 19, 2023	March 11, 2023	3	46
	United States	Scottie Scheffler (3)	March 12, 2023	April 8, 2023	4	35
	Spain	Jon Rahm (6)	April 9, 2023	May 20, 2023	6	52
	United States	Scottie Scheffler (4)*	May 21, 2023	Present	83	118

Weeks at number one

*	Current number one player as of December 15, 2024

Rank	Player	Weeks	Order	Majors
1	Tiger Woods	683	9	15
2	Greg Norman	331	3	2
3	Dustin Johnson	135	20	2
4	Rory McIlroy	122^[a]	16	4
5	Scottie Scheffler*	118	25	2
6	Nick Faldo	97	4	6
7	Seve Ballesteros	61	2	5
8	Luke Donald	56	15	0
9	Jon Rahm	52	24	2
10	Jason Day	51	19	1
11	Ian Woosnam	50	5	1
12	Brooks Koepka	47	23	5
13	Nick Price	44	7	3
14	Vijay Singh	32	12	3
15	Jordan Spieth	26	18	3
16	Lee Westwood	22	13	0
17	Fred Couples	16	6	1
18	David Duval	15	11	1
19	Justin Rose	13	22	1
20	Adam Scott	11	17	1
21	Ernie Els	9	10	4
22	Martin Kaymer	8	14	2
23	Justin Thomas	5	21	2
24	Bernhard Langer	3	1	2
25	Tom Lehman	1	8	1

Order – indicates the sequence in which the players first reached number 1.
Majors – number of major championships each player has won throughout his golfing career.

Weeks at number one by country

*	Country with the current number one player as of December 8, 2024

Rank	Country	Weeks	Order	Majors	Players	Top player	First player	Latest player
1	United States*	1,045	6	32	9	Tiger Woods	Fred Couples	Scottie Scheffler
2	Australia	393	3	4	3	Greg Norman	Greg Norman	Jason Day
3	England	188	4	7	4	Nick Faldo	Nick Faldo	Justin Rose
4	Northern Ireland	122^[a]	10	4	1	Rory McIlroy
5	Spain	113	2	7	2	Seve Ballesteros	Seve Ballesteros	Jon Rahm
6	Wales	50	5	1	1	Ian Woosnam
7	Zimbabwe	44	7	3	1	Nick Price
8	Fiji	32	9	3	1	Vijay Singh
9	Germany (including West Germany)	11	1	4	2	Martin Kaymer	Bernhard Langer	Martin Kaymer
10	South Africa	9	8	4	1	Ernie Els

Order – indicates the sequence in which the country first had a number 1 player.
Majors – number of major championships the country's world-ranked number 1 players have won throughout their golfing careers.
Players – number of players from that country who have been world-ranked number 1.
Top player – the player from that country who has spent most weeks as the world-ranked number 1 player.
First player – the player from that country who was first to be world-ranked number 1 player, left blank if that country has only one such player.
Latest player – the player from that country who was most recently world-ranked number 1 player, left blank if that country has only one such player.

Earlier number ones

Before the start of the Official World Golf Ranking in 1986, unofficial end of year world golf rankings were published by Mark McCormack in his World of Professional Golf annual from 1968 to 1985. McCormack's rankings listed Jack Nicklaus as the number one from 1968 to 1977, Tom Watson from 1978 to 1982 and Seve Ballesteros from 1983 to 1985.

Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d The rankings were frozen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rankings were produced on March 15, 2020 and restarted on June 14, 2020. No rankings were produced for the 12 weeks between these dates and so Rory McIlroy's total weeks at number one do not include these 12 weeks.

References

General

"Official World Golf Ranking". Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2020-03-15.
"Number 1 Golf Rankings". Retrieved 2012-03-20.

Specific

^ "Week ending April 6th 1986" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.
^ "Week ending November 22nd 1987" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.
^ "Week ending November 29th 1987" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.
^ "Week ending October 30th 1988" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.
^ "Week ending November 6th 1988" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.
^ "Week ending November 13th 1988" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.
^ "Week ending March 26th 1989" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.
^ "Week ending April 2nd 1989" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.
^ "Week ending August 20th 1989" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.
^ "Week ending September 2nd 1990" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.
^ "Week ending October 14th 1990" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.
^ "Lee Westwood is world golf No. 1". ESPN. 2010-10-31. Retrieved 2010-11-01.
^ "Lee Westwood becomes world number one as Kaymer falters". BBC Sport. 2010-10-31. Retrieved 2010-10-31.
^ Donegan, Lawrence (2012-03-05). "Rory McIlroy climbs to world No1 after Honda Classic win". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2012-03-04.
^ "Luke Donald back to World Number One after play-off victory at the Transitions Championship". Archived from the original on 2013-05-21. Retrieved 2012-03-20.
^ "Luke Donald loses world No 1 ranking to Rory McIlroy". The Daily Telegraph. London. 2012-04-16. Retrieved 2012-04-16.
^ "Luke Donald finishes third in New Orleans to regain No1 spot". The Guardian. London. 2012-04-30. Retrieved 2012-04-30.
^ "McIlroy snatches world No. 1 ranking from Donald". ESPN. Retrieved 2012-05-07.
^ Corrigan, James (2012-05-27). "Luke Donald's PGA Championship master class at Wentworth takes him back to world No 1 spot". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 2012-05-28.
^ "Dallas resident, Texas alum Scottie Scheffler claims world No. 1 golf ranking, wins Dell Match Play". Dallas News. 2022-03-27. Retrieved 2022-03-27.

External links

Official website

[covidfreeze-20] The rankings were frozen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rankings were produced on March 15, 2020 and restarted on June 14, 2020. No rankings were produced for the 12 weeks between these dates and so Rory McIlroy's total weeks at number one do not include these 12 weeks.

[1] "Week ending April 6th 1986" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.

[2] "Week ending November 22nd 1987" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.

[3] "Week ending November 29th 1987" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.

[4] "Week ending October 30th 1988" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.

[5] "Week ending November 6th 1988" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.

[6] "Week ending November 13th 1988" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.

[7] "Week ending March 26th 1989" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.

[8] "Week ending April 2nd 1989" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.

[9] "Week ending August 20th 1989" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.

[10] "Week ending September 2nd 1990" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.

[11] "Week ending October 14th 1990" (pdf). Official World Golf Ranking. Retrieved 2012-03-20.

[12] "Lee Westwood is world golf No. 1". ESPN. 2010-10-31. Retrieved 2010-11-01.

[13] "Lee Westwood becomes world number one as Kaymer falters". BBC Sport. 2010-10-31. Retrieved 2010-10-31.

[14] Donegan, Lawrence (2012-03-05). "Rory McIlroy climbs to world No1 after Honda Classic win". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2012-03-04.

[15] "Luke Donald back to World Number One after play-off victory at the Transitions Championship". Archived from the original on 2013-05-21. Retrieved 2012-03-20.

[16] "Luke Donald loses world No 1 ranking to Rory McIlroy". The Daily Telegraph. London. 2012-04-16. Retrieved 2012-04-16.

[17] "Luke Donald finishes third in New Orleans to regain No1 spot". The Guardian. London. 2012-04-30. Retrieved 2012-04-30.

[18] "McIlroy snatches world No. 1 ranking from Donald". ESPN. Retrieved 2012-05-07.

[19] Corrigan, James (2012-05-27). "Luke Donald's PGA Championship master class at Wentworth takes him back to world No 1 spot". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 2012-05-28.

[21] "Dallas resident, Texas alum Scottie Scheffler claims world No. 1 golf ranking, wins Dell Match Play". Dallas News. 2022-03-27. Retrieved 2022-03-27.

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