The Official World Golf Ranking and Rolex Women's World Golf Ranking will be paused until further notice.
With the worldwide professional golf schedule paused indefinitely, the governing bodies behind the professional golf ranking systems for men and women have jointly announced the rankings will be halted.
"The Governing Boards of the OWGR and WWGR have decided that the rankings will be frozen at Week 11 (the week ending March 15th and 16th 2020)," a statement read in part.
When tournament golf resumes, the Official World Golf Ranking and Rolex Rankings will resume working as normal.
Here's a simplified explanation of how the Official World Golf Ranking works: Players are ranked on a rolling 104-week (two-year) calendar. Players earn points based on their finish in rated tournaments, which are rated based on their home tour and the number of current world top-200 players in the field that week. Points that players earn retain their full value for 13 weeks before shedding their value over the next 91 weeks in equal installments. The total current points a player has is divided by the number of tournaments they've played in that cycle, and the average points per event is how a player is ranked against their peers.
The Official World Golf Ranking is critical in determining the field for many events, including the four men's majors and, potentially this year, the Olympics.
Without tournaments which give players a chance to replace deprecated points and replenish points, the rankings would continue to change each week without any player having control.
That means that, for the foreseeable future, Rory McIlroy will be locked in as the world No. 1 on the men's side and Jin Young Ko will get locked in as the No. 1 on the women's side.
