Anirban Lahiri is still the best-ranked Indian on the OWGR
The numbers tell the dispiriting story. The top-10 highest ranked Indian golfers in the official golf world rankings have combined for zero wins on the Asian, DP and LIV Tours (no Indian pro competes on the PGA Tour currently) in 2023.
It’s therefore no surprise that seven of them have seen their rankings fall this year, some by substantial margins, while only three of them have seen their rankings rise.
Anirban Lahiri remains the highest ranked Indian male golfer, but his ranking has slipped from 92 nd at the start of the year to 152nd as of October 1st . The caveat, of course, is that he plays on the LIV Tour, he is ineligible for the PGA Tour and has only earned points on the few Asian Tour events he has played and therefore his rankings don’t necessarily reflect his true standing in the men’s game today.
Given that Lahiri is currently 10th on the LIV points list and has three second-place finishes, it is entirely possible that his ranking would have climbed if LIV events were eligible for points. Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in, so Lahiri is now outside the world’s top-150.
Playing on the European (DP World) Tour obviously gives Shubhankar Sharma and Manu Gandas the opportunity to earn more points than playing the Asian or the PGTI tours but even points earned in Europe have been dramatically reduced in a ranking system which many of the world’s top players have started to ridicule as being too USA centric.
Sadly, Gandas , in his first year in Europe he hasn’t been able to adapt to the conditions and competition and has lost many of the points he picked up last year during his stellar season at home where he won 6 times.
Om Prakash Chouhan, the current PGTI money leader had the biggest jump thanks to his win on the US$300,000 European Challenge Tour event played last March at KGA in Bangalore. Chouhan began the year at 906 and is currently 680 th , though he did get as high as 585 th right after his breakthrough win.
The other two who have moved in the right direction are Shubhankar Sharma and Chikkarangappa S. The former began the year ranked 233rd , then dropped to 276th before his spectacular eighth-place finish in the British Open rocketed him up 111 places to 165th .
Sharma’s British Open result illustrates just how important playing well in big events has become with the new formula implemented by the OWGR this season. The number of points on offer has a disproportionate impact on the rankings. Sharma is proof that one good result can offset a string of bad ones. He has missed 10 cuts in 20 events this year, yet his top-10 in the British Open was more than enough to make up for the missed cuts.
Chikkarangappa S is currently the second highest ranked Indian on the Asian Tour at 16th right behind Lahiri, who is 15 th. The bulk of Chikka’s points this season have come from his three top-10 finishes on the Asian Tour, which have helped boost him from 748th to start the year to 669th now.
There are still five events left on the Asian Tour and six on the DP World Tour, so an Indian male golfer could still breakthrough with a win. Yet that would be no more than a silver lining around the overall picture. Where once Indian players routinely won multiple events a year, the Indian men have only one victory on either tour going back to the start of 2019 – Gaganjeet Bhullar’s win at the Indonesian Open in 2022.
This year’s fall in the rankings for the majority of India’s leading male golfers is evidence of how quickly the rest of the world is moving ahead in player development while India leaves it to chance and personal/parental resources. But also their fall in rankings is due to the significant reduction in points allocated in Asia and PGTI by the system which is controlled mostly by the all powerful US based PGA Tour.
The low rankings make it tougher to get into events that offer more points, further reinforcing the downward cycle. More worrying is the lack of a next generation to pick up the baton and build on the success of the likes of Jeev Milkha Singh, Arjun Atwal, Jyothi Randhawa, SSP Chawrasia, Lahiri, Bhullar, and Sharma.
Leaving Sharma, who is still only 27, aside, Indian golf could be in for a few more bleak years unless we find a way to ramp up player development and get players over to the PGA and Korn Ferry tours in USA.
OWGR for the top-10 Indians
Name Start of the year Current ranking
Anirban Lahiri 94 152
Shubhankar Sharma 233 161
Gaganjeet Bhullar 306 314
Rashid Khan 376 536
Yuvraj Singh Sandhu 391 667
Chikkarangappa S 748 669
Om Prakash Chouhan 906 680
Veer Ahlawat 474 709
Manu Gandas 486 733
Ajeetesh Sandhu 697 768
Photo – LIV Golf