Golf is an exciting game with records changing frequently. The history of golf driving is full of mind blowing records.

The world’s golf driving records are managed by official World Rankings system. The system is based on the ratings of the performance by professional golfers. Introduced in 1986, the World Rankings system is approved by the four major golf championships and six professional golf tours. These major championships and tournaments are the contributors of the International Federation of PGA Tours.

  • How are these rankings calculated?

The rankings are based on the point system and golfers are awarded with points based on the final positions they get in official golf qualifying tours. For each event, there is minimum number of points available. Professional golfers’ personal rankings are than calculated from the ranking points a professional golfer has obtained in previous two years.

Without going deep on the procedure of rankings and records, let’s see the current world’s golf driving records of top golfers.

Current world golf rankings: The top 10 ranked professional golfers in 2008 are:

  • Tiger Woods from United States hold first position on the world top ten golfers. He earned 11.97 points.
  • The number two in world ranking is Sergio García of Spain. His overall points are 8.10.
  • The third position is occupied by Phil Mickelson of United States with 7.03 points.
  • Other players are Pádraig Harrington (Ireland) -fourth position, Vijay Singh (Fiji)-fifth position, Robert Karlsson of Sweden – sixth position, Camilo Villegas of Colombia-seventh, Henrik Stenson (Sweden)-eighth, Ernie Els of South Africa – ninth, and Lee Westwood from England in the tenth position.

Other world’s golf driving records are:

Tiger Woods of USA set the world record for the highest Points Average. In 2001, he scored an average of 32.44. He also has the largest ever lead with 19.40 average points.

Golf is known for the huge money as well. World’s top golfers make huge money by playing golf. Here is the world’s golf money-making record list. The money is computed in US dollars. The number one players who made maximum money in respective year in the last ten years are:

  1. Sergio García –26 6,979,959 –2008
  2. Tiger Woods– 17 11,002,706– 2007
  3. Tiger Woods– 19 11,141,827 — 2006
  4. Tiger Woods –23 11,515,939 — 2005
  5. Vijay Singh– 32 11,104,892 — 2004
  6. Vijay Singh –28 7,639,461 — 2003
  7. Tiger Woods– 21 7,392,188 — 2002
  8. Tiger Woods –21 6,213,229 — 2001
  9. Tiger Woods –22 9,501,387 — 2001
  10. Tiger Woods –23 6,981,836 — 1999
  11. David Duval –24 2,680,489 — 1998
  12. Tiger Woods –22 2,082,381 — 1997
  13. Masashi Ozaki –21 1,944,034–1996

These rankings are considered authentic and fair. It’s the matter of debate that whether these records have selected the right World Number One. Such debates usually occur if the ‘number one’ golfer has not won any major championship recently. For instance, Tiger Woods from US did not add any points during his absence; yet he remained ‘number one’ in December 2008. However, these records are respected by the majority of the participants.

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