Robert Frost is quoted as saying, “Freedom lies in being bold.”

That feels appropriate for both golf and as we enter the 4th of July weekend.

Tournaments

We are full swing in the midst of the summer tournament schedule and we can feel it! We’re processing so many events every week to make sure they hit your profile. For example, one junior, who is nearly a top-100 player in his class, has 26 events recorded in TUGR over the last 12 months compared only 13 events recorded in other ranking systems. HUGE difference in being able to capture a player’s true skill level and talent when doubling the number of events we capture.

_{(To be clear - playing more events doesn’t in itself rank a player higher, it simply gives us a more accurate read on where someone should be ranked. Remember, TUGR is a strokes-gained type system, not a points-based system, so the more events recorded, the more accurate the connections a player has to the broader ecosystem.)}

We can tell we’re in the heart of the summer schedule because the requests are at peak levels for entering events. All I can say is this: Thank you for your patience. We receive every email and request and try and respond.

To pull the curtain back behind the scenes, we are processing so many events as we try to truly capture as much of the junior golf ecosystem as possible, that we are constantly gathering results throughout the week.

We use the most advanced technology to calibrate the rankings. Because we have nearly 70,000 juniors in our database (of which ~20,000 meet the minimum round requirement to be ranked), it takes time to re-calibrate the rankings each week with all the new events that need to be recorded.

We post new rankings by Wednesday morning (today) each week, capturing the previous week’s events. I guarantee when I open our inbox this afternoon, we’ll have so many new event requests. I want to reiterate, we capture more events per player, on average, than any other ranking system. Compared against some systems, it’s 30% more events, in other cases (looking at the example above) it’s 100% more events. 

Again, thank you for your patience, especially during the absolute busiest time of the year for getting tournaments posted.

Take a moment this weekend and appreciate the ecosystem of American junior golf. We speak with tour directors, college coaches, and other industry leaders nearly every week. The people in this sport love the game and do it to give back to juniors. It’s simply amazing to see how many junior events exist and how dedicated people are to giving juniors opportunity.

Rankings are updated: http://tugr.org

Thanks,
Jeff