How many OWGR points did Nick Dunlap jump with his recent American Express victory? Rankings explored

Nick Dunlap took home The American Express title and, in doing so, he has written several pages of golf history. Not only did he become the eighth amateur to win on the PGA Tour and the first since 1991, but he recorded the biggest leap in the history of the world rankings.

By winning The American Express, the young sophomore from the University of Alabama earned 55,68925 points for the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR), which propelled him no less than 4,061 places in the world rankings. As of Monday, January 22, Nick Dunlap is ranked 68th in the OWGR.

According to Golf Digest, citing the X (formerly Twitter) Nosferatu account (@VC606) that tracks OGWR performance, Nick Dunlap's jump is the largest in the history of that listing.

Dunlap also maintains a position in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), where he is ranked third behind Gordon Sargent and Christo Lamprecht. However, this listing is also destined to change.

The amateur ranking is updated every Wednesday, i.e. in two days' time. At that time, the 1970.8621 WAGR points that Nick Dunlap earned for his victory at The American Express will be counted. Although the result of the point average calculation must be awaited, it is likely that Dunlap will climb to first place.

Why did Nick Dunlap rise so high in the OWGR?

The OWGR was inaugurated in 1986 and operates on a system that awards points to each tournament based on the players in its field. Tournaments must be sanctioned by one or more of the 20 eligible circuits.

Each tournament distributes the points received among the players who made the cut (or who made the first cut if the tournament has more than one). In the case of an event without a cut, all players receive points (these are considered exceptional cases).

As a rule, only individual events award points. Players receive a portion of the points distributed by the tournament, depending on their place on the final leaderboard.

The points earned by each player are added up over the "Ranking Period," which lasts 104 weeks. The sum of all points is divided by the number of eligible tournaments played by each player. The minimum divisor is 40, for those who have played that number of tournaments or less.

The result of the division is the "average point" which is the value that defines the place of each player in the world ranking.

Nick Dunlap's case is extremely interesting, because the 55.68925 points obtained by winning The American Express are the only ones he has earned in the current "Ranking Period." However, this was enough for him to have an "Average Point" of 1.3922 which ranks him 68th.