Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy are indisputably the two best golfers in the world. The only question that hangs over this season is where they slot at the top,. Rahm and McIlroy have won seven of their last 14 combined global events, which is just unfathomable. That can’t happen, and yet it’s exactly what is happening. To accentuate that, the duo has combined for 13 top-five finishes in those last 14 starts across multiple tours.
Last time we ranked the best golfers in the world, McIlroy was No. 1 and Rahm was No. 2, but they have now flipped even though McIlroy won his most recent (and only) start on the DP World Tour in 2023. This should tell you just how good Rahm has been (we’ll touch more on that below).
While you could probably rank those two players at the top and not rank anyone else in the top 10 to give you better context for just how good they’ve been, we still slotted in the other 16 golfer behind them knowing that the gulf between Rahm, McIlroy and everybody else is as vast as it’s been between two players and the rest of the world in a long, long time.
The Power 18 provides insight as to how golfers are currently performing with benefit given to their play over recent events. It is a wider lens than simply what happened at the last tournament to be played but more narrow than the Official World Golf Rankings, which take into account how more than 2,000 golfers perform across an entire season.