Is the PDC's Order of Merit system a true reflection of a player's 'true' world ranking? Paul Nicholson explains why it's time for a change in his latest column and suggests a new alternative.
Is it fair that Jonny Clayton finds himself as low as 18th in the world rankings despite all he’s achieved this year?
Based on the system in place now, of course it is, because he’s won just as much ranking money as someone like Stephen Bunting. But there’s a possible scenario in the coming six weeks where he could win the Premier League and add £250,000 to the £50,000 of unranked money he got for landing the Masters and still be 18th in the world!
Obviously I’m not saying the Premier League money should go onto the rankings because that’s never happened to anyone else, plus it is essentially an invitational field, but it will add further weight to the proof that he is one of the very top players in the world right now. It won’t be reflecting by this current ranking system.
I think it’s about time the whole ranking system was tweaked because it feels lop-sided towards certain tournaments and makes it very difficult for those in the top 10 to slide down, and just as tough for those lower down to make significant climbs.
The World Championship has so much responsibility for where people are in the rankings and the next biggest event, the World Matchplay, is £350,000 behind it in terms of the winners’ cheque.
The Order of Merit worked perfectly when the world champion was getting £100,000 but now they’re getting £500,000. The amounts in previous rounds are also far higher than they once were. More money has gone into the other events but not at the same rate.
In my opinion the system has been inaccurate for the past couple of years now.
Points-based system
I’d want a points-based system introduced similar to what they have in tennis where certain calibre of events have points assigned to them, rather than it going off the prize money structure.
You’d get most points allocated for the ‘majors’ – which would need to be defined properly because there’s a separate debate going on about what they include – another bracket for European Tour events and the lowest amount for the Players Championship events. However, the points on offer for those wouldn’t be so small because they don’t have a big enough impact on the rankings right now for me.
They should still keep the various Orders of Merit they use specifically for qualification purposes – for instance the tables for the Players Championship Finals and the European Championship because that rewards those who have done well on particular tours.
However, the actual world rankings needs to be a points system with all the events graded into Tier A, Tier B and Tier C.
Darts is fairly unique compared to other sports in terms of players ‘defending’ prize money earned from two years earlier and I think we need to look at other sports and how they do their rankings.
Qualification for some major tournaments such as the World Matchplay and World Grand Prix are based on separate one-year rolling lists to give a more accurate reflection on who’s been in form and deserving over those 12 months so shouldn’t the main Order of Merit be done like this too?
Should you be rewarded in the world rankings for something that happened 18-24 months ago?
Rob Cross won almost £300,000 at the World Matchplay and European Championship in 2019, so if we were now on a one-year ranking list he’d be ranked just outside the world’s top 16 now rather than fifth. Is that a more accurate position of where he is right now? Maybe.
What is a major?
You could make it four Tiers of tournaments because there are of course those televised events which many wouldn’t class as a ‘major’, yet they are more prestigious than those on the European Tour and Players Championship events.
We’ve had the debate about what are the official majors for ages – especially the Masters – and maybe this points system will also help clear up this endless argument too.
As far as Clayton is concerned, I think the Masters should have some ranking points as you effectively have to qualify for it by ending the year in the top 24. But should it be called a ‘major’? Not in my opinion.
Player movement
Devon Petersen just about saved his Tour Card a couple of years ago almost purely because of his last-gasp World Championship run, which accounted for almost 70% of his year’s income. That’s quite a stack from one two tournaments.
Admittedly, since then he’s picked up a lot of money from various other events that have helped him climb into the world’s top 32 which has been fantastic but if the system was ‘fairer’ he perhaps wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do that.
If players win huge amounts of cash in one tournament – such as Gary Anderson picking up £200,000 as world championship runner-up – that then gives him the freedom to skip events and stay in the UK. That’s entirely his right to do so, but if you have a system where the rankings are tighter you will effectively force these players to enter more events and not be able to sit back and take it easier.
If Dimitri Van den Bergh had missed out on qualification for last year’s World Matchplay – which he was close to doing so – then he’d now be about 21st in the world rankings and I think that’s about accurate on a consistency basis.
But now he’s in the top nine and should be well set there for a while. Does this mean he’s better than Jonny Clayton?
A points-based system would mean there’s far more fluctuation in the rankings but that’s not a bad thing whatsoever. We’ve had a field day with Michael van Gerwen being world number one for seven years and now dropping down to two!
Even though his position was locked in by winning huge amounts of money regularly, he probably still would have remained world number one for many years on the points system based on his overall dominance.
So, a new system wouldn’t stop someone staying at the top for a long period of time if they keep winning on a rolling 52-week basis – just look at Novak Djokovic in tennis for example – but it allows more deserved movement and prevents some players locking themselves in for a couple of years based on one or two very good runs in the biggest events. Nobody should be ‘protected’.
We also have this weekly debate of ‘who’s the best player in the world right now’ – which Jonny Clayton was unofficially assigned a few weeks ago – but that’s because everyone knows the official world rankings doesn’t answer that!
So let’s have a system which effectively means the world number one is pretty much always going to be considered the very best, rather than the player ranked 18th!
Unranked events
There’s an argument to say there’s too many unranked events such as the World Series Finals but you can’t give points out for invitationals.
That said, there was an occasion a few years ago where three players including Jeff Smith and Krzysztof Ratajski were ‘invited’ to the World Championship and I got in touch with the PDPA to slam this decision and they said the PDC were a promotional company who thought this was a prudent move at the time.
Everyone else had slogged their guts out to be part of the biggest tournament in the world and others managed to get in via the back door.
So that’s my biggest gripe when things like that happen, albeit those are admittedly rare.
However, considering there’s so many standard 501 tournaments on the tour that are ranked, is there a need for unranked ones such as the World Series Finals to have the same regular format?
As I wrote in a previous series of columns last year, there’s so many other kinds of original formats you could use instead for unranked events that would give the viewer – and players - more variety. If there’s no ranking points up for grabs, why not? Click on the following links to find out more about those.
How would the new system come into play?
There’s no denying a change in system would ruffle a lot of feathers and would seem a logistical nightmare to introduce – but that doesn’t have to be the case.
You’d start by working out the system you’d want to use in terms of which events fit into which tiers, how many points to award for each one and all the other finer details.
Then, once finalised, you’d announce the system will be introduced at the start of the next season, but would be running in the background behind the current system in for the next 12 months.
This would prevent everyone starting on 0 and everything they’d achieved in the last 12 months counting for nothing. Players would be able to keep an eye on how they are doing on the new ‘inactive’ rankings list so their starting position won’t come as such a shock.