The Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) was first introduced in 1986 as a means of ranking all professional golfers around the world. It was an initiative proposed by St. Andrews, as its committee found that its system for issuing invitations to The Open Championship every year was leaving off a handful of great golfers, simply because they didn’t play primarily on the PGA or European Tour.

While the system used to calculate the rankings is constantly changing, it is currently points-based. Players are awarded a pre-determined amount of points based on their finish in any given tournament. The bigger the tournament, the more points available. You then add up the number of points the player has, divide it by the number of events he’s played, and voila! You have your OWGR score.

Since its inception, 21 different golfers have held the prestigious title of being the best golfer in the world. The OWGR is updated weekly, and the players who appear on today’s list have held the distinction for as little as one full week, and as many as 683 total weeks (you may be able to guess who that is).

Today I’ve taken the liberty of ranking all 21 players who have ever held the world #1 ranking, from worst to best. It goes without saying that all of these golfers are or were very good, but I mean someone has to be the worst of the bunch, right? Enjoy:

21 Tom Lehman

Tom Lehman is the first to show up on our list, and the reason for that is fairly simple: he’s the only player to ever reach #1 and only spend just one week on top (total—other players have spent a week there, got knocked off their perch, but later returned).

Lehman’s reign at the top was in April 1997, when he knocked Greg Norman off the perch.

Norman had been on top from June ‘95 through April ’97, for 96 straight weeks. Norman regained top spot immediately after losing it, and Lehman would never again be the top-ranked golfer in the world.

20 David Duval

Had David Duval not stepped away from golf because of nagging injuries and medical conditions, he maybe could have found a higher spot on this list. Duval held the top spot for a total of 15 weeks; 14 weeks from March ’99 through July, and then for one more week in August of that same year.

Duval would later win his only Major Championship at the 2001 Open, but that wasn’t enough for him to usurp Tiger from the throne, who was in the middle of a 264-week stretch at the top. Since losing his Tour card in 2011, Duval has been primarily an analyst for the Golf Channel and NBC.

19 Luke Donald

There are a grand total of two golfers on this list who failed to win a Major during their careers, and Luke Donald is one of them. To be fair to Donald, he held the #1 ranking four different times, for a total of 56 weeks. There are guys who appear higher on this list who have fewer weeks on top, but Donald’s failure to come through at big events hurts his ranking here. Not only did he never win a major, but Donald never finished runner-up.

The Brit's first time reaching the top was in May of 2011, and all 56 of his weeks came between then and August 2012.

18 Martin Kaymer

Germany's Martin Kaymer became the second man from his country to ever hold the number one ranking in February of 2011, and he held the spot for a couple months (eight weeks). While he’d never return to the top spot, Kaymer is a two time Major Champion, including his impressive wire-to-wire win at the 2014 US Open.

Kaymer plays primarily on the European Tour, so he has only three PGA Tour victories to his name—but he's made them count.

In addition to his US Open win in 2014, he won the PGA Championship in 2010 in a playoff against Bubba Watson, and he also won the Players Championship in 2014.

17 Lee Westwood

At the end of October 2010, Lee Westwood did something that no one had accomplished in over five years: overtake the #1 ranking from Tiger Woods. Westwood held the top spot for 17 weeks before being taken over by Kaymer, but he returned to the top with another five-week stint from April 2011 through May.

Westwood’s ranking takes a serious hit here because of his failure to do what matters most in golf, and that's winning a Major. He and Luke Donald are the only two golfers on this list to never win one, but give credit where it’s due, Westwood was mighty close very often—he has three runner-up finishes, and nine top-three finishes at Majors. Ouch.

16 Adam Scott

While Adam Scott has been in a bit of a slump for the past few seasons, he’s regained his form and is currently in the hunt for the FedEx Cup. Scott has had just one stint on top of the world back in May of 2014, which is when he usurped Tiger from the top. To this date, it was Woods’ last time at #1.

Needless to say, Scott was playing the best golf of his career during this era. He won the 2013 Green Jacket, and that win marked a stretch where he’d finish top-10 in five of the next seven Majors.

15 Fred Couples

Some people might think I have Fred Couples a little too high on this list, but those people are wrong. Everybody loves Freddie, and that’s enough for me to bump him up a few spots.

Couples enjoyed two stints as the world number one for a total of 16 weeks.

His first stay at the top lasted just a week, taking over the throne from Ian Woosnam in March of 1992. He lost it the next week to Nick Faldo but then regained it the following week. He held on for 15 weeks before once again relinquishing to Faldo, and that was it for Couples.

14 Jason Day

The #1 ranking hasn’t been a very safe spot over the past four years, as six different golfers have held the distinction since Woods lost it to Scott in May of 2014. Jason Day enjoyed three stints as the world #1, and while he’s slipped down to around #10 recently, he does have 51 cumulative weeks as world #1.

The first time Day reached the top he stayed there for just a week before giving up the title to Jordan Spieth. He took back the throne three weeks later and kept it for three weeks this time. After that, he finally got comfortable, as he enjoyed a 47-week stretch from March 27, 2016 to February 18, 2017.

13 Justin Thomas

It’s difficult to rank a guy who has spent just four weeks as the world #1 yet is only 25-years-old, but that’s where we find ourselves with Justin Thomas here at #13 on the list. Thomas is today one of the most dominant players in the game, so perhaps a little bit of recency bias is playing into my decision to place him near the middle of the pack here.

Thomas usurped the current world #1 Dustin Johnson in May of this year and held onto the position for a month. Johnson got the title back on June 10 and has held it ever since.

12 Jordan Spieth

It’s pretty obvious that we had to put childhood buddies Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth back-to-back on this list, and we decided to give Spieth the edge because his resume is just a little more impressive.

Sure, Thomas is currently ranked above Spieth, but Thomas has just one Major to Spieth’s three.

They’re pretty much exactly the same age (Thomas is two months Spieth’s elder), so that didn’t play much into the decision. Spieth has enjoyed four stints as world #1, the earliest occurring in August 2015 and most recently in March 2016 for a total of 26 weeks.

11 Bernhard Langer

A little trivia here for ya: who was the very first golfer to hold the official world #1 ranking? The answer, of course, would be Germany’s Bernhard Langer. When the system was first introduced in 1986, Langer was the first to ever hold the distinction.

Langer was the #1 ranked golfer for just three weeks, from the beginning of April to the end of April in 1986. He’s actually spent the second-shortest time there (Tom Lehman spent just one week on top), but it’s not really an even playing field for Langer, who had some prime years before the ranking system was born.

10 Nick Price

The most successful Zimbabwean to ever pick up a golf club comes in at number 10 on our list, and that’s, of course, Nick Price. The three-time Major Champion enjoyed just one stint as the World #1, but it lasted nearly a year as he held onto the distinction for 44 weeks.

Price grabbed the top spot from Fred Couples in August of 1994, shortly after winning back-to-back Majors at The Open Championship and the PGA Championship. Throw in the fact that he’d won the PGA Championship in 1992 as well, and it’s a wonder how he wasn’t already ranked #1 prior to this.

9 Ian Woosnam

Ian Woosnam, the pride of Wales, was the world #1 ranked golfer for a 50-week stretch, beginning in April of 1991 and relinquishing the throne in March of 1992.

Woosnam got to the top thanks to a stretch that saw him win seven tournaments on the European Tour from March 1990 to July of 1991.

One of those tournaments happened to be the 1991 Masters, which was the week after he finally grabbed onto the world #1 spot, really solidifying his rank. Woosnam played most of his career on the European Tour, finishing with 29 victories there, good for 6th all time.

8 Vijay Singh

There are a few golfers on this list who are ranked pretty high considering how they spent very little time, relative to others ranked lower, as world #1. Here’s the thing, though—most of the guys who have appeared on the list before Vijay Singh didn’t have to compete with Tiger throughout their primes.

The fact of the matter is, if not for Singh, Tiger Woods would have held the World #1 ranking from April 1999 to October 2010. Singh was on absolute fire in 2004 and 2005, and from September ’04 to June ’05 he enjoyed three stints as the official World #1 for a total of 32 weeks.

7 Dustin Johnson

Many will argue that we have ranked Dustin Johnson too high on this list, and that’s actually an argument I have time for. That said, it’s hard to argue with the numbers, and as of right now just four golfers have held onto the #1 ranking longer than Johnson has.

DJ is currently in his third stint as the world #1; his first stretch was a long one, as it lasted 64 weeks from February 2017 to May 2018. Thomas briefly took over for about a month, but Johnson took it back and has regained it yet again (at this time) after briefly losing the spot to Justin Rose.

6 Rory McIlroy

I mentioned in the Dustin Johnson entry that there were just four golfers who have spent more time as the world #1 than DJ, and Rory McIlroy is one of them. McIlroy has enjoyed a whopping seven different stints as the world #1, which is third-most all-time.

While McIlroy hasn’t been at the top since September 2015, there’s plenty of time for the 29-year-old from Northern Ireland to get back there.

His current tally at #1 is at 95 weeks, with his longest stretch lasting 54 weeks, from August 2014 to August 2015. That was immediately after he’d won back-to-back Majors at the Open and PGA Championship.

5 Ernie Els

Into the top five we go, and you’re probably wondering why I have a guy who’s spent just nine weeks as the world #1 in the top five. The answer is simple: he got pooched by playing alongside Tiger for his peak years. If not for Tiger, Els would have been in a battle with guys like Singh and Phil Mickelson throughout the early 2000s.

Els is one of just five golfers to ever take the #1 ranking away from Tiger, accomplishing that feat thrice—once in 1997, and twice more in 1998. Els had three brief stints for a total of nine weeks as the world #1.

4 Nick Faldo

England's Nick Faldo is one of three men from England to hold the world #1 title, and he was the first to ever reach the top. While he’s comfortably behind the top two in this category, he has spent the third most time as the world #1 ranked golfer, enjoying a total of 97 weeks atop the golf world.

His 97 weeks were spread out over four separate stints on top, all coming between September 1990 and February 1994.

His first stay lasted just six weeks; his second lasted nine; his third stint was just a solitary week, and then he finally got comfortable on top, holding onto #1 for 81 weeks from July ‘92 to February ’94.

3 Seve Ballesteros

I’m a little bit too young to remember a time when Seve Ballesteros reigned supreme in the world of golf, as I myself am only slightly older than the OWGR system. That said, the early rankings were dominated by Seve, who is still today the only Spaniard to have held the top spot.

Ballesteros’ career was already 10 years in the making by the time the OWGR came into effect, so needless to say he would have likely held the top spot for more than the 61 cumulative weeks he did over five stints. Ballesteros died tragically in 2011 from a brain tumor at just 54-years-old.

2 Greg Norman

When you set out to read this list, I’m pretty sure that you could have guessed who would have been #1 and #2. I won’t spoil #1 for you just yet (lol), but coming in at number two is the guy who holds the record (well, tied) for most stints on top at 11, and that’s The Shark, Greg Norman.

Australia's superstar first grabbed the #1 ranking from Ballesteros in 1986. He held it for 62 weeks before losing it to Ballesteros again, but he would return to the top 10 more times, with the most recent stint coming in 1997. Norman finished his career with a dominant 331 weeks as the world #1.