Where do things stand at the end of the 2022 season?

November 1, 2022 by Aaron Howard, Charlie Eisenhood and Patrick Aubyrn in Analysis with comments

With the 2022 season now in the books, here is the latest update of the Ultiworld Disc Golf World Rankings and our newly developed Composite World Rankings (which combines UWDG, PDGA, UDisc, and Statmando rankings into a single list). Our world rankings are based on the methods used for the algorithmic component of our Power Rankings. However, unlike the Power Ranking, which follow a “what have you done for me lately?” philosophy with a heavy bias towards recent results, the UWDG World Rankings are more holistic: they attempt to capture a long-term view of who has been the best player over the last two years.

Without further ado, here are the UWDG World Rankings top 25 for both MPO and FPO, with data from the 2022 USDGC/TPWDGC and Pro Tour Championship included.

Ultiworld Disc Golf World Rankings

Notes

• Isaac Robinson’s 6th place finish at USDGC and runner-up finish at the Tour Championship help push him up into a surprising third place spot in the current UWDG World Rankings. He also dropped a 15th place finish from the 2020 USDGC, which helps at the margins. A larger portion of his score than those of other players is built on his performance in the 2022 season, as he toured minimally in 2021 — and he has played extremely well against strong fields at tournaments with big purses since the middle of 2022.
• Similarly, Holyn Handley helps fill up her tournament count after playing far fewer tournaments in 2021, and her very strong play at the end of the 2022 season helps push her up four spots into 6th place.
• Niklas Anttila launched into the top 25 thanks to great performances at USDGC and the DGPT Championship.

Composite Rankings

We fully admit that our rankings are only one of many that are now available, and, in fact, the best rankings are most likely a combination of the most popular world rankings available. So, we took some inspiration from Nate Silver’s 538 and developed a composite world ranking that combines our rankings along with those produced by the PDGA, UDisc, and Statmando into a single combined ranking set.

Your gut reaction to this composite ranking might be one of concern: Is it meaningful to combine all of these seemingly disparate ranking systems? The answer…