Going back to the OP, there was further explanation of the system Broadie and Rendleman used to calculate skill in http://www.golfdigest.com/golf-tours-news/2012-04/gwar-stachura-world-golf-ranking which was briefly discussed in a recent thread http://thesandtrap.com/t/57602/luke-donald-back-to-1#post_706070
After reading the Golf Digest article, I have more of an understanding of the methodology used (basically if A beats B by a stroke in Tourny 1 and C beats B by 2 strokes in Tourny 2, then C is 1 stroke better than A). While this makes more sense than what I originally thought (which was that they basically gave each course a course rating based on distance, etc. and then used that to compare scores between players who didn`t compete against each other), I have a number of questions and see a number of problems:
1. Is there any differentiation made based on tournament finish? i.e. Say A wins Tourny 1 and beats B by 4 shots. In Tourny 2 B finishes 20th and beats A by 4 shots. Are these two players considered equal (same total strokes) or is A considered better because he performed better in a more meaningful situation?
2. How are Playoffs handled?
3. How are Match Play Tournys handled?
4. Some courses may have a tendency to spread out players more than others, Is this considered?
5. How reliant are comparisons between Tours on a limited number of cross over players in a limited number of tournaments? i.e. If a Japanese Tour regular happens to have a good showing in the US, does this boost the rankings of other Japanese Tour players by a lot or a little?
6. Are certain tournys given more weight than others? i.e. If A beat B in the US Open by 4 shots and then B beat A in a Nationwide event by 4 shots, are they considered equal, or is A considered better based on tourny importance?
7. Does the system use any time weighting like the OWGR?
8. How are MCs, DQs, WDs, etc. handled?
I think that Broadie and Rendleman may be right that there could be a bias in favor of certain tours and that there is certainly some politics/arbitrariness in how OWGR Event Points are awarded. However, without knowing all the facts, I tend to think the system they propose is probably better suited for handicapping or scoring average comparisons rather than as a method for determining world rankings. I can think of several methods to improve the awarding of event points that can utilize much of the current OWGR framework without introducing a bunch of potential new problems that I see with this system.