Professional golf is suffering from a glut of awards and honors. To determine the best player each year, we have the PGA Tour money list, the FedEx Cup, the Race to Dubai, the World Golf Championships, the Official World Golf Rankings and the majors. I’ve got a headache from all these different lists, titles and trophies. It’s like boxing with the alphabet soup titles: IBF, WBO, WBC, WBA. Actually, golf has more. The reason is that boxing has only one Don King, but in golf we have several. 

What’s happened is that golf has many organizations and they all seek legitimacy through the awards they bestow and events they host. First, let’s look at the world rankings. These exist because IMG, which operates most golf events in Europe and Asia, needed a way to validate golf outside the Untied States. Then take the World Golf Championships, the Players Championship and the FedEx Cup. These events exist because the PGA Tour doesn’t own any of the majors so it needed to create its own “majors.” The Race to Dubai is another contrived playoff, this one by the European Tour.

That doesn’t mean these events aren’t enjoyable to watch. In fact, many of these tournaments and races are exciting and create some of the year’s most dramatic moments. But they are no help in determining which player had the best year. When you look back at a golf season, you can’t rely on the FedEx Cup or Race to Dubai to tell you the best player. Those events are built to entertain, not to determine the best player. The World Golf Championships aren’t much help either because they are all limited-field events.

Even something like the money list is too subjective because so much money doesn’t count. Luke Donald and Webb Simpson were only close on the PGA Tour money list this year because Donald played seven fewer events. 

The majors are really the only thing that’s stayed constant in golf since the Masters began in 1934. That’s why we pay so much attention to them, and why most sports fans stopped watching golf after the PGA Championship and won’t tune in again until the Masters. I love the majors, but you can’t determine the best player in four events. Some people say that Luke Donald can’t be the best player because he’s never won a major. That’s bull. Who’s playing better than him?

In the end, we only have two yardsticks for measuring the best player: the majors and the world rankings. For the good of the game, I’d like the world tours to get together and sort out any issues they have with the rankings, and then give the Player of the Year Award to the guy with the most world-ranking points in a year. (This would be differnet from the No. 1-ranked player because that ranking is done over a two-year period.)

I can already hear the complaints from American players that ranking points are too easy to get points abroad. Well, nothing’s stopping them from going over there and playing.

This article first appeared in the January 2012 issue of Golf Magazine. The January issue is on newsstands and the tablet version is available for free for magazine subscribers on iPad, Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet, Nook Color and Samsung Galaxy Tab. Learn more