Tiger Woods is No. 1 in the Official World Golf Rankings. This should not be a surprise to you, seeing as how there haven't been too many tournaments played in recent weeks. What may surprise you is how long he'll hold onto that spot even if he doesn't pick up a single club.

In his column today, ESPN.com's Jason Sobel notes that "according to those who run the OWGR, if Tiger Woods continues his leave of absence into the summer, he likely won't lose his No. 1 status until June or July." That's six months from now and eight months from when Tiger last played a tournament.

Now, it's understandable that Tiger has put some distance between himself and the competition -- his ranking of 14.13 is nearly double second-place Phil Mickelson's 7.95 -- but really, taking more than half a year off doesn't pull you down? Sobel thinks that's a bit too much latitude to give a golfer, and I'd agree. It's silly, like if one conference in college football didn't play a conference championship and so avoided the tough end-of-season test before skating into the bowls. (How's it hanging, Ohio State?)

The problem lies in how the OWGR weights its criteria. So how does the OWGR rank the golfers on the six professional tours? Sharpen your pencils and put on your mathin' hats, friends:

The World Ranking Points for each player are accumulated over a two year "rolling" period with the points awarded for each event maintained for a 13-week period to place additional emphasis on recent performances - ranking points are then reduced in equal decrements for the remaining 91 weeks of the two year Ranking period. Each player is then ranked according to his average points per tournament, which is determined by dividing his total number of points by the tournaments he has played over that two-year period. There is a minimum divisor of 40 tournaments over the two year ranking period and a maximum divisor of a player's last 60 events.

zzzzzzwhahuh? Oh, sorry, I fell asleep somewhere around the first mention of "divisor." That two-year provision seems to be the key point -- the idea is not to penalize a player too much for one brief bad patch. But as Sobel notes, by that standard you'd be including Tiger's two recent layoffs -- knee-induced and hydrant-induced -- and that by the middle of this season, assuming he didn't return, he'd have played only 19 events over the last two years. By contrast, Phil Mickelson, who had two hiatuses (hiatusi?) of his own, will have played about 43 events.

"Tiger Woods' average points figure will drop each week he doesn't play and it will take until somewhere between the U.S. Open and Open Championship for his average to drop to where Phil Mickelson's currently is," the OWGR indicated. "If Mickelson plays well enough to maintain his current average and Woods doesn't play, then the No. 1 spot could change hands early July." And that's only if Phil continues to play well.

No matter what, though, Tiger's a wounded elephant right now, and all the other golfers are gathering around hoping to bring him down. And when he does topple, I'll bet he falls right on Rory Sabbatini. Whenever that may be.