Ko remains top despite rankings blunder

Lydia Ko will remain world number one for at least one more week after the company which calculates the women’s global golf rankings incorrectly said that Thailand’s Ariya Jutanugarn had overtaken her.

The technical provider of the Women’s World Golf Rankings said in a statement on Monday that a “bug in a projection tool” had caused a snafu which incorrectly showed that Ariya had dethroned New Zealand star Ko.

“When running the projections, the tool used the date on which the projections were run, rather than the date when the rankings would be released,” the statement said.

The mix-up meant that an additional tournament – the 2015 Manulife LPGA Classic – was included in the calculation last week.

When the rankings were calculated on Monday the event was dropped, giving one fewer tournament for each player -and leaving Ko with a razor-thin lead in ranking points.

Ko now remains number one by a margin of 0.01 points.

“We are working to correct the problem within the projection tool and we apologize for the error in last week’s projections,” the statement said.

Ariya is all but certain to claim the No.1 spot this week, however, when she returns to action at the Manulife LPGA Classic in Cambridge, Ontario. Ko is not playing in the Canadian event.