Presenting the Yahoo! Sports World Golf Rankings, Week 6

It's time for our own golf ranking system for the top players on the planet. Why? That's easy. The one used now isn't good enough. For one thing, it evaluates golfers over a two-year period. Two years! A lot can happen in two years. (Ask Tiger Woods.) For another, the current system gives too much credit to players who prevail against less competitive fields halfway across the globe.

Therefore, every week between May 31 and September 27, two days after The Tour Championship, Yahoo! Sports will unveil the new rankings of players Nos. 1 to 10, using lists submitted by many of the game's most knowledgeable observers. We will use a simple statistical formula for the lists we receive ? the top player getting 10 points, the second, nine points, and so forth. We will then add up all the points to produce our list of the top 10.

We've asked voters to tell us who they believe are the top 10 players right now. Over time, we expect to add more voters to the list. We hope you enjoy it, and please offer your own views.

The Yahoo! Sports World Top 10 for the week of July 4, 2011:

1. Rory McIlroy (21), 285 points [1]
2. Luke Donald (3), 247 points [3]
3. Lee Westwood (6), 242 points [2]
4. Martin Kaymer, 156 points [4]
5. Steve Stricker, 122 points [5]
6. Jason Day, 109 points [8]
7. Nick Watney, 106 points [NR]
8. Charl Schwartzel, 101 points [6]
9. Matt Kuchar, 98 points [7]
10. Phil Mickelson, 53 points [9]

First-place votes in parentheses; position last week in brackets.

Some notes: Nick Watney's big win vaults him into the sixth spot from beyond, knocking Graeme McDowell out of the rankings. Fifth through ninth is a huge cluster with anyone able to make a good jump with a good week. And Westwood falls to third despite getting more first-place votes than Donald, which means people either really like or really don't like Lee, no in-between.

Voters:

Michael Arkush, Yahoo! Sports
Shane Bacon, Yahoo! Sports
Al Barkow, golf historian, journalist
Jay Busbee, Yahoo! Sports
Jay Coffin, Golfchannel.com
Tom Cunneff, Links magazine
Martin Davis, Editor, American Golfer
Steve Elling, CBSSports.com
John Feinstein, Golf World/Golf Channel contributor
Bill Fields, Golf World
David Graham, two-time major champion
Melanie Hauser, contributor, PGATOUR.com
John Huggan, Golf Digest
Sal Johnson, GolfObserver.com
Rees Jones, golf course architect
Peter Kessler, radio talk-show host
Ron Kroichick, San Francisco Chronicle
Mark Lamport-Stokes, Reuters
David MacKintosh, Buenos Aires Herald
Andrew Magee , PGA Tour veteran
Scott Michaux, Augusta Chronicle
Brian Murphy, Yahoo! Sports
Jerry Pate , former U.S. Open winner
Geoff Russell, Golf World editor
Stina Sternberg, Golf Digest
John Strege, Golf Digest
Jerry Tarde, Golf Digest editor
Kris Tschetter, LPGA Tour veteran, author
Jonathan Wall, Yahoo! Sports
Sam Weinman, Golf Digest.com

Cameron Richardson Chandra West Kasey Chambers Megan Ewing Kristanna Loken