A ranking instead of a table
Golf cannot use a standings table, because players do not play each other in fixtures and no two competitors play the same schedule. What replaces it is a ranking built from points earned at individual tournaments over a rolling period, which produces something closer to a reputation index than a record of a season.
Points are awarded by finishing position, but the size of the award depends on how strong the field was. Beating a hundred of the world's best is worth far more than winning a weaker event, and this weighting is the whole point: without it, a player could climb by choosing soft schedules.
The result is a single ordered list used for things that matter well beyond bragging rights: entry into the biggest tournaments, seeding, team selection and sponsor obligations all run partly off it. That is why a player will fly across the world for one event in a week they would otherwise rest.
Why rankings drift downwards on their own
The ranking is an average across a rolling window rather than a running total, and older results progressively lose weight. A great performance is worth its full value when it happens and steadily less as the months pass, until it drops out of the window entirely.
This has an effect that confuses newcomers: a player can fall in the ranking while playing perfectly well, simply because a major win from two years ago is losing value faster than new results replace it. Equally, a player who stops competing does not hold position — the average erodes.
Because the divisor is a count of events with a minimum applied, playing very little can also distort a ranking upwards for a period. Someone returning from injury with a handful of strong finishes may sit higher than their current form justifies, which is a known limitation rather than a scandal.
What the ranking is good and bad at
As a filter for access, the ranking works. It is objective, it is public, and it weights results by the quality of the opposition, which is more than most sports manage. If the question is who has earned the right to be in the field, it answers well.
As a statement of who is playing best right now, it is slower than the eye. Form arrives faster than a rolling average can register it, and a player in the middle of a hot two-month run will be ranked below where their current golf sits. Anyone reading the ranking as a form guide should expect it to lag.
Separate season-long points races exist alongside it, resetting each year and rewarding consistency within one tour's calendar. Reading both together is more informative than either alone: one describes standing, the other describes a season.