Huh?
Rickie shot 73-70-70-71 and was 12 shots out of the lead going into final round.
I’m talking about his typical week, not a specific week. I was amazed when he closed out the Players.
On the way in to work this a.m. I heard Frank Deford on NPR discussing Serena Williams and the difficulty of assessing “the best” among athletes from different eras. I was surprised to hear him (not that he is any ultimate arbiter or anything) plainly assert that Tiger’s recent slide has resolved any chance that he would replace Jack as the greatest ever.
I’m not suggesting thus resolves any debate. I think there were a few years during which Tiger was the most dominant athlete of ANY sport. But Deford’s theme was that one had to be judged by the caliber of their competition, and that Tiger never had Jack’s Palmer/Player/Trevino/Watson.
Interesting analysis by Deford.
Although there was definite overlap in their careers, it is a myth that Nicklaus was a contemporary of either Palmer or Watson. Palmer was dominant in the 1960’s, before Nicklaus really got rolling. Nicklaus won 40 times after 1970, while Palmer only won six. Palmer was nearly done when Nicklaus was reaching his peak. Similar with Watson. Watson really got rolling in 1978, with 31 of his 39 PGA Tour wins coming after 1977, while Nicklaus was on the downhill, winning only nine of his 72 PGA Tournaments after that.
They passed the torch to each other, but really weren’t contemporaries.
Trevino was a contemporary, but not quite on the level of those other four guys. (Not taking anything away from Trevino, who was a great, great golfer.)
Player won half of his PGA Tour wins in the 70’s and half in the 60"s and is five years older than Jack. Palmer is 11 years older.
I agree with much of your analysis. But I think instead of Jack having a single main opponent - a la Ali/Frazier, there were a number of strong opponents throughout his long career.
The length of Jack’s major span makes comparisons difficult, 18 majors in 24 years from the 62 US Open to the 86 Masters. By contrast, Tiger amassed his 14 in only 11 years, from the 97 Masters to the 08 US Open. Might be a better comparison to use Nicklaus’ first 17, ending with the 1980 PGA. The last one was definitely an outlier.
For a better comparison, I think you’d need to look at top 5s, or at least seconds, to assess the strength of competitors, but I mainly looked at wins. Jack has 19 second places in majors to Tiger’s 6. Palmer and Mickelson have 10 each, and Snead/Watson/Norman 8.
Here’s how the wins and competition look to me.
During the span that Tiger won his 14, there were only 3 golfers I would consider strong, ongoing, multiple winners. Els won 3 of his 4, Singh all 3 of his, and Mickelson 3 of his 5. In addition to them, you’ve got a couple like Harrison and O’Meara who tossed up an awesome season or 2, but I don’t consider those to be anything like an ongoing rivalry. For better or worse, I think he was Tiger’s strongest rival. But - as a long-time fan of ABT, I can attest that Phil provided precious little head-to-head competition.
I think Nicklaus’ competition looks stronger. First, I disagree with your characterization of Watson as not a contemporary. Watson won all 8 of his majors within Jack’s span, and 4 of his 8 before Jack’s 17th. Between 75 and 8-0, Watson won 4 and Nicklaus 5. That’s a pretty substantial overlap. Nothing approaching that for Woods.
Gary Player won 7 of his 9 during Jack’s stretch, from 62 through 78, during which period Jack won 15. Again, far more head-to-head than Woods encountered.
Other notables - while Jack was winning majors Ray Floyd won all 4 of his, Seve won 4 of 5, and Trevino all 6 of his.
If you added in the number of times they finished second to each other, I think it would look even more impressive. Jack finished second to Trevino and Watson 3 times each.
Tiger most likely has greatest partial career (tho if we are talking partial careers, how about Byron Nelson?), but the more you look at it, the more impressive I think Jack’s achievements are - especially as he dominated for so long, and against so many other strong players.
I imagine an argument might be made that the overall field is so much stronger now that Tiger’s task was more challenging. Not sure I find that persuasive.
BTW - Deford was talking about Serena Williams, noting how she is awesome, but has lacked a strong rival like Graf/Seles, or Evert/Navratilova.
I disagree. I think it is trivially easy to make the case that the fields are far more deep these days.
Without digging deep into all the data, lets just look at International golfers and their performance in majors. I’ll split it up from 1960-1985 and an equivalent time, 1986-2010. The “Big Four” won all but one of their majors in the first era. I’m not counting British Opens won by golfers not named Gary Player in the 1960’s, as any honest analysis wouldn’t. Those fields were equivalent in depth to an average Web.com event or maybe even an LPGA Major of the last few years.
16 of 100 events in the early era were won by non-Americans, or 16%, and 12 of the 16 were won by just two guys, Player and Seve.
Between 1985 and 2010, non-Americans won 42 of 100. Since 2010, 11 of 20 have been won by non-Americans.
24 of the Top 50 golfers in the World Golf Rankings are non-American today. In the entire decade of the 60’s (though the WGR’s didn’t exist) I’d guess 2 guys made it - Player and Jacklin. In the 70’s, add Seve and David Graham and Bruce Crampton. 1980 to 1985 a lot more began showing up, but only Watson was cranking out great seasons by that time.
Jack actually finished 2nd to both Trevino and Watson 4 each, so 8 total. And 2 of those hinged on his foes holing chip shots from off the green.
I did do an analysis a couple of years back which did seem to show that modern fields are indeed deeper, by seeing how many golfers were within X shots of the final leader(s), or how far away from the leader 10th place was. But to contend down to the wire requires a substantial amount of skill (or a lot of lucky shots)-another analysis could be done to see how many different names show up within say 3 shots of the lead over a ten year period. In other words your “deeper” field may not mean much when most of those players have very little chance of actually contending, vs. just making the cut and finishing within c. 5-15 shots of the lead. [I will be very busy this weekend but I’ll take a look at it.] A top golfer at the peak of his game will be worth (in terms of chances of winning) ~25-30 guys down in the “field”…
If you look at Jack’s performance over the 70’s, it is simply astonishing how consistent he was-36 top tens, and an even more amazing 27 top 5’s. 70% of the time he was pretty much right there at the end. Tiger was never that consistent even as he did soar to what was likely the highest peak any golfer has or will ever reach (his Tiger Slam). Selecting even his best 10 year stretch (1998-2007) he got 26 top tens and 22 top 5’s, which is still pretty impressive.
I’ve been beating that drum for over ten years, so good luck to you. IMO the US Open was the only major worthy of the name before 1970, and even it had very little participation from international players.
The British Open and PGA Championship had demonstrably weak fields before 1970, and you don’t even have to assume that athletes get better over time, although that’s accepted by everyone but diehard Jack fans. All you have to do is look at how many of the top 100 in the world AT THAT TIME were in the fields. The typical PGA Championship of the 1960’s had about 50 US touring pros and 100 US club pros, and hardly any international players, so it clearly had no more than 50 of the top 100. The British Opens before 1970 had less than a dozen Americans in the field, even counting seniors and amateurs, and the one Gary Player won in 1959 had ZERO US touring pros in the field, so I’d be surprised if they had even 30 of the world top 100. I think that the competition is tougher today in the WGCs, the first two FedEx Cup playoff events, and invitationals like the Memorial and Bay Hill, than in three out of four majors played before 1970.
It probably wasn’t until 1980 that three of the four majors had anywhere near 90 of the top 100 players in the field (the Masters rarely had 90 players at all, including legacy champs, amateurs, and reps from minor foreign tours, so usually no more than 70 world class players), and by an amazing coincidence, that’s when Americans stopped dominating the majors and the world rankings.
Deford’s “analysis” is the same crap I’ve been hearing for years — that the fact that a handful of players racked up lots of wins and majors proves the competition was tougher then. To me, it indicates the opposite. Take any four of the current top ten, and have them play on the Web.com tour, and they would end up with pretty much the same records as Arnie, Jack, Trevino, and Watson did before 1980. The weaker the overall fields, the greater the concentration of wins among the half dozen or so best players.
To be clear, I’m not saying that any of this proves that Tiger was better than Jack, or even Vardon. It’s impossible to compare the best of one era against the best of another, because the equipment, training, rehab facilities, courses, and competition are all different.
But I AM saying that anyone who says that Jack was better because he had tougher competition is nuts.
It depends on what you mean by “competition”-and the answer to that question is not an easy one to come up with. Vijay Singh, for example, was certainly a contemporary of Tiger, and thus would normally be considered part of his competition-except that neither ever contended in any of the other’s victories (the closest finish I could find for either was 5th). Vijay’s effect on Tiger’s chances of winning thus cannot be considered to be in the same universe as the effect that both Trevino and Watson had on Jack’s chances (8 seconds to them).
I agree that the fields of the 60’s, esp. for the British Open and the PGA, were weaker than today’s. But before you obsess over all of those guys outside of the top 50 (or overseas) who weren’t in said fields, recall that they for the most part are never going to contend and thus their absence or presence isn’t going to significantly affect the odds of the top players winning.
You make a lot of good points that I will think about.
What do you say about my perception that there is something about head-to-head competition. One of my biggest gripes about Tiger was the way the field consistently faded when Tiger was in the hunt. How many times did anyone trade blows with him down the back 9 on Sunday?
Look at all the one-hit wonders we’ve had in majors. Michael Campbell wouldn’t even have entered the US Open in 2005, if the USGA hadn’t held sectional qualifying in England for the first time in its history that year. He was ranked 90th in the world, and scraped through qualifying on the number. He then had the week of his life, making several putts over 12 feet down the stretch, and beat a charging Tiger. If the USGA hadn’t picked that year to have overseas qualifying, Tiger would be the only man to have won the first three majors of the year.
Campbell had one top ten in a major in his life before 2005, way back in 1995. His best finish in a major since 2005 is T35, one of only five cuts he’s made in the last ten years. The only win he’s had anywhere in the world since his US Open win was the 2005 HSBC match play, with a field of 16.
Same with Trevor Immelman. He only had one PGA win before he beat Tiger in the 2008 Masters, and the only win he’s had since then has been on the Web.com tour.
Even the best players rarely have their “A” games. They win more often than lesser players because their “B” games are still pretty good, but anybody in the top 200 is capable of having a week where he can beat anyone who isn’t playing his best. The top players in the world might have three or four weeks a year like that. The number 100 guy may have only one week in a hundred like that.
But if there are a hundred guys in the field who can beat Tiger’s “B” game one time in a hundred, then the odds that NONE of them will be hot that week are only a little better than one in three (36.67%). So two weeks out of three, unless Tiger’s playing his best, a Michael Campbell or a Rich Beem or (almost) a Bob May or a Yang can come out of nowhere and beat him.
On the other hand, if the talent pool was smaller 50 years ago, or if half the world’s best players simply weren’t in the field, then maybe there are 100 guys in the field who can only beat Jack’s “B” game one week in 200. In that case, Jack’s “B” game will win three out of five times.
It’s just science.
Right, that’s why Tiger won so many majors from behind. Oh wait…
Damn, Rickie brought it yesterday. (With a mighty assist from the Swede! :eek:) I don’t think I sink as many bombs in a YEAR as he did yesterday. 2 big wins for the year. Add to his strong showing in the bigs last year, and it looks as tho he might be ready to step into the big time. Could be a fun next few weeks.
I think it is neat having a bunch of young guys bunched around the #1.
When the thing came out about Rickie being the most overrated golfer, I had to agree, because he really hadn’t done much to justify the press he was getting. But all credit to him, he has responded to it in the best possible way. The Players is at least the fourth strongest event of the year, and the DB is in the top dozen or so. Combined with a win at the respectable Scottish Open, he’s made a belieber of me.
What do you think it is that makes a player be a consistently strong “also ran.” The old “best player w/o a major”? I’m thinking Tom Weiskopf (one of my faves as a kid). Tom Kite until late in his career. Maybe Sergio. The kind of guy who is always in the mix, but just doesn’t seem to be able to finish the job given as many chances as he gives himself?
I imagine it is silly to think there is a single factor.
Is Rickie defying the hot girlfriend curse? 
I think Lee Westwood has to be a very strong candidate. Colin Montgomerie always crops up in these conversations as well. But it’s Westwood for me. Perhaps that’s my Brit bias speaking though.
Jason Day is “en feugo”. He is certainly in a groove and what a time to get in the zone.
Meanwhile, Tiger has another MicroDisectomy on his back, about a year and half after his first one. He won’t be playing until early next year
And Sergio Garcia is “putting a shrimp on the barbie.”
Hopefully, at Torrey Pines. It will give me something to watch the week before Mariota wins the Super Bowl.
Hey guys, today is the end of the season. The PGA Championship! Anyone else watching? I’m excited and hoping Spieth can pull off a win! I wish he was playing against Day instead of Stenson.
And I’m wondering if Tiger will ever come back after his surgery. I think odds are even that he won’t.
More Back Surgery this week for Tiger. Looks doubtful that he will be back for the Masters, 2016.