You got me. He hasn’t won any of the events he never played, including both the Mayakoba and the Mayakoba.
and you got me. I repeated one tournament. Take away my posting privileges for this egregious error.
What flavor is that kool-aid? Maybe if you freeze it, Tiger can have some popsicles for Hank Haney.
I think that, even now, Jack Nicklaus himself would tell you that Tiger Woods in his prime was by far the best golfer of all time.
But Tiger is well past his prime, and will NEVER be that guy again. That doesn’t mean he should pack it in. If he still loves golf, if he still loves life on the tour, he can and should keep playing as long as his body lets him. But it’s hard for me to see him winning any more PGA tournaments, and impossible for me to see him winning a major.
Thing is, the media and Tiger’s fans don’t want to hear that- they still think “This is GOLF, not a real sport, There’s no reason he can’t dominate til he’s 60.” Worse yet, they all think they’re defying the conventional wisdom. They all think, “Just watch, you haters, you’re just fueling Tiger’s fire and making him more eager to prove you wrong.” But Tiger has NEVER thrived on being underestimated. He’s always thrived on being feared. Even when he wasn’t playing brilliantly, he intimidated the rest of the field, and led them to self-destruct. That will never happen again.
And frankly, in the media, “Tiger will be back better than ever any second now” IS still the conventional wisdom!
Got any more ridiculous straw men in your barn?
Cite for Tiger fans and/or media saying golf isn’t a real sport?
Cite for anybody, even some anonymous forum poster let alone the media, saying he’ll be better than ever any second now?
Yes, Tiger fans are encouraged, but my over-under for a good year next year isn’t that he’ll be better than ever, it’s that he doesn’t have any WDs. I don’t expect him to dominate again, even if he stays healthy.
I do expect him to win again — if he stays healthy. As I said in a previous post, his T9 at Albany implies he’s playing at a world top 20 level already, and he should be able to improve a couple shots per round when he hones his short game. That is easily good enough to win when he has a good week putting. I don’t think we’ll see any more 8- or 9-win seasons, but he might get more than one per year.
And if he can win a PGA event, he can win a major. The odds are much less, not because they are so much harder to win (in his prime, his winning percentage in majors was a little higher than his winning percentage in regular PGA events), but because there are only four a year, so the chances of him having a hot putter the week of a major are about a tenth of the chances of him having a hot putter during a non-major week. Simple as that.
The Masters is probably easier to win than a top tier PGA event because of the small field, at least for someone with the right mentality. I think Tiger has shown he has a winning mentality. And he’s certainly not too old, when Els and Mickelson and Clarke are winning majors in their 40’s. If Tiger doesn’t win another major, it won’t because of his age, it will be because of his health. It doesn’t have to be another injury that results in another surgery, it might just be enough nagging pain to keep him from practicing as much as he should.
Your belief that he won tournaments through intimidation defies both common sense and the record. Golf is a real sport, but it’s not like boxing or football or even basketball, where there is contact. Anybody without the mental strength to play his own game and not worry about the mere presence of Tiger is unlikely to be in contention anyway.
And it’s a myth that players self-destructed against him. He was just that much better, so if he had a good week, nobody could beat him. If Tiger had a lead, they knew he wasn’t likely to play badly, so if they wanted to win, they had to make a lot of birdies, which meant taking a lot of chances, which usually results in more bogeys. I remember a Masters where Els had to go for the green in two to have a chance of catching Tiger. He normally would have laid up, but he needed an eagle to catch Tiger. Of course the ball ended up in the creek, and he bogeyed. That’s not self-destruction, it’s taking a big risk to win. Because contrary to another popular misconception, the players today don’t play it safe; they don’t need to. Thanks largely to Tiger, the money for tenth place is so good that they have no reason not to go for the win.
And one of the most famous Tiger stats is that he never won a major from behind. If his competition self-destructed with Tiger in the field, how is that stat possible?
For some reason, he gets dinged for that stat, when it’s really amazing that he had the 54-hole lead 15 times, and closed it out 14 times. Nobody else has ever had a percentage approaching that. After he stopped winning, people saw how hard it is to do that. Heck, just last week, they mentioned about a hundred times that Hoffman had zero wins with half a dozen or so 54-hole leads, and he increased that by one on Sunday.
If I can clear up anything else for you, just ask.
Wow, and I thought I could be pompous and pedantic!
You disagree?
Excepting his rookie season and a few contractual obligations to low-rent events like the Buick Open, Tiger almost exclusively played the strongest events on the Tour. They typically had at least 60 or 70 of the world top 100 in the field.
Compare that to the PGA Championships of the 60’s, with 100 or so club pros and only 50 or so touring pros in the field, and only a couple of international players. Compare it to the British Opens of the 60’s, with zero to ten PGA touring pros in the fields (Gary Player’s 1959 Open win had zero).
Compare that to the Masters of the 60’s, with 70 to 80 players in the field, including amateurs and old-timers, and few international players.
Compare that to the US Opens of the 60’s, with only a handful of international players.
Note that this is not about whether Tiger was better than Jack. It’s about the fields they played against.
It’s a matter of record that before 1975 or so, the three American majors had zero to few international players in the field, and the British Open had zero to few American players. So most of the majors of that era had less than half of the world’s top 100 players in the field. Even Jack himself complained about how poor the fields were for the PGA Championship.
Show me where I’m wrong.
Feel free to continue with that. It’s your making shit up that I object to.
29% of his wins didn’t even have 80 players in the field! 18 WGCs and 5 other events with limited fields with no cuts (ToC, TC and 2009 BMW).
Yes, Jack did not play against many international players during his prime on the PGATour. But I have yet to see anyone identify more than a dozen players that didn’t play these events. The PGATour was where all the Top Players played. And Internationals were not prohibited as evidenced by Gary Player, Bruce Devlin, Bruce Crampton, Bob Charles etc. were playing the PGATour.
and yes again, not many of the PGATour elite went to play the British Open. Jack was beating the PGATour elite pretty regularly, and then he goes over to Britain and averages a third place finish from 1963 - 1980. Only 26 different players out scored Nicklaus in the British Open from 1963-1980. 8 players did it more than once including Watson and Trevino for 38 times total. 38 times in 18 years. Jack went over to Britain, on their turf, vulnerable to the wrong side of the draw, and averages a little worse than 3rd place in 18 years.
LMAO…There was 18 players in the field. Most of which were in the middle of their off season. At best it was the equivalent of 40-50th in a full field event.
I heard that. I didn’t think it would last through today. Maybe this time…
He seems to be progressing nicely. I would never have thought that he would have performed this well in just his fourth event of the year.
All indicators seem to be positive. Never mind that he had a makeable putt to get into a playoff — he’s played three weeks out of four with evidently no pain, and shot all four rounds under par this week, on a tough course, for the first time in 5 years. He also got to see how his game would hold up down the stretch when in contention, and it held up well. He wasn’t super sharp down the stretch, but he didn’t melt down, either, and he made an incredible putt on 17.
I think a win this year is now a very realistic expectation if If IF he stays healthy, but I don’t understand how he can swing that hard and not pop something else in his back.
Didn’t see this before.
It’s not his fault that the elite events have smaller fields; in fact, he often skipped the ToC, even though he was almost always eligible. And like Snead, Jack got credit for OFFICIAL wins in team events (with Arnie as his partner, no less), and events with fields as small as 20.
You’re simply wrong. You can’t name a dozen good international players who didn’t play the PGA tour because, like most Americans, without looking it up you can’t identify a dozen golfers from any country other than the US who played during that era, period. Who were the top dozen Australian golfers then? The top dozen South Africans? The top dozen from mainland Europe? Unless they won several Opens, like Peter Thomson or Bobby Locke (who WAS banned from the PGA), most Americans had no idea who the top golfers were in other countries, because they didn’t play here, or like Thomson and Locke, only played a couple or three years. The four players you mentioned, plus Kel Nagle, were just about it, because few foreign players could afford the extra time and expense of playing in the US, and even fewer were willing to leave their families for months at a time to do so.
Here’s an example: if you take every golfer who won the Order of Merit (which, for those who don’t know, is the top Euro player of the year) from 1955 to 1975, and add up their appearances in the US Open or PGA Championship from 1962 (when Jack turned pro) through 1974, what would the total number be?
The answer is zero. And that’s for players a relatively short hop across the Atlantic, not South Africa or Australia. And I’m not saying they didn’t play those US majors in the year they won the OOM, I’m saying they didn’t play those US majors in any year during that span. Whether because the PGA and USGA made them jump through too many hoops to get in, or because they just didn’t want to spend the time and money, none of those top British or Euro golfers came over here for the PGA or US Open during those prime Nicklaus years. So why would they do it for a regular PGA tour event?
To be even more specific, Peter Alliss was one of the best players in Europe for nearly 20 years. He won the Order of Merit twice, and beat the biggest American stars like Palmer, Venturi, and Casper in his Ryder Cup matches, but he was invited to the Masters only five times, and he only accepted twice. Too far to travel, he said. Plus the ball was different.
His Ryder Cup partner, Christy O’Connor, also won the OOM twice. He never played an American major in his entire career.
Geez, what a short attention span you have. AGAIN, this is not about how good Jack was. It’s about the fields he had to beat. The Open had a very weak field before the mid-70’s; that’s just a fact. You said yourself all the best players were on the PGA Tour, so if there were less than ten PGA touring pros in the field of the Opens Gary and Jack and Arnie won (there were zero when Gary Player won his first Open in 1959), then the Opens of that era weren’t as strong as the John Deere today.
I’m not trying to argue that Tiger is or was better than Jack. There’s no way to know. They used different equipment and played on different courses. For all I know, Vardon was better than Tiger. All I’m saying is that Tiger had tougher fields to beat than Vardon. And Jack.
Those 18 players were all ranked 38th or better in the world, and were at various points in their season, since some of them were international players. I guarantee that none of them were as rusty as Tiger. In any case, I think that finishing 12th and T2 in his last two events against fairly strong fields (over 50 WGR points to the winner of both) that are a couple of months into their season makes a strong case for top 20 status.
Whatever, officially his ranking has improved over 500 spots in the last four months, from #668 at the Hero to #149 now. If he manages his 9th win at Bay Hill, he should be in the top 50, and eligible for WGCs again.
Wasn’t claiming it is was his fault…I am just saying it is easier for a horse to win a two horse race than a 20 horse race.
How is that wrong? FTR…Bobby Locke was banned in 1948 and reinstated in 1951 and his banishment has nothing to do with his citizenship. There was no prohibition of international players during Jack’s prime on tour. The presence of Player, Charles, Devlin, Crampton, DiVicenzo is de facto proof of that. They were international players. Yep, no (or few) Europeans on tour. But that is not because they were prohibited. They simply chose not to play.
To nitpick for clarity, O’Connor and Alliss won the British OoM, not the European Tour OoM. The European Tour did not form until 1972.
Ok one hand you are saying the British had weak fields in before the 1980s. But on the other hand, you are saying US Majors were tainted because the players that were playing the British Open, were not playing the US Majors.
So what is it. British Opens were tainted because the fields were weak, US Majors were tainted because they lacked International competition?
Can’t have it both ways.
Tiger is playing better than I expected. Although his club choice on the 18th tee yesterday was strange, considering he had to make birdie to tie Casey (already in the clubhouse). That tells me that he has little trust in the big stick or even his three wood. Wondering what is going to happen when he plays Augusta, where he will need to hit driver 9-10 to compete instead of 4-5 times like at Honda and Valspar.
Considering the width of Augusta’s fairways and lack of rough, it’s unlikely to be a problem. Besides, his driving was not the problem. It was his long irons.
Great, we agree on that. Now let me try something different, since most Jack fans can’t be logical talking about Jack. Let’s talk about women’s golf.
50 years ago, the LPGA was almost entirely American, just like the PGA. Here are the current world rankings for women’s golf:
1 Shanshan Feng
2 Lexi Thompson
3 So Yeon Ryu
4 Sung Hyun Park
5 Anna Nordqvist
6 I.K. Kim
7 Ariya Jutanugarn
8 In Gee Chun
9 Cristie Kerr
10 Hye Jin Cho
Isn’t it blindingly obvious that it’s MUCH harder for an American to accumulate wins and majors when international players regularly compete? Isn’t it blindingly obvious that if players from Sweden and Korea weren’t on the tour, then there would be a lot of American players with 20+ wins and 5+ majors, instead of very few with half those numbers?
That is the mistake Jack fans make. They think that since Jack had to beat a lot of guys with multiple majors, that proves that he had tougher competition than Tiger. But the truth is that since the mid 80’s or so, when it became common for all the best players in the world to play all four majors every year, there are probably four or five times more players in the field capable of winning, so it’s four or five times harder to win. So a guy like, say, Phil Mickelson, who famously has not won the US Open, might have won in 2004 when he finished second to Goosen, or in 2006 when he finished second to Ogilvy, or in 2013 when he finished second to Rose, if international players mostly skipped it.
So I entirely agree, it’s easier to win a two horse race than a 20 horse race.
I didn’t say it did. Here’s what wikipedia has to say about it, with a direct quote from Claude Harmon, which I have helpfully emphasized. If you can find a more authoritative source that contradicts it, I’ll be happy to read it:
I didn’t say they were prohibited, I said they had to jump through hoops. Back then, even for Americans, the PGA had a lot of stupid rules — required courses in clubhouse management, for example, which even Jack complained about. That would be an annoyance for someone who lived in the US to do during the off season. It would be unendurable for an Australian, who had a family back home, to waste his time on.
So yes, there were a handful of international players who for whatever reason were willing to put up with the stupid rules and the enormous expense of travel and temporary lodging, and the time away from home. But the vast majority of top international players didn’t think it was worth it. Because travel was so slow and expensive, most of them didn’t want to play even in the Masters, as evidenced by Alliss turning down most of his Masters invitations, and other prominent Euros turning down all of them (go ahead, argue that the Masters wasn’t that big a deal back then). So you’re right, they chose not to play. Which means that the PGA fields were missing many of the best players in the world.
Correct. But there is no evidence that the top mainland Euro pros played the majors any more frequently before 1972. And since you bring it up, it’s also true that the Ryder Cup was the USA against the British, rather than all of Europe, until 1979, which made it much easier to win both individual matches and the overall trophy, and which most people seem to forget when comparing Ryder Cup records as evidence of the superiority of American golfers 50 years ago.
Correct. The Opens of the 60’s had weaker fields than the average PGA tour event today, and maybe even weaker than the weakest PGA tour events. How can anyone deny it, with exactly zero American touring pros in the field when Gary Player won in 1959, and less than ten all through the 60’s?
No, I didn’t say that. I said the US majors of 50-60 years ago had much weaker fields than today, because only a handful of international players played in the US majors, and that is easily verified by simply looking at the list of entrants. But I don’t claim that all the best international players played the Open.
Because of the time and expense of travel back then, I would guess that the majority of good players from South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, etc. didn’t play ANY of the majors, including the Open, with any regularity, although they may have played the Open a time or two as a bucket list item. For one thing, until the early 60’s, everybody had to go through local qualifying to play the Open. So you would have to invest more than first place money in travel and lodging to go there with no guarantee you would even get to play. Incredibly, there were no exemptions, not even for the defending champ, or the current US Open champ.
Obviously, the few who were willing to invest the time and money it took to play the Open were also more likely to play a US major. And in fact, winning the Open was arguably the easiest way to qualify for a US major back then.
Sure I can. Good Lord, that’s the whole point. ALL the majors had weaker fields than today, because (assuming half the best players in the world were Americans) half the best players were missing from all of the majors — the Open had hardly any Americans, and the other three had hardly any international players.
By the way, according to the official world golf rankings, 12 of the top 20 players this week are international players, and before the fairly recent ascension of Fowler, Dustin, Spieth, and Thomas, there was a period of years when the ratio was even worse for Americans. There is no reason to believe that the genetics of American golfers have gotten much worse in the last 50 years, or that international players’ genetics have gotten much better. The percentage of babies born with the talent to play elite golf is the same now as then, and the same around the world as here. The difference is that the huge purses now available, and the increased ease of jet travel, including many private jets, now makes it feasible for a higher percentage of top international players to play in the US, and vice versa.
I am just saying it is easier for a horse to win a two horse race than a 20 horse race.
I hadn’t been following the thread and just decided to see what the hubbub was about.
As a poor recreational player whose knowledge of golf history has come mostly from reading Golf Digest while waiting to get a haircut, I appreciate your post.
[expletive deleted because this ain’t the Pit] I haven’t chimed into your little bullshit thread precisely because I knew you would be (and have been) up to your usual little sophistry-laden tricks and snide sideways insults. So instead you up and try to bait me. [expletive deleted because this ain’t the Pit]
I won’t waste any more breath on the interminible field depth thing (which, note, I never argued against, per se) vs. Tiger’s main rivals all mysteriously going AWOL whenever he was in contention, since you obviously aren’t the least bit interested. Your little Vardon Trophy two step from several years ago (“Oh, let’s see if I can cherry pick something that Tiger did that Jack didn’t do…except that Jack actually led the tour in scoring average numerous times but always fell a few rounds short of the required number of qualifying rounds, you say?”)
You revealed your true colors there, where instead of sacking up like a man and conceding the point, went off on how hugely significant a few extra rounds has to be, revealing your total and complete ignorance of all things statistical by doing so. So you just keep on going on about how perfectly “logical” you are, and how anybody who argues against Tiger’s competition isn’t. [And we won’t even discuss your threadshit from c. a year ago, which another Doper called you out on too, where again you tried to bait me] It is 100% obvious now that you have ZERO interest in discussing this in anything remotely resembling good faith. Goodbye. [expletive deleted because this ain’t the Pit]
I’m sorry, who are you again? Apparently you’re somebody who is still furious over a post I made in 2015, but I honestly didn’t remember it, or you, until I followed your link. And if I had been trying to bait anyone, I wouldn’t do it in a post buried at the bottom of a seven year old thread. And just by the way, it’s not my thread.
On the contrary, I would be extremely interested to learn how you figure Tiger’s opponents went AWOL whenever he was in contention, since one of the most popular refrains from Jack fans is that Tiger never won a major from behind. He was in contention from behind plenty of times. I especially remember the 2005 US Open, when Michael Campbell played the best golf of his life, and poured in long putt after long putt on the final nine holes to hold off a charging Tiger. And I think most people would agree that YE Yang, Bob May, Chris DiMarco, and Rocco Mediate, to name just four, also played the best golf of their lives when they were head to head against Tiger in the final pairing of a major. Yang actually won, the others took him to a playoff, and none of them crumbled – it took spectacular clutch putts and/or chip-ins by Tiger to beat them.
So please, tell me more about how Tiger only had to show up to win.
Um, I hate to tell you this, but that post isn’t about Tiger at all, it’s about Billy Casper. And it’s not even about Billy versus Jack, it’s about Billy versus the Big Three of Arnie, Jack, and Gary. And it’s considered by some dishonest to allege a direct quote from someone, when the record clearly shows he never said it. Here is an accurate quote from the thread regarding cherry-picking, incidentally before anyone else mentioned it:
See how easy it is to make accurate quotes?
Wait, conceding what point? That Jack lost Vardon Trophies during the time span (1964-70) I was talking about because he didn’t play enough rounds? Well, he didn’t.
The only years in that time span that Jack claims he had the lowest scoring average were 1964 and 1965. Jack played 26 rounds in 1964 and 24 rounds in 1965, more than enough to qualify for the Vardon. The reason he didn’t win it was not because of minimum rounds, it was because the PGA had some stupid rule about having to be a Class A member to be eligible for the Vardon (and the Ryder Cup), and Jack hadn’t been on tour long enough to be a Class A member.
I have made a number of posts knocking Jack for claiming scoring titles that he wasn’t entitled to, because it is an obvious fact that it’s easier to score better when you only play when and where you want to, instead of having to play 80 rounds (the minimum of the time), including at times and courses that you really don’t want to. It was Jack’s choice to play tour events less and play practice rounds at the major venues more — in retrospect, a very smart choice, but he knew he was breaking the rules for the Vardon while he was doing it. So I refuse to go along with him awarding himself scoring titles for years when he didn’t play the minimum number of rounds. I notice that he doesn’t refuse to accept the official wins and money he received for playing team events (with Arnie as his partner, no less!), or for events with 20 or fewer players in the field, which were also a feature of the PGA of his era. So he should take the good with the bad.
That said, I have always acknowledged that he has a legitimate case for the Vardons he didn’t win in 1964 and 1965, because he did play the minimum number of rounds those years. I even said Jack was robbed of those two Vardons, in the very thread you’re claiming I ignored Jack’s right to them. How’s that for sacking up?
No, you’ve convinced me that Jack fans are a model of logic and accuracy. And tranquility.
I have seen the argument about the US major field from the 1960 and 1970’s were not as strong because of the lack of integration of American and International players.
a. Few American didn’t play the British
b. Few Internationals didn’t play the US Majors
FWIW, to prevent one of the Strawman arguments, I agree with “A” and “B”. Those statement are true
What these advocates have never provided is a detailed list of World Class Elite Int’l Players that did not play the PGATour.
A few posts back, Christy O’Connor and Peter Alliss were mentioned. There is no evidence to support that they would be competitive on the PGATour. NONE. Alliss never finished better than 8th in the British Open, and O’Connor wasn’t much better. Only one Brit won the British Open in 32 years. And it was their “turf”.
I don’t think you can name 10 World Class Elite players that never tried to play the PGATour, between 1960 and 1980
This is like your mom saying, “Eat your vegetables, there are people starving in India,” and you saying, “Name ten of them.”
I’m not going to bother trying to name them, because you wouldn’t accept them as world class, because they didn’t win a bunch of majors – as you just did with Alliss and O’Connor, even though they played only one major per year, and even though they beat the likes of Palmer, Casper, and Venturi head to head. Just like you base Tiger vs Jack on one number, you dismiss their entire careers based on how they played one week per year.
Besides, it would take a lot of research to find such players. You would have to go back to the records of events played in South Africa or Australia 60 years ago, and find people who beat the likes of Thomson or Locke with some frequency, but who didn’t choose to invest the time and money it took to play majors, let alone spend an entire season on the PGA tour.
So all I can do is ask you a question:
The US Open was won by non-Americans only three times between 1925 and 1994, but was recently won by non-Americans eight out of 11 years (2004-2014). Is this because babies overseas started being born with tremendous golf talent around 1970, or is it because American stopped being born with tremendous golf talent around then?