You miss my final sentence?
I’ll say one more thing: with the new Age of Parity and all the journeymen winning majors, you’d think it would be a prime opportunity for Tiger to take advantage-but of course he hasn’t. Through age 32 or so for both players, I would have given Tiger the edge-but no longer. His injuries and <ahem> indiscretions are no excuse.
That’s absolutely correct, and it’s a point most commentators seem to miss entirely.
Tiger is still very good and quite capable of winning more tournaments- maybe even a few more majors. BUT… I read and hear constantly things like “There’s no reason Tiger can’t dominate another 10 years.” Sigh… that’s silly, and it shows a lack of respect for golf as a sport. Many people think of golf as an old man’s sport, and so it seems totally logical to assume a 45 year old Tiger Woods could still whip the field as easily as 25 year old Tiger did. After all, he still seems to be hitting the same long drives he’s always made, right?
But that’s ALMOST beside the point. When great golfers get older, it’s NOT their drives that suffer first or most: it’s their SHORT games that go South first. As we saw at the British Open not long ago, even Tom Watson can still drive well enough to contend at some majors. It’s his PUTTING that went to Hell as he approached middle age.
We’re already seeing that with Tiger Woods now. He now regularly muffs putts that you KNOW he’d have sunk a few years ago. His defenders think that’s no big deal. They say things like, “Tiger is fine- all he has to do is start making a few putts.” Which misses the point entirely! That’s like me saying, “I can marry Charlize Theron - all I have to do is get handsomer and richer.”
Deteriorating putting skills are NOT a small thing on the PGA tour, and it’s not something Tiger can easily fix by spending 15 extra minutes on the practice green or by getting a new coach.
Tiger is an aging superstar with nagging injury problems that AREN’T going to get appreciably better. He’s where Dan Marino and John Elway were at age 36- still capable of having fantastic days, but starting to have more and more bad days.
Elway won the Super Bowl in his last game as a pro- but even he knew the writing was on the wall. Tiger isn’t washed up by a long shot- but he’s now EQUALLY likely to win a tournament or to miss the cut. That’s what happens when superstars begin to get old.
Well, he’s won three times and MC’d twice this year, so it seems to me he’s more likely to win.
That aside, the important word in your sentence is “now.” He is clearly not all the way back, but he’s also clearly improving. He’s hitting more fairways, and his misses are missing by a lot less (and contrary to popular belief, he hit a lot of three woods and long irons off the tee in 2000, too.) His short game is now about where his driving was last year, i.e. spotty. It was brilliant at the Memorial, and abysmal at the US Open. With his driving under control, he can now afford to devote more time to it. It may take another year or so to get everything in sync, but so what, he’ll only be 37.
And yes, I know that not many players have won five majors after 36, but not many have won five majors at all. You can’t judge what Tiger will do by looking at what other golfers do, because he is better than they are. As shaky as his game is now, he’s still the first player to win three regular season PGA events since the last time he did it, in 2009, and the year is only half over. Picking up a couple strokes a round as he tightens up his short game will get him back to winning six or seven times a year.
At that point, it’s just a matter of being on his game during a major week. Whether or not he plays well during a major week seems completely random — this year, some of his worst weeks were at majors, but in the two years before that, the only top 5 finishes he had were at majors. Before 2009, his winning percentage in majors was just about the same as his overall winning percentage, or even a little higher.
All of that seems to indicate that the hype and pressure of a major doesn’t affect his game, which is what you would expect of a player who gets the crowds and press coverage every week that other players only get at majors. If he’s on his game, he’ll win; if he isn’t, he won’t, and over the next five or six years, the odds are that he’ll be on his game during at least one major week per year.
That’s true, but what does it indicate? If you have a few guys who win a lot of majors, then you have less guys who have won a major, therefore Tiger is facing more major winners. That might be because the fields are equally strong then and now, but there were more really great players back then, or it might be because there are so many strong players now that even a great player can only win once in a while.
If there are five really good players and the rest not so good, then you would expect a guy like Jack to get a top ten almost every time. If there are 30 really good players, it will be a lot tougher to get a top ten.
I honestly don’t see any way to determine for sure which of those scenarios is closer to reality. But I think Jack made an excellent argument in his 1996 autobiography, where he gave several reasons why he thought the middle of the pack today is as good as the top players were in his day.
And I have yet to read anything that explains why pro golfers should be the only athletes who have not noticeably improved over the last 50 years, or even, as some Jack fans would have it, have gotten noticeably worse.
Let me clarify my point on Jack and his decision to stay home with the family.
Jack, early in his career, said that Snead’s victory total was a goal of his. Something that has been documented.
IMO, after a few years of playing a ‘full schedule’, I think he changed his mind. (has anyone changed their mind before?). He decided to not play as frequently and as such, was limiting his chances to break Sam’s record.
As I indicated before, when I graduated from college, I was ambitious. I wanted to become to get promotion after promotion and become VP and President and hopefully CEO. I had a plan and calendar. After a couple years, I said Screw that. I was not willing to sacrifice my life and to be ruthless and cutthroat and do whatever necessary. It was not what I wanted. I didn’t want to work 70 hour weeks.
I decided I wanted to “work to live” rather than “live to work”. In other words, priorities change.
I am not excusing Jack’s inability to match Sneads record, only explain it. Priorities.
IMO, If Jack played the same number of Tournaments per year in the 70’s and early 80’s as he did in the 60’s he would have matched or beat Sneads record.
Snead’s record was never on Tiger’s bedroom wall. It was Jack’s record of 18 majors on his wall. Tiger beating Jack win total is impressive, very impressive and I am not trivializing it.
Or he might have had a nervous breakdown. Playing 25 events a year into your 40’s is just not realistic. Vijay does it, but he’s a mutant, and he doesn’t have an artificial hip.
Jack actually played a normal schedule until 1979, the first year he played less than 15 events. And from 1979 to 1986, the last year he won a PGA event, his winning percentage was only about 4%. That means that in the years he played less than 15 events, he would have had to add over 200 events to break Snead’s record, even assuming his winning percentage stayed the same under that strain. There’s no way he could have done that.
It’s also worth noting that three of the five events he won during those 8 years were majors. That pretty clearly indicates that he was concentrating on them, using his time off to scout the venues and play practice rounds, and using the other events as tuneups. That gave him a big advantage over the rest of the field. If he had played a full schedule and tried his best to win every event, he might not have won those last three majors.
Yup, it looks like Snead’s record, arguably the second most impressive record in golf, is another one that Tiger will break almost by accident, as he has with the “Most Vardons.”
And assuming that this year is not a fluke, Tiger appears to be back up to a 25% winning percentage. If that holds for the next couple of years, he’ll break Snead’s record after 36 more starts, at which point he will have played 307 events in his pro career, and will be 38 years old. Jack played his 307th PGA event in 1976, and was 38 in 1978, when he played his 345th event. So no matter how you look at it, he had more than a fair shot at Snead.
I can try to measure overall field depth by seeing what the average number of strokes behind the leader(s) for the top 10 (or 20) is at the end of regulation play. Will take me an hour or so to brew something like that up (i.e. not right now).
It’s not clear to me what that would show. Both Jack and Tiger are famous for cruising during the last round, playing conservatively when they have a lead, and letting the other players try and fail to make risky shots to catch them.
:dubious: It would show how deep the fields were-even during their primes there weren’t that many majors where they (or someone else) ran away from the field. I’d say your confounding factor would probably equalize itself between the eras, and overall is a very minor one in the overall scheme of things. I’ve already done the raw data for the 60’s, and there are quite a number of tournaments where the shot spread between the winner and 10th place is very large.
The last 15 golf majors have been won by 15 different players.
since the time of their major, to the present, these players have won exactly 4 PGA Tour Tournaments.
Lucas Glover won the '09 US Open and has won one PGAT tournament since then
Phil Mickelson won the '10 Masters, and has won two PGAT tournaments since that time.
Rory McIlroy won the '11 US Open and has won one PGAT Torunaments since that time.
Yes, some of the international players have won some minor tournaments around the world since their major win (Paddy, McDowell, Oosthuizen, Yang) and Kaymer has won a couple tournaments with very good fields. But none of them have won an official event on the PGAT.
Maybe there are more good players these days, but there are far fewer great players.
The fact that nine of those 15 were international players might have some bearing on that stat.
And in the last four full seasons (2008 though 2011), 11 of the 16 majors were won by non-Americans.
During the first 17 (and a half) years of Jack’s pro career, and excluding the British Open before 1970, when few Americans played it, there were a grand total of two international players who won majors — Tony Jacklin won one, and Gary Player won a bunch. And you have to keep going back, all the way to 1947, before you can add a third non-American major winner.
That’s really all you need to know about the competition in the two eras.
Jack was dominant, and for a long time. When he wasn’t winning, he was finishing in the top 2 or 3 a ridiculous amount of time.
I wrote an article about this recently, I ranked the top 28 golfers of all time based on their finishes in major championships.
Check it out, [link deleted] 
The first chart (total points) is interesting. I have no idea what you are trying to show with the other charts, and I have a math degree, so I think I’m at least as number-savvy as the average guy. You should at least explain it better, e.g. what do you mean by “Years Completed”? It’s obviously not cumulative, since the wins are not monotonic increasing. It’s not age, since it doesn’t go high enough. It’s not years as a pro, since it goes too high. And I can’t tell who’s who, because I can’t tell, say, dark purple from very dark purple. I give up.
But back to the points chart, like I said, it’s interesting, and it obviously took a lot of work, but I don’t think it can be used to fairly compare golfers. You say you don’t follow golf, and it shows. The majors are NOT a constant in golf history. Some of the guys on your chart played when there was only one major a year, and the fields were as small as 8 (so the guy who placed dead last would get an eighth of a point). Hagen only played about half as many majors as Jack. Hogan, Snead, and Nelson only played the British Open one time each in their primes, because it was not worth the time and expense to them. And so on.
But you said your main purpose was to compare Tiger and Jack, and for that, it’s fair, since they both played four majors a year when they were not injured. As it happens, Tiger has missed quite a few already because of his knee, while Jack didn’t miss one for nearly 40 years, so he’s certainly the best when it comes to perfect attendance. And nobody can deny that if you count high finishes, as you did, his record looks untouchable.
Of course, Tiger’s not done yet. He’s still just 36, and guys like Jack, Snead, and Watson have contended at or near 60 years of age. And IMO Tiger’s about to start another years-long stretch of domination.
You’re probably right that he won’t catch Jack in your points chart, but I’ve followed golf for 50 years, and I’ve never seen a chart like that before, so the stats you are using are not mentioned much. I was a huge Nicklaus fan for 40 years, actually still am, but I don’t remember anybody claiming his second and third place finishes meant anything until this century, when it looked like Tiger might pass him in wins. But who knows, your chart may catch on, because it looks science-ish, and it gives Jack’s fans a way to claim he’s still the greatest.
Golf fans are divided about 30-60-10, based on my reading of several golf discussion boards. 30% (IMO the smartest 30%) think Tiger has already done enough to replace Jack as the greatest. He’s behind Jack in major wins, but he’s ahead of him in everything else — money titles, scoring titles, career wins, Player of the Year awards, etc., plus all kinds of records and streaks that Jack never came close to. And IMO smart people realize that you can’t judge a career by four weeks a year, you look at all those stats and more.
About 60% think that’s too much work, and just want to count major wins. They say Jack will be the greatest until Tiger gets 18 majors (actually, some say 19, but since Tiger will have every other record and Jack will just have the one, I don’t think they mean that).
And about 10% say Jack will always be the greatest, or more precisely, Tiger will never be the greatest, even if he wins 100 majors. Their justifications for that opinion vary, but I’ll just say that few of them would look out of place in a remake of “Deliverance.”
Good response Tony but no need to play the race card.
Edit: Hey, forgot to say thanks for reading and the constructive criticism 
The second chart is not meant to be read for each individual - you can see those later in the slideshow/gallery of each player’s individual career. The big chart with white background and the multiple color columns gives what an average career looks like. This “average career” is then plotted with each individual career to see how they each progressed and regressed.
Tiger’s chart shows that either he was overly successful earlier (lack of competition), his success tailed off earlier than you would expect (the steroids argument perhaps?), or that he is just in an extended valley and will be back up there soon.
“Years Completed” is in fact years as a pro - these guys can play for 50 years. Tom Watson finished second at the British Open 40 years after playing in the Masters for the first time. Obviously, I should have made this more clear. I will definitely add something to try to clear that up. I see later on in your response you do mention careers last forever, not sure how I misinterpreted you here 
I don’t follow golf very closely, but I’m relatively familiar with the history; after writing this at least. I did talk about the fairness in comparing eras. It definitely gives the more recent players a huge advantage. Like I wrote in the article…
I’m comparing careers, not the biggest talents. A player like Bobby Jones who never turned pro (he preferred being a lawyer or something) could have won a ton more tournaments and been much higher (Golf.com ranks him #3).
One of the reasons I decided we couldn’t compare Jack and Tiger with anything other than majors is that Jack decided not to compete in very many non-major tournaments. At least, that’s what I read when I researched this, maybe you can comment on that, having followed his career?
I walked into this thinking it might be close, but I really think its hard to discount Jack’s success. Imagine if Tiger had 15 second-place finishes at majors at this point in his career, there would be no debate about who had the better career to this point. By my quick count of (1st/2nd/3rd) place finishes, Tiger has 14/6/4 vs 18/19/9. If you are going to compare performance in major championships (which everyone wants to do - 18 vs 14), the bottom line is, I don’t think its close.
Stat Dance, I’ve taken the link to your website out of the post. I know you’re new here, but we frown upon registering only to advertise your own site, which is what it’s appearing you’re doing.
If you really want to get the word out and like this place enough to continue posting, you’re free to put the link in your profile (homepage).
StatDance, I think one of Jack’s most remarkable (non-winning) achievements is how he did in the British Open from 1963-1980.
Yes, many of the top Americans didn’t travel across the pond, but during this 18 year period, a total of about 24 players beat Nicklaus in the championship.
Two of Jack’s biggest rivals in the 60’s and 70’s:
Arnold Palmer never beat Jack during this stretch in the BoC.
Gary Player only beat him twice during this stretch, the two years that he won.
People look at Watson, Seve, and Peter Thompson as the greatest links players. No, IMO with a Jack’s record, Jack is the greatest Links player.
Just trying to add to your ongoing discussion. Don’t really think of this as spamming, interjecting my thoughts in an ongoing discussion - sorry if I bothered you? Its not like I made a spam thread and said “hey guys check out my blog where I post videos you can see on youtube but with a zillion ads” 
For those that don’t want to look it up, from 1966-1980 Jack finished 5th once, and 4th once… and those were his worst finishes at the Open Championship.
Ridiculous.
Heres a timeline of great players (4 majors or more during their career) and their performance in majors from WWII-today…http://i.imgur.com/ycREt.png
Showed that like you said, he was competing with other great players; he just kept winning.