Tag: Tiger Woods

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Golf: The Top 20 Golfers Of All Time

Anytime you make a list like this there is always going to be disagreement. I tried to make the process as objective as possible, with opinion thrown out the window. The criteria I used was wins and major championships. Winning is not emphasized enough in golf. There have been many golfers over the years that have made very good livings on the PGA touring with winning hardly any tournaments. The golfing media is into top 10 finishes and even scoring average to some degree. I gave a player one point for a win and 5 points for a major championship win. Since this is going all the way back to the 1900’s, the U. S. and British Amateurs are considered majors. I will go into this more as I go through the list but there still had to be some subjectivity when doing the process. Professional wins in some cases had to be weighted somewhat and some not included. I did not include any team events and no senior wins were included. The quality of play is very good, but it is not the quality that is on the regular tour. If it was, these guys would be playing the regular tour, because they would win about two to three times the amount of money. As much as I admire the longevity of players like Bernard Langer and Hale Irwin their senior careers were not included. The two surprises to me that just failed to make it were Lee Trevino, not enough regular wins, and Vijay Singh, not enough majors, both falling one point short of making the top 20. No active player on the PGA tour made it, with Rory coming the closest falling 10 points short. With no further ado, here is the list and since most of the surprises are from the middle on, I am going to go from no. 1 down to 20

No 1. Tiger Woods  95 wins  18 majors  185 points. No surprise here. Tiger’s record speaks for itself. The amazing thing here is that he has 38 European Tour wins to go along with his 3 British Opens which is third all time. He really is a winning machine. What is remarkable he did about 90% of this from 1997 to 2008. It was quite an 11 year stretch.

No. 2 Jack Nicklaus 64 wins  20 majors 164 points. Just not enough worldwide wins for Jack to catch Tiger. No question, major championship record 2nd to none, and with as many 2nd and 3rd place finishes he had, if the emphasis had not been placed on winning so much, he would have probably slipped just ahead of Tiger. Even though it is very hard to win in golf it still in my view the name of the game.

No. 3 Sam Snead  76 wins   7 majors 111 points. No question Tiger and Jack stand alone at the top. The next 5 are going to be separated by only 9 points. Sneads lack of a United States Open Championship is the big flaw in his record but even if he had won, he would not have challenged the top two. Other than the Open, it is clear that Snead knew how to close the deal.

No. 4 Gary Player  60 wins   9 majors  105 points. The first surprise for me on the list. I would not have ranked Gary that high. His worldwide wins put him in that position. Here is where I had to make some decision on the quality of wins and there were some, I gave no points for. The ones that I did give credit to were against good fields. You cannot argue about his record in the majors, he is tied for 5th all time.

No. 5 Ben Hogan  58 wins  9 majors  103 points. Many people rank Hogan 3rd on the all-time list. His horrible auto accident limited his activity. The odd thing about Hogan was his terrible playoff record of 8-12 and 1-3 in the majors. No question 1953 was his great year, playing in only 6 tournaments he won 5 including 3 majors.

No. 6 Walter Hagan  47 wins 11 majors  102 points.   Hagan was a match play king winning 4 PGA championships in a row when it was contested at match play. During much of Hagen’s career there were only 3 professional majors to win per year. Even with less opportunity he finished 4th all time in major championship wins.

No.7 Arnold Palmer 62 wins  7 majors.  102 points. Tied with Hagen but I used majors to break any ties. The king was by far the player that gave golf its first major boost in popularity. Just could not win the PGA and only came close a couple of times losing by one shot to Julius Boros in 1968. His go for broke style which won him many a tournament and was popular, also lost him a couple of majors at least.

No. 8 Peter Thomson  65 wins  5 majors  90 points. By far the biggest surprise on the list. The man who gets no respect. He won 5 British Opens 4 in the 50’s when there was not a lot of American participation. He did win one in 1965 when it was beginning to get a foothold on being a big tournament again, thanks to Palmer. He won eleven times on the Senior Tour so it showed he knew how to play against his peers. He dominated what was known as the Great Britain tour in the 1950’s. It is hard to judge the quality of the competition at that time so I gave him only a half a point for those wins. It was hard to judge this player but one thing is for sure he knew how to win and is a forgotten great champion.

No.9 Bobby Jones 21 wins  13 majors  86 points. The only amateur on the list and the greatest amateur of all time. Another player who did not play in that many tournaments but won most that he played in. He had one of the greatest years in golf when he won the 4 major championships at the time in one-year, 1930.

No. 10 Seve Ballesteros  57 wins  5 majors  82 points. Again another worldwide player who had a magnificent short game. He got the Ryder Cup to go European and turned it into a premier event. He was wild off the tee which contributed to him never winning a U.S. Open. He finished 3rd in 1987. He helped put European golf on the map

No. 11 Greg Norman  69 wins  2 majors  79 points Again another worldwide player getting his just do. Second least number of major wins in the group but contended many times and had two unbelievable losses, the Mize pitch in and the Tway bunker shot. During 86 and the first major of 87 he was tied or in the lead in 5 straight majors after the 3rd round, the only player to ever do it. Then he lost the 6-shot lead to Nick Faldo in the 1996 Masters. What is amazing is that he still managed to finish 2nd even though he shot 78. Of the 44 players who played on Sunday only 11 broke par and just 5 broke 70. Faldo’s 67 was probably one of the best final rounds in major championship history. Normans career will always be thought of as what might have been.

No. 12 Roberto De Vicenzo  74 wins  1 major 79 points. Another surprise on the list. De Vicenzo was another great worldwide player whose wins had to be evaluated. He may have had 2 majors if not for the scorecard mistake at the 1968 Masters which cost him a place in a playoff with Bob Goalby. He was truly a great player and obviously new how to win. He and Norman are the only players with fewer than 3 major wins in the top 20. De Vicenzo had a great senior career which again shows that he could play with his contemporaries.

No. 13 Tom Watson  37 wins  8 majors  77 points. Another on the list that could not win the PGA, but he loved the British Open winning it 5 times. A player, like so many, that ran into putting problems late in his career, or would have won much more. Made the big chip in on 17 at Pebble Beach to keep Nicklaus from winning his 5th U.S. Open in 1982

No. 14 Phil Mickelson  46 wins  6 majors 76 points. It took Phil awhile but once he broke through in the majors he went on a tear. He ended it in 2021 by becoming the oldest to win a major. Like Sam Snead he never could win the U.S. Open but finished 2nd six times. 2006 was the brutal one when he double bogied the last hole to not even get into a playoff. His course management has been questioned the most of anyone on this list. There are many out there that think he would have won much more if had not made so many dumb mistakes.

No. 15 Harry Vardon  41 wins  7 majors  76 points. I put Vardon below Mickelson because there was no question the competition was not as great in the early 1900’s as it was in the 2000’s. Vardon is credited with starting the modern game. He was the dominant player for the first 20 years of the 20th century. Another victim of the bulky putter late in his career.

No. 16 Billy Casper  59 wins  3 majors  74 points. Casper went on a transformation in the mid 1960’s going on a diet that included buffalo meat. He dropped 40 pounds and added two majors, a U.S Open in 1966 which saw him make up a 7 shot deficit on Arnold Palmer, and a green jacket in 1970. He was the best putter of his era with that wristy pop stroke. He wrote an instructional putting article for Sports Illustrated, that my Dad and I followed to a T.

No. 17 Byron Nelson  48 wins  5 majors  73. I am sure many would put Bryon higher on this list. He had one of the greatest years in professional golf winning 11 tournaments in a row. Nelson is probably the only player on this list that did not enjoy tournament golf. For him golf was a ways and a means to buy a ranch and become a rancher, which is exactly what he did. He probably would have won a lot more if his heart had been in it. No Open championship for Nelson.

No. 18 Gene Sarazen  38 wins  7 majors  73 points. Sarazen had one of the most famous shots in golf the double eagle at no. 15 at Augusta in 1935 that propelled him into a tie with Craig Wood and the next day won the 36 hole playoff. It is unlikely the Masters needed any help in establishing itself as a major but the double eagle shot solidified the deal. This allowed Sarazen to become one of only 5 players to win all of the majors.

No. 19 Ernie Els  47wins  4 majors  67 points. Els will be always known as the man that Tiger Woods kept from winning even more. If Tiger had not come on the scene when he did, Els probably would have won at least 3 more majors. Els had one of the worst cases of the yips when he 7 putted the first green in the 2016 Masters. Els had a great career, but it will be what “Wood” have happened if Tiger had not come along.

No. 20 Nick Faldo 36 wins  6 majors  66 points. Last but certainly not least Nick Faldo was the man that started all the swing change nonsense. He made a big swing change with coach David Leadbetter and turned his career around. He went from a journeyman player with the nickname of Nick Foldo, to becoming a 6 time major champion winner and no. 1 player in the world.

There you have it, the top 20 golfers of all time. Some would argue that there is too much emphasis on worldwide wins rather than concentrating on PGA tour wins. I tried to value the wins but in some cases I think I went overboard. I was really surprised by Peter Thomson’s record. His British Open wins, particularly the ones he won in the 50’s have always been tainted by so called weak fields. However, the last time the British team beat the US team in the Ryder Cup was in the mid 50’s. I just cannot go along with the premise that the best golf was only played in America. I think it is a good list driven by one thing, winning. Winning on the world stage and winning in national events no matter where they are played is still one of the most difficult things to do in golf. I feel there will be some current players that will crack this top 20, but we will see. For now, I will take any of the top 20 against any other 4 you want to have.

 

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Golf: Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods, is the third member of the group, who should be considered the greatest golfer of all time, and thanks to the alphabet, I have saved the best for last. Despite the fact that I wrote, that Sam Snead should be in this group, the debate always boils down to Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods. Those that feel that Nicklaus is the best, will always point to his major championship record, which is second to none. There is no doubt that people look at the performances in major championships, as golf’s holy grail. We need a little historical background on major championships, to put them in a proper prospective. Although Tiger Wood’s major championship record is not as good as Nicklaus’s, it is not all that far behind, when you look at the entire history of golf.

When Nicklaus was trying to win the most major championships of all time, he was chasing Bobby Jones. Jones had won 13 major championships, which included the U. S. and British Amateur, where he won 5 and 1 respectively. He won 4 US Opens and 3 British Opens to round out his 13 majors. When Nicklaus was making his run at Jones, he had won 2 US Amateur titles, before turning pro in 1962. Walter Hagen had 11 professional major titles. He won 3 US Open, 3 British Opens, and 5 PGA Championships. He won 4 PGA’s in a row when the event was all match play. Speaking of greatness, he is the greatest match play player of all time. It was convenient when Nicklaus won his 14th major, which included his 2 amateur wins, he broke Jones’s major record, and Hagen’s professional major record, at the same time. As the years went by Nicklaus’s majors number always included his amateur wins. When he won that memorable Masters in 1986, it was stated that this was his 20th major championship, which in 1986, looked like a record that would never be approached, let alone broken. Then, along comes Tiger, and all of a sudden, the talk is only about the 18 professional majors that Nicklaus won, like the US amateur is not considered a major any more. No one had the guts, to write that the great Bob Jones, now only had 7 majors. If you count Tiger’s 3 US Amateur wins, then that brings his total to 18 and only 2 behind Nicklaus. They both have won the 4 professional majors, 3 times each. Jack has won one more Masters, one more US Open, and one more PGA, thus the 2 more career majors. You just can not change, what is considered a major as time goes by. If it was counted as a major in 1980, then it is a major today. Even though Jack’s record in the majors, is still the best, Tiger is a close second, for sure.

Tiger is the G.O.A.T, because he just has done too many things that no one has ever done, plain and simple. The only person to win 3 US Amateurs in a row. The youngest to win all 4 majors, doing it when he was 24, about 2 years younger than Nicklaus. His making the cut 142 straight times, should be enough to put him at the top. He broke Byron Nelson’s record of 111 and Jack made a good run, with 105. Hale Irwin follows with 86 and Dow Finsterwald is 5th at 72, just a little above half of Tiger’s mark. Tiger was the only player to win 4 professional majors in a row. See, I know how to sneak that professional word in too. He has the lowest career scoring average. He is tied with Sam Snead for 82 wins. He has led the money list 10 times, Nicklaus is second with 8, and Tom Watson and Ben Hogan did it 5 times, each. Biggest victory margin in the US Open 15, next Willie Anderson 11 in 1899. Biggest victory margin in the Masters 12, Jack second with 9. Biggest victory margin in British Open 8. Two other golfers matched this record, J. H. Taylor, 1900 and 1913, and James Braid in 1908. The major he does not have the biggest victory margin, is the PGA, where he did win by 5 once, but Rory has the record at 8. He has 41 European Tour wins which is 3rd all time. Tiger has won Bay Hill 8 times, and The World Invitational at Firestone 8 times, tying him with Snead for the most wins at one event. He is 14 and 1 when holding or sharing the third round lead in a major. He has won a record 22.8% of his starts on the PGA tour. Nicklaus won about 12% of his. There may one player on tour today, who is close to 10%, but that is about it. He won the Vardon Trophy a record 9 times. Last but not least his playoff record is 15-2. Ben Hogan’s playoff record is 2 and 9. Any questions. Tiger is it, baby.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Back after about a 2 and 1/2 week hiatus. My play has been interesting if not spectacular. Of my last 19 rounds, 15 of them have been between 73 and 77, with the other 4 being 78, 79, 80, and 81. Most of them have been between 75 and 77 with the last three, being 77. I know there are some people who would die for a “streak” like that, but I am feeling frustrated. I have not shot a par round this year and I haven’t felt like any one part of my game has been all that solid. I did go through one stretch when I hit my irons really well, but other than that I have had my usual problems. But I have been able to rake it around, and shoot in the mid seventies pretty consistantly. I don’t have any conclusions drawn from the last two weeks of play, but that’s just the way it has been.

We, as golfers, are always talking about how hard the game of golf is, for various reasons. Rather than say the game is hard, I think we should change the wording, and thus the thought process, from hard to complex. Lets give a prime example. We all talk about how important it is to know how far we hit each club. This is true only to a certain degree. I hit my 50 degree wedge 110 yards. Sounds simple enough doesn’t it. So if I am 110 yards from the middle of the green I should hit my 50 degree. However, there are 80 combinations of the way the ball is lying on the ground, and in the grass, and the conditions that we are playing in, that will affect how far that ball will travel. I am not going through all those combinations now, but trust me there are that many, especially here in Western Pa. It is our awareness and how we evaluate those conditions that will dictate how successful we are in executing a good shot. We are talking about conditions that can make a difference of 20 or 30 yards on a shot of only 110 yards. It is even more so on longer shots. So pay attention and think complex not hard.

Finally and maybe even least, Tiger Woods is going to  swing number 5.  A quick review. Swing number 1 won the Masters by 12 shots.  Swing number 2 won 7 majors and 20 sum odd tournaments. Swing number 3 won 6 majors and 20 sum odd tournaments. Swing number 4 gave him a dominate 2013 where he was player of the year, again No. 1 in the world, but alas no majors. You noticed I haven’t mentioned any names. I don’t think the names are important. But who will guide swing number 5. Will he go back to one of the old swings. Highly unlikely. I know I am in the minority but I think Tiger will come back full blast and even past Jack Nicklaus. Of course there is one big if. He has to get healthy. If his back and knee continue to be a problem, then he is done. He may win one major on just talent and guts, but he will never be a force unless he has all the physical tools. So what will swing number 5 be like. Maybe he will swing like Lee Trevino. I think he should swing like Annika. Was there ever a better more fluid swing in the last 50 years. That premature release of the head should take the strain off the back. So Tiger, go find Annika’s coach, and make swing number 5 the most fluid and stress free swing since Sam Snead.