Quote:
Originally Posted by
camper6 
And what you didn't notice either is that you can't get into the Hall of Fame until you are forty years old.
Aha. Don't know how we missed that.
Quote:
Both players have dominated the game. Which player is going to dominate longer?
Tiger has already dominated longer than Jack, if you take the word literally.
Jack was one of the top five players in the world for about 20 years, and he was a world class player for over 25 years. But not even his mom would say he dominated every year of that period. He went over three years without winning a major in the late 60's, and nearly three years without one during the late 70's. And even if you think majors are the most important thing, they don't necessarily indicate dominance. Padraig Harrington won two majors in 2008, and won the Player of the Year award almost solely on that basis. But would anybody say he was dominant that year, when he wasn't even on anyone's radar until the middle of July?
IMO "dominant" doesn't just mean you played well, or won a couple of tournaments. It doesn't even mean you were the Player of the Year. Jim Furyk was POY in 2010. Was he dominant? No.
Dominant means you were so much better than everybody else that there was no question that you were the best player of the year, by any reasonable standard. It means you won more majors than anybody else (which means you won at least two majors that year), more events than anyone else, the money title, the scoring title, and Player of the Year. That's dominance.
And dominance is not common in pro golf. The POY Award was first awarded in 1948, and Ben Hogan was dominant that year. He won two majors (out of three, since like most Americans, he didn't play the British Open), ten events, and the money title, the Vardon, and POY. In other words, my definition of dominance is not impossible to attain, because Hogan did it the very first year they had a POY award.
But possible doesn't mean easy. Nobody did it again until 1962, when Arnold Palmer won 8 events, two majors, the Vardon, the scoring title, and POY.
And nobody did it after that until Tom Watson, in 1977. And that was it for the 20th century. Three players, one year each, in the 42 years since the POY Award was created.
And then Tiger did it four times in the next 7 years. In each of 2000, 2002, 2005, and 2006, he won at least two majors, and had the most wins, the money title, the scoring title, and the POY. So by that definition of dominance, it's Tiger over Jack, 4-0.
I'll admit that my definition is not fair to Jack for the first five years of his pro career, because the PGA rules at that time made him ineligible for the Vardon. But that doesn't change the results, because in none of those years did he lead in all the other stats. The closest he came was in 1965, when he led all the stats, but didn't win two majors. It's still Tiger, 4-0.
So let's see how we can help Jack out. I'll start by giving him Vardons for 1964 and 1965, when the rules made it impossible for him to win, and according to Jack, he had the lowest scoring average of the year. (I won't do that for the other six years that he claims he had the lowest scoring average, but didn't play enough events, since that was his choice. Palmer, Casper, Trevino, and Watson each won at least three Vardons under the same rules as Jack, so it's clear that playing the minimum number of rounds was not unreasonable for a top player. And Jack had more time to play his practice rounds at major venues by playing less regular events, so he gained advantage from his schedule).
And just for Jack, I'll say you don't have to win two majors in a year to dominate, you just have to win one, as long as nobody else wins two. So does that give him a dominant year in 1965?
No, because he didn't win the POY that year. He WAS eligible, but they had different standards then. The US Open and PGA were bigger than the Masters, and MUCH bigger than the British Open. Dave Marr was the 1965 POY, mostly for winning the PGA that year.
So I'll pretend that we are going by today's standards, and give Jack a virtual POY to go along with his virtual Vardon trophy. And that, along with the relaxation of the majors rule, gives Jack a dominant year in 1965. He had the most wins, (tied for) most majors, and won the money title, the (virtual) Vardon, and the (virtual) POY.
But that's the best I can do. Changing all those rules just gives him one dominant year. It doesn't help him any of his other years.
And it puts him even farther behind Tiger, because now you have to add 1999, 2001, and 2007 to Tiger's dominant years. In those years, Tiger won a major, nobody else won two, and Tiger had the most wins, and won the money title, scoring title, and POY (all official). So it's now Tiger 7, Jack 1.
OK, so by that definition, Tiger wins. But what if you relax it further, and just say dominating means being clearly the best player, whether or not you won the Vardon or whatever?
That obviously gets a lot more subjective. I wrote a couple of very long posts a couple of years ago on another board, where I went through Jack's career year by year, and compared him with his peers. The bottom line was this:
-- You can make a reasonable case for Jack being the best player of the year in nine different years.
-- You can say that Jack was clearly the best player of the year, no reasonable dispute, in five different years.
-- And Jack dominated the way Tiger dominated, leading every stat, just one year.
By comparison, Tiger was:
-- arguably the best player in 11 different years.
-- indisputably the best player in 9 different years
-- dominant, by the definition given above, for 7 years.
