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stephenf

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  1. You may be aware that was a favorite thing with Harvey Penick, who I think credited "Wild" Bill Mehlhorn at least in part. Point is, it really does work for a lot of people and is very much time-tested. But it's also true that no specific approach, or drill, or device, or bit of language is going to work for everybody. Otherwise every tour pro would go to one teacher. Only the greatest major-championship player in history advised that very thing. Seems to have worked out for him over a very long and successful career, too. It's true the vids are talky. As for his swing, I know it's not the kind of thing you look at and think "man, I want it to be just like _that_." But I keep thinking: Does anybody remember what Jack Grout looked like swinging a club? Or Harvey Penick, or Stewart Maiden? It just isn't necessary to have an impressive-looking swing to be a great teacher. Yup. Not surprisingly, Nicklaus has covered this better than anybody. As time went on, he clarified "head still" as referring to a "quiet" head, not one rigidly held in position, not one that didn't swivel as necessary, etc. Also said a slight counterbalancing through the ball was fine, and releasing up and out once you're past full release is fine. Mainly, trying to lock it in position with tension in the neck and shoulders is no good. A second take on this question I always found interesting was Byron Nelson's insistence that a free-swinging motion and a quiet head were two necessary aspects of the same motion. That is, learning to swing with freedom of motion, he said, was about the only way you were going to be able to keep your head still. A swinging motion tries to find a still point. It's actually true. Definitely will do. I absolutely loved his work in Network. I'm as mad as hell too, and I'm not gonna take it anymore either. We need more golf teachers like that.
  2. First day of two-day tournament: Wind at 38-40 constant, gusts to over 60 mph, sand blowing from nearby fields so hard we got sandburns. Really. Second day, starting with temps in the low 30s, a kind of snow-sleet mix falling in chunks, so hard that if you had a short iron in your hand, you had to wipe the ice off it and hit the shot quickly before it built up again. We played two and a half holes before they called it. (Won it, thank God.)
  3. Also known as "half the days of the year in West Texas." Can endure just about anything with Jameson's, lad.
  4. Shawn Clement's teachings are actually very "old school." He teaches the swing similarly to the way Ernest Jones, Manuel de la Torre, Harvey Penick, etc. taught the swing. To me, it is a superior way to learn the swing. First, through analogies, he allows the student to understand that the golf swing is an athletic movement that is very similar to other athletic movements. If you already know how to throw a ball, skip a stone or cast a fishing rod, you know the basics of the golf swing. Second, he has drills (which have been around for a long time because they work) that reinforce the correct movements and (most importantly) let the student feel a swing. The swing is taught as a whole. Third, there is a mental aspect to the videos. The emphasis is on swinging to the target. The movements are swing focused, not ball focused. The focus actually improves ball striking. The student learns to play golf, not golf positions and body parts. I have found Shawn's approach very helpful. In the past, I took numerous lessons, went to golf workshops, tried training aids, the whole nine yards. Shawn's approach has been very liberating. Using his drills and approach, I have gotten farther in the past 6 months that I did in the previous 6 years. The problem with Shawn's free video content is that it's not well organized. I recommended Shawn to my son earlier in the year and organized the videos for him. Here is a copy of the email I sent to my son: "I rewatched a number of Shawn Clement's videos on YouTube. I finally have a list of his best videos for you. I put them in a rough order to make learning his approach easier. I have listed the name of the videos below. If you go to YouTube and search "Shawn Clement Video Name", the video should come up. Intro videos/philosophy 1. Golfers Over 40 Watch This. (Watch this even though you are not over 40. It is a good intro to his approach.) 2. Ridiculously Easy Golf Part I. 3. Ridiculously Easy Golf Part II. 4. K.I.S.S. Golf--Keep it Simple. 5. Feel the Weight of the Golf Swing. 6. Stop Overthinking Your Golf. Process Videos 1. Best Video on the Grip Ever. 2. Knife the Grip. 3. Golf Grip and Wrist Hinge. 4. Set Up Posture to Swing to the Target. 5. Set Up all Clubs. 6. Understanding Weight Shift. 7. Takeaway and Starting Golf Swing. 8. Starting the Downswing. 9. Aiming, Alignment and Ball Position. 10. Body--Arms--Hands Timing in Golf Swing. 11. Swing Plane Update. 12. Rhythm in Golf Swing. 13. Tempo and Timing. Specific Drills--a great way to learn the basics of the Swing. You can do these even if you haven't watched all the previous videos. 1. Fencing for Power in Golf. 2. Best Drill in Golf--Feet Together. ( if you can do this drill and the one foot dill, you are most the way to a good Swing). 3. Savvy Feet Together. (There are a number of Videos wth Savvy. These may help Kate to visualize how her Swing will look). 4. 2nd Best Drill in Golf--One Leg. 5. Perpetual Balance Drill. 6. Learn Golf Much Faster with this Drill. (Elephant Walk.) 7. Feet Together--One Leg Updates. 8. Feet Together Driver=Consistency. 9. Through the Ball Drills. 10. Spine Angle Kettle Bell Tips. 11. Amazing Lumberjack Sledgehammer Drill. Mental Approach to Golf--Play Golf, not Golf Swing Mental approach. 1. How to Focus in Golf Part I. 2. How to Focus in Golf Part II. 3. Mental Game Baseball for Golf. (Introduces RIBS concept for evaluating shots in practice and play.) 4. Instinctive Practice. A few additional videos for later. 1. Eyes Closed for Solid Contact. 2. Throw that Club Straight. 3. Be Savvy When Throwing Clubs. 4. Savvy with Your Center. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sorry to be ringing in so long after the fact, but this was one of the most helpful (and generous) posts I've ever seen. Seems to me that a couple of the complaints here (among the accolades) might have to do with Clement having a tough time handling the volume of students and comments and so forth. He is a tremendously popular teacher, and maybe the numbers just got overwhelming. I've read a lot from people who've had great experiences with him, and it's true that he's definitely in the tradition of Ernest Jones, Penick, Toski, Flick, with some hints of people like Stewart Maiden and Seymour Dunn, more recently Leslie King and John Jacobs, among others. That is one helluva tradition to be in.
  5. Ah, so I see you don't understand the meaning of "not hostile, just direct," so you just do that internet-commenter thing where you accuse the other person of being out of control, sort of ("foam or spittle"). If you have no substantive response, what is the point of your effort to control how and when somebody else posts? And if you don't think it's possible to answer the question, what's your interest in reading the posts at all?
  6. Thanks to both of you, very much. Much appreciated.
  7. Like you, maybe? If you have any substantive response whatsoever, feel free to post it. Otherwise, I'm going to post responses as and when I see the need for it, and you're not going to control that. I mean this not as hostile in the least, just direct.
  8. Looking back at your argument once again, it's even weaker than I thought. Where is your "I'm just making this up" rationale coming from, anyway? You're committing the logical fallacy of "begging the question" (a term almost universally misused now), or petitio principii -- essentially just restating a premise as if it were a proven conclusion. Let me try to simplify this: There is a limited number of players on the PGA Tour, and a limited number of players in the field at any tournament. What is your evidence that the midlevel players now are significantly better than they were during the Nicklaus era? I'm asking because I have, quite frankly, tons of evidence that they are not significantly better. Your argument is theoretical, based on made-up presumptions. Mine is based on actual performance records. The problem is, you admit making up the ratio of players, and then you use the loose linguistic expression of how your postulate "speaks to" the point you're trying to make. But you haven't proven your point at all. You haven't even begun to prove it. At heart, your argument really is one from authority: "Everybody knows" players today are just that much better, so let me make up a table with a ratio in it. Doesn't work.
  9. Re Jack's second-place finishes, what is the evidence that the field is "stronger" today in the sense of having so many more people who actually threaten to win majors? My own somewhat educated and pretty well-researched belief is that you might see some minor reduction, but not as much as nearly everybody thinks. Sheer numbers might result in the occasional freak result -- they usually in this game, given enough opportunity -- but by and large, it's not going to matter how many Kevin Chappells and Jerry Kellys are making half a million to a million bucks a year down at the midlevel. Those aren't the guys who wouldn't be contending with Nicklaus, Trevino, Watson, Palmer, Player, Casper, Miller, et al., for major championships most of the time, at the finish. Occasionally, maybe. Not usually. Besides, one thing people don't seem to get is that you're not talking about the difference between zero and a lot. There have always been journeyman players who could have a good week and jump into contention at a major. And the average score on the PGA Tour today, with an almost endless list of advantages to players today -- equipment, course conditioning, perfect greens pretty much every week, fitness trailers, entourages, perfect clubfitting, a much cushier go of it, no worries about making cuts in the all-exempt structure, etc. -- is typically a stroke or less better than it was 30 or 40 years ago, which is just absurd when you think about it. I'm not convinced at all, because there really is no evidence to say so, that midlevel players now are any better than they were then. As for the comparisons to sprinters and other athletes, they just don't apply, for various reasons, the most obvious of which is that physical strength and athleticism are only one component that makes up a championship golfer, while they are almost totally what makes a track athlete. Although it does remind me of this ridiculous argument of how "athletic" today's players are compared with past players. Nicklaus, for instance, ran a 100-yard-dash time that would've placed something like 5th in the state of Ohio last year . He was a premium basketball player, as many people know, on a very good team his senior year (19-4, and I think he also played on the Ohio State freshman team), and had been a catcher in baseball and a good football player as well. Sam Snead was a freak multisport athlete (track, baseball, football, boxing, and just about anything else) who ran the 100 in times that would've put him in the Olympic trials back then. Watson was a well-regarded footballer and basketballer, with awards. Hale Irwin was an all-Big Eight defensive back at Colorado. And so forth. Against that, you have people swearing Woods could beat 'em all at everything, just because of how awesome he looks and how "intimidating" he's supposed to be (*cough* -- I'd love to see him "intimidate" a Nicklaus, or a Ray Floyd or Irwin). There's a tint of racism in that, as far as I'm concerned -- the presumption that anybody with even a small percentage of "black" heritage must be a superior athlete -- but probably more than that is just the need for sheep to do the hero-worship thing when prompted by the media, like an extended "Bill Brasky" skit on Saturday Night Live.
  10. Also also: Just because you haven't heard the proof doesn't mean there are no "people" who have proved it.
  11. Incidentally, speaking of Merion, you may know that four previous U.S. Opens were played there, before Justin Rose won it this year with a one-over total. One of those could be said to be in Nicklaus's prime -- the 1971 Open, where he and Trevino tied for the 72-hole lead at even par, with Trevino posting a 69 to catch Jack, who -- after a double-bogey at #5 to drop him to even par -- reeled off 13 straight pars to get into the playoff. Among the top six pro finishers in 1971, you had scores ranging up to three over. Among the top six in 2013, scores ranged up to five over. Among the top six in '71, you had a total of 154 regular-tour wins and 28 major championships. Among the top six in 2013, there were 109 wins, 11 majors. (That's including all of the Eurotour wins for Rose and Els, and none of the Eurotour wins for any American player, which heavily favors the 2013 bunch. It also includes Billy Horschel's one win on the PGA Tour, even though he's the seventh guy on that 2013 list, included here because he was tied with three of the top six, at four shots back.) See how this objective-check-against-relative-finish-comparisons thing works? You could postulate that the 2013 top finishers had fewer wins (by about 30%) and less than half as many majors only because the fields today are so strong, and your evidence would be (if true) that they shot the same course in the same kind of pressure at a distinctly lower score, proving their superiority as a field despite the win totals. But the facts don't match, because they actually shot it a little worse . Cut line in 1971: 148 (+8). Cut line in 2013: 148 (+8). Mean score among finishers, 1971: 291.0. Mean score among finishers, 2013: 294.5. There's your more awesome field. In 1981, the year after Nicklaus won the U.S. Open and the PGA at age 40, they played the U.S. Open at Merion again. David Graham won at seven-under. Nicklaus shot even par that year. So, in the two times Nicklaus played the Open at Merion, he shot even par. Either time, it would've beaten Rose this year. That's just one example of many.
  12. Yeah, because Phil and the other top pros of today are just so much better than Palmer, Player, Casper, Trevino, Miller (at his best), Watson, et al. Right?
  13. What a glurge. "A" for effort, certainly, but the logic...man. Let's work up from the bottom: 1. "Far fewer people played golf at a high level in the 1960s and 1970s." Even assuming that's true, so what? You're simply restating the premise when you say "there are just so many of them [better players, that is], that alone raises the bar, undeniably." So if you add an "undeniably," it makes the argument? The very question at hand is whether "more good players" equals more players in the category of players who can win majors in a way that keeps Woods from winning majors. 2. You presume, but cannot prove, that the stats (I think you mean career win totals) of Jack's 1Bs are "inflated" because of a lack of competition -- specifically because of a lack of greater numbers. Put another way, you merely restate another of your conclusions -- that "more" competition (more players) equals the notion of "better" competition, in the sense of making it harder for top players to win. But you only assume it. Do you know who the 100th-ranked player in the world is right now? Victor Dubuisson. Yes, that Victor Dubuisson. 104 is Paul Casey (you know him). 106 is Scott Jamieson. Just behind them is Kevin Stadler. The five from 95 to 99 are Ryan Palmer, Kevin Chappell, Luke Guthrie, Marcus Fraser, and Sung Joon Park. I'm sure they're all fine players. But do you really contend that a surplus of players in that category make it harder for Tiger Woods to win a major than it was for Jack Nicklaus, or would've made it harder for Jack to win, if he'd had more of those guys to worry about? Say it with a straight face. Try it. But the real hilarity of your assumption is its self-contradictory quality. You appear to be saying that Jack's win totals, and the win totals of his top competitors, were due to the relatively lower number of guys who could shoot 72s and become millionaires without ever winning anything, so there were fewer midlevel players to challenge the top players. But at the same time, you -- and inevitably others -- will point to Woods' easy wins, runaway wins, unchallenged wins, as evidence of his superiority. Surely you see the irony in that argument. One of the problems with your meatball hypothetical statistics here is that you make no distinction between better and worse players when you talk about guys "with a chance to win." With what chance? A fluke chance? These "80 guys" you're talking about, if you put them all together at the same time, were the odds on the winner coming from that group even as good as the top two of Jack's competitors from any phase of his career? That would be a statistically answerable question. I've got five bucks. How about you? 3. What I'm saying can in fact be "proven" in the sense of reaching a fairly high level of certitude. Not absolute certainty, of course. But an elevated level that is far better than speculation, assumption, and guesswork. 4. If you really think you'd want Woods' top four against Jack's top four, well...I'll just let people make of that what they will. If you wanted a real game for Jack's top competition, you might have to go back to Hogan's era and pick up Nelson, Snead, and any other two top guys (I'd probably start with Demaret and Mangrum). I suppose it goes without saying that all these players, including the top players during Woods' era, are supremely talented and capable, and there would be no wipeout. That's just golf. Despite the media wetting itself over Woods constantly, the truth is that if Woods played the #125 player in the world 10 times,and #125 played somewhere around his potential, Woods would win six or seven times. That is a decisive series in this game. If he averaged seven or eight wins, it would be absolutely dominating (and would be very hard to do against another pro). Mickelson and Els at their best would get some wins against Snead and Nelson, or Watson and Trevino. (Hell, Jerry Kelly would've beat Jack Nicklaus on some days.) But over several matches, history suggests you would see some differences start to emerge. 5. Re your repeated reliance on Jack's statements, you can keep repeating it without addressing anything I've said about it, but that isn't an argument, it's a proclamation. Jack is going to be generous and promotional with the Tour that gave him a chance to be rich and famous. If you know him at all, you know that much. If you don't, you can't possibly evaluate what he's said about it. And it's not necessary to evaluate it anyway, because the argument from authority just isn't relevant here. It is a mostly knowable thing whether the fields now are "better." And besides, Jack has said contradictory things on this subject. If you'd like to go through the history of those comments, we can do it. We could start with what he said about what the new equipment would do to keep marginal players out there on tour winning millions of dollars over their career. A proposition involving marginal players using game-improvement equipment does not equal a proposition that the competition now is oh-so-much tougher. Anyway: What you are ignoring in your theories based on what you consider to be self-evidence and "undeniability" regarding the sheer number of players and how much better you think they are (without any evidence to prove it), is the fact that you can make a pretty fair objective comparison of performances on an approximately even basis from era to era by looking at scores on similar courses and, where it makes sense to do so, adjusting for factors like vastly improved conditioning of courses, equipment changes, setup for championships, similar irons hit into greens, and so on. When you do this, it becomes apparent quite rapidly that given the massive advantages of the modern pro, scores ought to be a helluva lot lower than they are. The unadjusted scores of Woods-era players are no better than a stroke lower, sometimes not even that, than they were during the Nicklaus era. That is an undeniable fact. This is true for the top players as well. Average strokes for Vardon Trophy winners: Nelson, 1945, 68.33. Demaret, 1947, 69.9. Trevino, 1980, 69.73. Woods, 2013, 68.98. The average Vardon winner during the Woods era has been at 68.69, but that's an adjusted average, and that's with all the previously mentioned advantages. Even if you buy the notion of the adjusted averages -- and there are very good reasons not to -- you're talking about all of those massive advantages resulting in an improvement of about one shot per round -- less than two percent -- where you might expect three or four shots, or more. Are all these advantages -- distances, far better and more receptive greens, courses set up not to embarrass players, etc. -- really not adding up to even one shot per nine holes? And there, we're talking about the top players, often Woods running at full speed without a challenge and without any fear of losing. The average score on the PGA Tour is just about the same -- a stroke or less difference, generally, between eras. The difference in the greens alone ought to be worth two to four shots a round. Talk to the players who played and/or taught and/or did broadcasts in both eras and ask them about the difference in the average Tour green of the '60s and '70s versus the greens now. It's not close, and that matters. A lot. . So, around a stroke per round, some years not even that much, despite the differences in course conditioning and player conditioning, all the coaching and entourages, the generally easier setups, etc., and also despite the fact that nearly every pro plays with equipment that has various game-corrective features (including the ball) and a driver that allows the average player to hit it 25-30 farther than they used to. Between the increased distances on the driver and on the irons, along with much faster fairways, you had players hitting 7- and 8-irons into #15 at Augusta before the changes were made there. What you would need to prove your point is a serious difference in the per-round average score, and < one stroke won't do it I'm wondering: Are you aware of the MacGregor experiment from a few years ago, when they brought out a couple of Nicklaus-era persimmon drivers, no-help forged irons, and the old ball? The average distance that players could hit the old persimmon was something like 245 to 255. The longer hitters could get it to around 265-270. Nobody hit it farther than Nicklaus or Snead used to; in fact, nobody even got that far. And the iron distances were just where you'd expect them to be, typically 15-20 yards shorter for the same number -- 155 for the 7-iron, etc. Which is yet another reason you're never going to see a "new guys play old equipment" tournament in the silly season, especially not with objective observers on site to measure distances and so forth. Ironically, IMHO Woods at his best would've separated himself even more from the competition if they had been playing the old equipment, because his contact is so consistently good, which is to say he doesn't really need any of the game-improvement features, the perimeter weighting, etc. Certain guys out there (Couples is another) are known as being able to put the sweet spot, or at least the center of the clubface, on the ball at a high rate, and Woods is on that very short list. There are guys out there right now (which Nicklaus predicted, by the way) who are hanging around making three-quarter-million a year, shooting a lot of 71s, who probably wouldn't break 74 or 75 without the game-improvement features. (Just as an added personal note, I can tell you that the equipment really has made things entirely ridiculous. I'm 53 and hit the ball at least 35-40 yards farther -- sometimes way more than that -- with the modern driver than I did at 25, playing as a plus-2 amateur and then as a pro. With irons, even accounting for the lower lofts [which of course lead people to make all kinds of ridiculous comparisons to how far modern pros hit it versus how far Nicklaus-era pros hit it -- comparisons based on inflated figures, by the way ((check the USGA website sometime for the average 5-iron distance as strictly measured, not as reported by breathless, player-hyping TV announcers))], I hit it at least half a club farther than I did 30 years ago. It's absolutely outlandish. I can't even imagine what would've happened if I'd had this equipment in my 20s. And you should try to imagine Snead or Nicklaus with these clubs, in their primes. Just to keep up with the differences in distance, and not even accounting for the increased accuracy potential of the ball and the mishit-correcting features of clubs, you'd have to stretch every course by at least 40-50 yards per driving hole and at least 15-20 for every par-3, which would make the typical 7,000-yard course of the 1970s need to be around 7700 or 7800 just to keep up.) In sum, you are missing the objective comparison that gives meaning to the relative comparison of players. If I point out that Woods has been rarely challenged, and you can put forth evidence that this is because Woods is shooting 65 in final rounds to other players around the lead shooting 68s and 70s, then you have something. But if I can show you that these other players are shooting scores that indicate they're throwing up all over themselves while Woods coasts to victory, that's a different matter. What would go a long way toward settling this question is finding out what were the average scores of top players who were within, say, three shots of the lead going into the final round (of a major, if you wanted to limit it to that -- but it would be useful to know the number both majors and all tournaments), back then versus now. Or maybe you'd need to take the average scores of all players within three shots of the lead, and do a separate calculation to see whether the top players tended to do disproportionately well, and then compare eras. (That's actually a question I'm looking into in a book project that's underway at the moment.) Which brings us again to that question of how rarely (especially in his prime) Woods has had to worry about anything approaching a good performance in a final round by somebody tied with or just behind him. Are you aware of just how often people have handed tournaments to him by failing in the last round? Or how many times he's been able to win a playoff with a routine par? I'm not blaming Woods for that. All he can do is beat the people who are in front of him. But where are the Watsons who could duel with him, throwing a 65 at his 66 in the final round of an Open? Or the Trevinos who could push him to his absolute limit? Name me even four times you can remember off the top of your head, over the past 17 years, who have pushed Woods in this way in a major, who've come out and hit him in the mouth and kept punching. If you want, we can go through the '08 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines as an example. It had most of the features of the Tiger Laydown, including a field where not one player anywhere near the lead could manage even a single stroke below 70 on the final day, from which emerged one single competitor (Mediate) who was just happy to be there and who refused to try to make a relatively routine shot to the 72nd hole (it's that par-5 with the billabong, but a lot of room to the right, with a fairly simple pitch or sand shot if you miss the green) that would've all but assured a winning birdie. Both players (Woods and Mediate) limped to a one-under finish (with Woods shooting 73 in the final round, without anyone passing him) and went to a playoff, where they both struggled to tie at even par, then went to sudden death, where Mediate promptly and obligingly pulled out the same club he'd missed the fairway with earlier that day and the day before, on the exact same hole, and missed it in exactly the same spot in the left rough. (Try to imagine somebody like Trevino doing that, or even missing the fairway in the first place. Or even a Floyd or Irwin.) After a couple more hacks by Mediate, Woods simply two-putted for par and the win. Now, you may say it's true that U.S. Opens sometimes go like this, without tons of birdies in playoffs and such. Okay. But 37 holes in friendly weather, and neither player could do better than one under, and not one other leading player among a field with the best players of the current era could put up any challenge whatsoever? Also, what you may not know is that these guys tied for the 72-hole lead and shot one-under while both of them hit barely over half the fairways -- IN A U.S. OPEN. Ask some of the players from previous generations what you would shoot if you missed half the fairways in a U.S. Open. Something like 77 and 81, and a slammed trunk, is what. The point is that with all the money in the game now, there is much more consciousness of the product -- the players -- and much more of a concerted effort to protect and promote that product. Every once in a while the USGA busts out and makes conditions more or less like they used to be, and the modern players -- who aren't used to that sort of treatment -- falter. (Cf. Merion, this year -- remember how this crop of infinitely superior players were just going to brutalize that course? One-over won the tournament.) But the PGA Tour itself is never going to do that. They have no interest whatsoever in doing anything that would ever make anybody question whether these players might not be better than those of the '70s or the '50s. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. But a true statistical analysis taking into account all reasonable factors doesn't lie.
  14. Shockingly, I didn't read all two-hundred-plus pages of the thread, no. And I didn't have to, to know what Jack has said about the fields -- which anybody who has been around the game (as I have, as a lower-level playing pro, a teaching pro, and a sportswriter) knows is completely promotional. Jack is just not the kind of guy who's going to tell you "Yeah, the top competition was way better when I played, so this thing you're seeing today is substandard product, nobody should get all that excited about Tiger's wins, everybody go home." Just not going to happen no matter how true it is. Besides, what does it matter whatever Jack said about it anyway? You can do an analysis of competitive rounds, vastly improved conditions, much less penal golf courses (hardly anybody knows this, because most courses are designed now with as much scare value for amateurs as possible, without affecting the difficulty for pros), and equipment that minimizes error and maximizes distances, and you can arrive at a pretty accurate measure of the strength of the field now versus then. As much as I love Jack Nicklaus, if he says the sun comes up in the west, that doesn't mean it doesn't come up in the east. The question still remains: Will you take his top four versus Tiger's top four, lay your money down, and have them play a series on a golf courses that actually penalizes bad shots? Incidentally, this is not to diminish Wood's skill or his status as the best player of his generation, not one bit. Nobody has been more critical of Woods for his appalling behavior both on and off the course, but there is no argument against his best-of-generation status as a scorer and competitor. He is a tireless practicer, really wants to understand the swing, is a man among boys in terms of mental strength and competitive ability, and maintains all this despite what would be an understandable disregard, almost a contempt, for the rest of the field.
  15. Jack certainly had tougher competition, and it's provable anytime you want to look at the details. All the Tour's "deeper field" nonsense (totally pumped by virtually all announcers, players, etc.) is self-interest, since it would be directly against their interests and potentially harmful to profits if they admitted that the competition of any other era were better. The truth is, the "deep fields" of today simply don't matter. Take a look at the guys making between $600K and $800K around the #125 spot. Does it really matter to the legacy of a best-of-generation player like Woods how many guys like this were in the field? What matters is what the top competition is like, not how deep the money goes to provide a living for players who rarely, if ever, even sniff a win. And if you want to take Woods' top four competitors against the top four during any part of Nicklaus's prime, or the top five when Hogan was at the top with Snead, bring your money and let's have them play. I've got Palmer, Player, Trevino, and Casper (check the record before you laugh). Today, you'd have Scott, Stenson, Rose, and Mickelson. In 2003, you'd have had Singh, Els, Love, and Furyk. Fine players, all of them, and I'm a big fan. But against Jack's top four, in a seven-match series? On a course where hitting fairways and greens actually matters? Really? Also: Look at Woods' record regarding how many times he's won playoffs with pars, or how many times everybody else around the lead completely collapsed during final rounds, leaving him to shoot 70 or 71 to win easily. His well-known record as a frontrunner, and his equally well-known record as a chaser (as in, he hardly ever wins a major when he's behind going into the final round), is a refelection of just how exceedingly rare it is that anybody else put up a credible challenge to him in the final round of a major. Idiot announcers often cite the "frontrunner" part of that to pump his image, but the truth is that it's just as much a measure of how his competition just isn't up to the level of what Jack had to face at every major.
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