Majors -- why are they more significant?

[Octuple Bogey]

I don't want to sound ignorant here but I've always kind of wondered why majors are held in so much higher esteem than your garden variety PGA tournaments. I mean when Tiger is measured against Jack, it is the number of majors that is usually used as the yardstick not the overall number of PGA tournaments won. Sam Snead actually won more PGA Tournaments than Jack, 81 to Jack's 73, but he is never mentioned as the greatest golfer since he has fewer majors and no U.S. Open wins.

About the only things I can think of are that at a major all of the world's best players, including those from the European side, are going to be there, and the courses are usually set up so as to be more challenging.

But other than that... I mean, pardon me if I'm being disrespectful, but there are players that have won nary a tournament but have a major, two in one case I can think of, to their name and then there is Mickelson who had a boatload of victories but no major for all of those years... Tiger wins about 1/3 of all tournaments he enters so of course he is going to have a lot of majors to his name period -- I'd bet his chances of winning a major aren't a whole lot less than that of less prestigious tournaments he enters if you look at the statistics/record books.

I can't help but think that the nefarious label "best player to never win a major" hasn't somehow actually had opposite it's intended effect on Mickelson when it came to endearing him to fans. (I'm kind of actually wondering who the next player will be who earns that label.)

Any thoughts on any of this...

[Magnus]

I guess if you don't get it, you don't get it.......but maybe this will help - Imagine each major is the Super Bowl, or each major is the World Cup Final, or each major is game 7 of the World Series. It is, as you described, the best of the best playing in those events, and the courses are setup to be the hardest test of ones game.

Given this importance, the pressure, and difficulty in winning one, let alone many majors, you see why Jack and now Tiger are considered the best.

IMO Sergio holds the label of 'best player not to win a major' right now.

[Lefty731PM]

I don't want to sound ignorant here but I've always kind of wondered why majors are held in so much higher esteem than your garden variety PGA tournaments. Any thoughts on any of this...

Ever noticed how rarely Mickelson and Tiger actually play? You only see them in the majors and about 10 other tournaments. Very few tournaments outside the majors and a couple of significant others have more than a few top 10 players in the field.

Look at the number of tournaments Vijay and Woods play per year.

[JaY_B]

If you read the first word in the title of this thread, it sort of gives it away

[jking]

This reminds me of a discussion a friend and I had several years ago. I posed the question to him, "if you had the choice of winning 20 tournaments in your career vs. only 1 major and nothing else, which would you choose?"

Without hesitation he said "the 1 major". I didn't agree with him at the time, and I still don't agree with him now. If you only win 1 major and nothing else to back it up, you're going to be pretty much forgotten. While the majors are obviously more important, and for good reason, I think you need some other wins to validate yourself as a solid player.

20 years from now, if nothing changes, I think history will be kinder to someone like Colin Montgomerie than to Shaun Micheel.