Jack vs. Tiger: Who's the Greatest Golfer?

[turtleback]

Good post.  I've been thinking about what Scottie would have to do to get into the greatest ever conversation and it led me to a question.  Which was a bigger disparity in strength of field, Jack to Tiger or Tiger to Scottie?  

[Golfnutgalen]

In terms of years alone Tiger was born about 35 years after Jack and Scottie 20 years after Tiger. But Scottie didn't come out of the gates as fast, so it's more like 25 years between eras (Tiger late 1996 to Scottie 2022).

Anyway, obviously Tiger and Scottie's competition is more similar. No disrespect to Jack but the competition in the Brititsh Open especially was weak up until the mid 80s or 90s. The rest of the fields weren't very global either, not compared to today at least. 

[Ty_Webb]

1 hour ago, Golfnutgalen said:

I've done a lot of number crunching over the years.

This is pretty astonishing. Up until the end of 2009 Tiger played in 253 PGA Tour events. That is including all starts as an amateur. He won 71 of them or 28%. 

Do you want to guess how many events it took Jack or even Sam Snead to win title #71? It took Jack 425 (16% rate) and Snead 381 (19%). Jack was 42 by then, Snead I think 43. Those of course are the only players to ever win 65 or more tour events. That was not a typo, it took Jack 172 more tries and about 9 more years to reach Tiger's figure.

People don't realize how insane Tiger's win percentage was. 

If Scottie Scheffler can have 5 more consecutive seasons like this year it would put his career rate at 23%. And Scottie just had the best non-tiger season in modern history. 

In a game with a field of 156 players and with as much random variance as there is in it, these numbers are absolutely mindboggling.

[turtleback]

48 minutes ago, Golfnutgalen said:

In terms of years alone Tiger was born about 35 years after Jack and Scottie 20 years after Tiger. But Scottie didn't come out of the gates as fast, so it's more like 25 years between eras (Tiger late 1996 to Scottie 2022).

Anyway, obviously Tiger and Scottie's competition is more similar. No disrespect to Jack but the competition in the Brititsh Open especially was weak up until the mid 80s or 90s. The rest of the fields weren't very global either, not compared to today at least. 

Yeah, IMO there are (at least) two different aspects to the strength of field issue. 

One is organic, ie, the quality of play increases because of better training methods, equipment, quality of courses, etc. 

The other is structural, how the universe of players widened with to growth and inclusion of minority and foreign players, faster and cheaper transportation, more stringent qualifying - like eliminating so many club pros from the PGA, or making it more accessible for top European pros to qualify for the US Open by having qualifying in Europe, and the general increase in the sheer number of players.  There was a time when there were NO events where substantially all of the best players played.  Now you have, at a minimum, the 4 majors and the Players where that happens.

Between Tigers prime era and now that second aspect hasn't changed that much.  Most of the increase in depth of field for Scottie reflects the first aspect I listed, IMO.

Edited September 6 by turtleback

[Golfnutgalen]

23 minutes ago, turtleback said:

Yeah, IMO there are (at least) two different aspects to the strength of field issue. 

One is organic, ie, the quality of play increases because of better training methods, equipment, quality of courses, etc. 

The other is structural, how the universe of players widened with to growth and inclusion of minority and foreign players, faster and cheaper transportation, more stringent qualifying - like eliminating so many club pros from the PGA, or making it more accessible for top European pros to qualify for the US Open by having qualifying in Europe, and the general increase in the sheer number of players.  There was a time when there were NO events where substantially all of the best players played.  Now you have, at a minimum, the 4 majors and the Players where that happens.

Between Tigers prime era and now that second aspect hasn't changed that much.  Most of the increase in depth of field for Scottie reflects the first aspect I listed, IMO.

And the one thing I forgot to mention is Tiger obviously won the Masters and Zozo not too long ago, so there's no question that Tiger would still be great today. People like to say he didn't have longevity and yet that's 24 years between wins. But obviously Tiger's prime was more like 1996-2013 about 17 years. 

Indeed, it's remarkable that Michael Campbell for instance even got into the 2005 US Open. If I remember right the only reason he tried to qualify is they had European qualifying near his home so there was nothing to lose. This was the first year that European qualifying was introduced and it certainly affected the outcome of the event.  

32 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

In a game with a field of 156 players and with as much random variance as there is in it, these numbers are absolutely mindboggling.

Indeed, they are unprecedented. 

Edited September 6 by Golfnutgalen

[iacas]

1 hour ago, turtleback said:

Good post.  I've been thinking about what Scottie would have to do to get into the greatest ever conversation and it led me to a question.  Which was a bigger disparity in strength of field, Jack to Tiger or Tiger to Scottie?  

Jack to Tiger, easily. Diminishing returns, or whatever, with the rates of expansion and the top 200 players or whatever remaining constant.

[Ty_Webb]

8 minutes ago, Golfnutgalen said:

And the one thing I forgot to mention is Tiger obviously won the Masters and Zozo not too long ago, so there's no question that Tiger would still be great today. People like to say he didn't have longevity and yet that's 24 years between wins. But obviously Tiger's prime was more like 1996-2013 about 17 years. 

Indeed, it's remarkable that Michael Campbell for instance even got into the 2005 US Open. If I remember right the only reason he tried to qualify is they had European qualifying near his home so there was nothing to lose. This was the first year that European qualifying was introduced and it certainly affected the outcome of the event.  

Indeed, they are unprecedented. 

Michael Campbell qualified in a playoff at my club in England (Walton Heath) - I watched the playoff. It was the first time they did it.

That one, Trevor Immelman would not have been playing in the Masters back in even the early 90s and Rich Beem I'm pretty sure would have been selling carphones back in the day. That's three people who beat Tiger into second who just would not have been even playing back in Jack's time. Probably add KJ Choi to that list. There were a handful of foreign players playing in Jack's day - Player obviously and Isao Aoki, but they were pretty few and far between. I know it was always a talking point on British television in the early 90s about how there were only a handful of European players who got invites to the Masters. It used to be for tournament winners on the PGA Tour and that was about it. Now it's all sorts of top 50 this and top 50 that.

Having said that, I played in a captain pro challenge at Walton and the captain was a guy called Michael Lunt. He played a few Walker Cups - VERY good player, although he was well past his best playing days when I played with him. He told me that he played in something like the 1959 Walker Cup and got a letter in the mail from the Chairman at Augusta. It was an invite to the Masters. He had no idea what it was and nor did any of his fellow Walker Cuppers (they were all invited to play). So none of them went (it would have been quite an undertaking at the time). I think he played in four Walker Cups all told. After his second one, one of his teammates decided to go, played in it and came back and told them all they had to do it if they got the chance, but they never invited them again so he never got to play. If I was him I don't know how I'd be able to sleep at night after that.

[turtleback]

Another one in Tiger's time is Y.E. Yang, who cost him a PGA.

And another European in Jack's prime was Tony Jacklin who won both a US and British Open.