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

[Golfingdad]

I understood what you meant, but they are not irrelevant is what I'm saying. Henrik Stenson was ranked like 200th in the world in 2011 and now look at him. Same for Kaymer. Their scoring averages were about a stroke from where they were then and now, but that's the difference between the top-10 and 200+. The strength of the fields today make it difficult for even the top 25 players to make the cut sometimes. Webb Simpson, Lee Westwood, Brandt Snedeker, Graham DeLaet, Hunter Mahan, and Gary Woodland are all ranked worse than 30th in the world. Would you say that none of them "has a chance" at winning a tournament? Ben Crane is ranked 101 and he just won the Fed Ex St. Jude last month. The strength of the field makes Tiger's record of only missing 10 cuts in his career that much more incredible to me. Even when his swing seems absolutely awful he still manages to be there on the weekend.

But in 2011 I think that Henrik Stenson WAS irrelevant.  Wasn't he the guy who went home and lost his club championship to an amateur during the PGA that year?  2011 Stenson does not equal 2013/14 Stenson.

What Eyad is saying is similar to something I said in a post in the "other" Tiger/Jack thread awhile back.  If I was miraculously in the field for the PGA but then got replaced by Erik, the strength of field of the tournament would go up.  But down at that level (dead last by a couple of strokes versus dead last by 50 strokes) it doesn't have any bearing on the GOAT conversation.

Now, I don't totally agree with his idea that the cutoff should be the Top 25 but I don't think it should be completely written off either.  The worst guys now are miles better than the worst guys then, but there isn't that much significance there after some point.

[RJH999]

Those two things were effectively part of the Stevie Williams bachelor party. I don't think his attention has shifted from golf. He was married before he had a phenomenal 2005, you'll recall.

Funny looking at this quote from 8 years ago or so. He was better banging a steady stream of hookers, socialites, and cocktail waitresses, I tell ya!

[iacas]

The field is far, far deeper than 25 now. Virtually anyone who qualifies can win.

[RJH999]

The field is far, far deeper than 25 now. Virtually anyone who qualifies can win.

Unless John Daly is playing

[isukgolf]

Semi on topic here ... going on a golf trip Wednesday with a HUGE Jack fan ... talk all you want and all you get is 18 BAMN ... actually he does love to debate the topic, and knows a lot of that stats quoted here ... I usually take Tiger's side for sport, but he always ends up just saying 18 BAMN.

I print t-shirts as a hobby and can print anything I want basically ... so as a joke I drew up this shirt and we are giving it to him this trip ... it is a one off needless to say, but it will be good for a few laughs ...(it looked better on the screen, than when printed on the shirt to be honest)

[Golfingdad]

The field is far, far deeper than 25 now. Virtually anyone who qualifies can win.

Couldn't we just compile a list of all winners (majors, and total tournaments) during Jack's career versus all winners during Tigers career to confirm this?  If way more players are capable of winning, then shouldn't they be actually winning over a period of time? @turtleback (I'm asking you because you're the Tiger?Jack expert), has this already been done somewhere in the previous 8 gazillion posts?

Something like:  During Jack's best 10 years there were 65 different winners of 400 total tournaments, and during Tiger's best 10 years there were 175 different winners of 400 total tournaments.

Just curious.

P.S. @isukgolf ... What is BAMN???

[Ernest Jones]

Bad Ass Mr. Nicklaus

[Golfingdad]

Bad Ass Mr. Nicklaus

Well, call me Johnny Carson because ... I did not know that.

[9iron]

Couldn't we just compile a list of all winners (majors, and total tournaments) during Jack's career versus all winners during Tigers career to confirm this?  If way more players are capable of winning, then shouldn't they be actually winning over a period of time?  @turtleback (I'm asking you because you're the Tiger?Jack expert), has this already been done somewhere in the previous 8 gazillion posts?

Something like:  During Jack's best 10 years there were 65 different winners of 400 total tournaments, and during Tiger's best 10 years there were 175 different winners of 400 total tournaments.

Just curious.

Golfingdad, I don't think it is quite so easy for today's rank and file tour players to actually win a PGA Tour event as has been continually expressed in this thread for a very long time. I just checked the Official World Golf Rankings for players currently ranked between 90 and 100 and not one of them has a single PGA Tour win. Now, players ranked above and below that range have won, but it isn't like we are talking about a lot of guys winning a lot of events. If we looked at the players ranked between 130 and 140, the guys rounding out fields today, you have Pat Perez who last won in 2009, Robert Garrigus who last won in 2010, and Scott Brown and John Huh who won B Tournaments, the Puerto Rico Open and the Mayakoba Classic. All of these guys are better than club pros, but none of them has won a major and none has won a primary field tour event in a long time.

Let me offer some additional anecdotal stats. The 50th ranked player in the world is Mikko Ilonen. His best finish in a major is T16. The 60th ranked player is Koumae Oda. Best major finish is T39. The 70th ranked player in the world is Richard Sterne. I'm not sure of his best ever major finish except to say that I believe he has never had a top 10. The 80th ranked player is Nick Watney. His best finishes are a pair of 7th place finishes, from 4 years ago. The 90th ranked player is Chris Wood of England who has a T3 and T5 in the Open Championship, so he at least got somewhat close. The 100th ranked player is Fabrizio Zanotti who never sniffed the leader board on a Sunday in a major. Now, I picked these players at random based on their finishing on a nice round world golf ranking number, but as you can see, it isn't very easy to even threaten to win a major, let alone actually win one. When you are down the list of players it is basically impossible unless you catch lightening in a bottle.

So you'll get your occasional Rich Been or YE Yang winning a major, but these guys are the exception not the rule. If you take the entire world golf rankings top 150, how many have won majors in the past 5 years (there can be only 25 at most, I know) and where are they ranked? Almost all of them are ranked quite high. You can get really long odds on the lower ranked guys to win majors for good reason. It isn't very often they ever do so.

[turtleback]

Couldn't we just compile a list of all winners (majors, and total tournaments) during Jack's career versus all winners during Tigers career to confirm this?  If way more players are capable of winning, then shouldn't they be actually winning over a period of time?  @turtleback (I'm asking you because you're the Tiger?Jack expert), has this already been done somewhere in the previous 8 gazillion posts?

Something like:  During Jack's best 10 years there were 65 different winners of 400 total tournaments, and during Tiger's best 10 years there were 175 different winners of 400 total tournaments.

Just curious.

If someone has done that I have not seen it.  It seems obvious that Tiger's best 10 years were 1999-2008.  What would you say were Jack's best 10 years?

[taxgolf]

I think your comparing apples and oranges.. fact is there is too much time between them for if and's or buts.. cant compare the two so why try?? I think tiger will pass his record in the end though.. just my $0.02

I second that. Every era has his own great player.

[Abu3baid]

1. I don't agree that viriually anyone that is in the tournament has a chance at winning. Heck, take a look at the contests that are held in TST.. How many different player names are chosen by the knowledgable community? Less than 20? 2. I just picked 25 as an arbitrary number.. I could have easily picked 50 and my point still stands about club pros in Jack Time and those players that no one knows their name now.. Even if the players that no one knows their name are better than the club pros of old! Like @Golfingdad mentioned (sorry I didn't know you had brought that point up before, and as I mentioned it doesn't have to be 25.. Pick a number!) I think I'm going to look into this more as it is an interesting discussion. I bet if the boy at MIT look into it they can come up with some crazy logarithms to come up with some sort of equation to compare the two.. Till now tigers career is not over, and I'm sure the way it ends will have a bearing on this conversation!

[newtogolf]

But in 2011 I think that Henrik Stenson WAS irrelevant.  Wasn't he the guy who went home and lost his club championship to an amateur during the PGA that year?  2011 Stenson does not equal 2013/14 Stenson.

What Eyad is saying is similar to something I said in a post in the "other" Tiger/Jack thread awhile back.  If I was miraculously in the field for the PGA but then got replaced by Erik, the strength of field of the tournament would go up.  But down at that level (dead last by a couple of strokes versus dead last by 50 strokes) it doesn't have any bearing on the GOAT conversation.

Now, I don't totally agree with his idea that the cutoff should be the Top 25 but I don't think it should be completely written off either.  The worst guys now are miles better than the worst guys then, but there isn't that much significance there after some point.

I think you have to look at position AND how they trended over the season if you want to accurately reflect the level of competition they provided.

Jimmy Walker, in 2012 was ranked 43 in FedEx, in 2013 he ranked 26 and this year he's #1.  Tiger Woods was #1 in 2013 and this year he's 215.  If looking at OWGR, it's even more skewed because the trends aren't as quickly reflected in the rankings.

[9iron]

newtogolf, isn't the pro Tiger argument that we are debating here that in Jack's day the field included a bunch of club pros who had no chance of winning any major while in Tiger's day virtually anyone could win? I swear that is the argument being made.

What am I missing?

[9iron]

I don't believe that the deep end of the field is much different today in so far as their chances of winning a major is concerned vs. when Jack played. I think that both periods of time could be described as periods in which the elite players won the most majors  by far while deep in the field players - those with few wins on tour - won on occasion i.e. . about 5 percent of the time.

I posted some hard numbers above to try and illustrate how hard it is to win a major championship for deep in the field players. I'd like to see someone post some facts that would shoot down my theory.

[Golfingdad]

If someone has done that I have not seen it.  It seems obvious that Tiger's best 10 years were 1999-2008.  What would you say were Jack's best 10 years?

No idea.  But I got into the office a little early today and was curious so this is what I came up with:

I took the entire stretch of Tiger's majors (1997 through 2008), and compared it to a similar stretch of Jacks (1962 through 1975).  To make it a little more even, I omitted 1968 and 1969 from Jack's side; two years in which he didn't win any majors.  That left me with a 12 year stretch for each of them, in which they both won 14 majors and they both lost 34 majors.  I wrote down all of the other major winners over that span to see how many different winners there were.  The hypothesis would be that there should be more unique winners during Tiger's stretch than during Jack's stretch since we know that the field is stronger.

In Jack's case, there were 24 unique winners of those 34 majors, and in Tiger's case there were 25 unique winners.

Soooooo .... my hypothesis seems to be false.  If more players are CAPABLE of winning now then shouldn't more players ACTUALLY be winning as well?

For the record:  If I added Jack's two drought years back into the total and then added two years to Tiger's total to even out the numbers, it starts to skew a little bit in Tiger's favor.  Adding '68 and '69 gives us 4 more unique major winners in Jacks 14 year span, bringing the total to 28, and adding '95 and '96 to Tigers span gives us 8 more unique winners, 33 total.  Or adding '09 and '10 to Tigers span would give us 6 more unique winners (31 total).  Splitting the difference and adding '96 and '09 gives us 7 (32 total).

Anywhos ... thoughts???

Bibliography:  Wiki-fricken-pedia.

[mvmac]

If someone has done that I have not seen it.  It seems obvious that Tiger's best 10 years were 1999-2008.  What would you say were Jack's best 10 years?

Off the top of my head I would say '65-'75.

I don't believe that the deep end of the field is much different today in so far as their chances of winning a major is concerned vs. when Jack played.

I would say that Chris Wood has a better chance of winning a major than a club pro 25 years ago.

[9iron]

Off the top of my head I would say '65-'75.

I would say that Chris Wood has a better chance of winning a major than a club pro 25 years ago.

I would too, but I don't believe this changes anything. In theory, anhyone in the field has a chance. Just as the Jim Carrey character who asks "so you're saying I have a chance?" in the movie Dumb and Dumber technically "has a chance" of dating the hot chick, we rarely see a guy like that actually close the deal.

Chris Wood is a good player, and his talent is well suited to the Open Championship where he has a T3 and T5 already, but he has not won. Shaun Micheel has won a major, Rich Beem has also won a major. Both are what I would deem "back of the field" players. Here's the thing, players of similar stature won majors in Jack's heyday too.