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

[turtleback]

Originally Posted by camper6

But unlike you and camper6 I retain the ability to keep an open mind and to think critically.

(camper6:  Good post.  ME: no, dumb post)

Just by saying something like that you don't have the ability to keep an open mind and to think critically.

That would be true if I just stopped thee (as you did with "good post"  and zippy did with 18>14)  ut of course I didn't stop there and made a case, something you and zippy never seem to do.

Originally Posted by zipazoid

But if I lack critical thinking, so does Jack. His career goal was, among other things, 14 majors. So he could beat Bobby Jones' record. So in response to your claim that Hogan would have been GOAT, realize that the man who owns the record for most major wins disagrees with you. He thought it was Jones.

Ah, but what does he know, right? You're the one with the superior mental intellect.

How many majors have you won with that big brain of yours?

As has been pointed out, Jack's career goal was to exceed Sam Snead in most PGA Tour victories.  It wasn't until it became obvious that it wasn't going to happen that he lobbied  (successfully, at least among the non-thinking crowd) that the criteria should be most majors instead..  That was somewhat egregious, since he had far more opportunities to win majors than most of the great players that preceded him. It would be a little like Tiger lobbying to have most WGC wins become the new GOAT criterion.

As to the rest of your message, it is just silly and an example of the bancruptcy of your arguments.

[zipazoid]

You did note that I stated 'among other things', right? I'm sure that didn't escape your superior critical thinking skills.

Dude, it's not 'bankruptcy of my argument' - it's finality of my argument. Nuance Tiger ahead of Jack in whatever way your higher-evolved critical thinking skills permit you to. Doesn't make it right. It makes it your opinion. Mine differs. Have a nice freekin' day.

[Elvisliveson]

Originally Posted by turtleback

That would be true if I just stopped thee (as you did with "good post"  and zippy did with 18>14)  ut of course I didn't stop there and made a case, something you and zippy never seem to do.

As has been pointed out, Jack's career goal was to exceed Sam Snead in most PGA Tour victories.  It wasn't until it became obvious that it wasn't going to happen that he lobbied  (successfully, at least among the non-thinking crowd) that the criteria should be most majors instead..  That was somewhat egregious, since he had far more opportunities to win majors than most of the great players that preceded him. It would be a little like Tiger lobbying to have most WGC wins become the new GOAT criterion.

As to the rest of your message, it is just silly and an example of the bancruptcy of your arguments.

Turtleback, I don't know where you got your information from, but this is from about golf.com:

From Jack Nicklaus
The 20-year-old Jack Nicklaus in 1960: "Jones is the greatest golfer who ever lived and probably ever will live. That's my goal. Bobby Jones . It's the only goal."

[turtleback]

Originally Posted by Elvisliveson

Turtleback, I don't know where you got your information from, but this is from about golf.com:

From Jack Nicklaus

The 20-year-old Jack Nicklaus in 1960: "Jones is the greatest golfer who ever lived and probably ever will live. That's my goal. Bobby Jones. It's the only goal."

20-year old Jack NIcklaus.  Who was an amateur.  Who was contemplating not turning pro and having an amateur career.  Whose goals changed when he decided to turn pro.

[Elvisliveson]

Originally Posted by turtleback

20-year old Jack NIcklaus.  Who was an amateur.  Who was contemplating not turning pro and having an amateur career.  Whose goals changed when he decided to turn pro.

Not true at all. What he was referring to was Jone's 13 major championships. Jack already made up his mind to turn pro at that time, which he did the next year at age 21 after graduating college.

[zipazoid]

Originally Posted by turtleback

20-year old Jack NIcklaus.  Who was an amateur.  Who was contemplating not turning pro and having an amateur career.  Whose goals changed when he decided to turn pro.

Which, of course, you know.

[Elvisliveson]

Originally Posted by zipazoid

Which, of course, you know.

And which he can produce nothing to back it up. On the other hand there are plenty of articles like this http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1964&dat;=19710613&id;=MjojAAAAIBAJ&sjid;=OrcFAAAAIBAJ&pg;=2143,5393709 that continued to reference Jones' 13 majors as Jack's main goal even when Snead's win total could also have been attained.

[brocks]

Turtleback, I don't know where you got your information from, but this is from about golf.com: From Jack Nicklaus The 20-year-old [URL=http://golf.about.com/od/jacknicklaus/tp/jack-nicklaus.htm][COLOR=0066CC]Jack Nicklaus[/COLOR][/URL] in 1960: "Jones is the greatest golfer who ever lived and probably ever will live. That's my goal. [URL=http://golf.about.com/od/golfersmen/p/bobby_jones.htm][COLOR=0066CC]Bobby Jones[/COLOR][/URL]. It's the only goal."

I notice that your source doesn't give any citation for that quote, but it doesn't really matter, because in 1960, Jack was at OSU majoring in pharmacy (or maybe by then he had switched to insurance), and was planning to remain an amateur the rest of his life. Of course he idolized the greatest amateur of all time, Bobby Jones. But after he turned pro, he changed his goals. After winning his first Masters in 1963, he said this: ""My aim is to win more golf tournaments than anybody who ever lived. I want to be the greatest." In other words, the guy he was chasing wasn't Bobby Jones any more, it was Sam Snead. I used to have an easy link for that quote, but Google changed the way they archive newspapers a couple years ago, so you have to work a little bit. 1) Go here: http://tinyurl.com/jackquote 2) In the box near the top that lets you enter a page number, enter 12 3) If your browser works like mine, the newspaper will now be open to page 22, but that's what you want. Either grab and drag the page with your mouse, or use your mouse to move the blue box that covers part of the smaller picture of the page to the right. Either way, center the page so you can see the headline below the large picture in the middle of the page (which, interestingly, is of high school basketball star Pat Riley signing his letter of intent to play for coach Adolph Rupp at Kentucky). 4) You should now see the headline, "Nicklaus Wants To Win Them All," and you can read how he thinks the grand slam is no big deal, it's just a milepost on his way to breaking Sam Snead's record for most career victories.

[Elvisliveson]

Originally Posted by brocks

I notice that your source doesn't give any citation for that quote, but it doesn't really matter, because in 1960, Jack was at OSU majoring in pharmacy (or maybe by then he had switched to insurance), and was planning to remain an amateur the rest of his life. Of course he idolized the greatest amateur of all time, Bobby Jones.

But after he turned pro, he changed his goals. After winning his first Masters in 1963, he said this: ""My aim is to win more golf tournaments than anybody who ever lived. I want to be the greatest." In other words, the guy he was chasing wasn't Bobby Jones any more, it was Sam Snead.

I used to have an easy link for that quote, but Google changed the way they archive newspapers a couple years ago, so you have to work a little bit.

1) Go here: http://tinyurl.com/jackquote

2) In the box near the top that lets you enter a page number, enter 12

3) If your browser works like mine, the newspaper will now be open to page 22, but that's what you want. Either grab and drag the page with your mouse, or use your mouse to move the blue box that covers part of the smaller picture of the page to the right. Either way, center the page so you can see the headline below the large picture in the middle of the page (which, interestingly, is of high school basketball star Pat Riley signing his letter of intent to play for coach Adolph Rupp at Kentucky).

4) You should now see the headline, "Nicklaus Wants To Win Them All," and you can read how he thinks the grand slam is no big deal, it's just a milepost on his way to breaking Sam Snead's record for most career victories.

LOL, but I provided you in a following post an actual newspaper article from 10 years later (at age 31 when he was still well ahead of Snead's overall victory pace and it was well within reach) that states the 13 majors goal again! What are you going to do, claim it was Photshopped?  You Tiger sycophants are really too much. I am done here.

[brocks]

And which he can produce nothing to back it up. On the other hand there are plenty of articles like this[URL=http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1964&dat;=19710613&id;=MjojAAAAIBAJ&sjid;=OrcFAAAAIBAJ&pg;=2143,5393709]http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1964&dat;=19710613&id;=MjojAAAAIBAJ&sjid;=OrcFAAAAIBAJ&pg;=2143,5393709[/URL]  that continued to reference Jones' 13 majors as Jack's main goal even when Snead's win total could also have been attained.

Thanks for that link, but I don't see any quotes from Jack there, just something a headline writer said. Is there a different article in the paper that actually quotes Jack? Edit: never mind, I found it, on the article to the right. So congratulations, that's the earliest documented evidence I've seen of when Jack switched back to having a goal of most majors. But it does not change the fact that his goal early in his career was Snead's record, and that he switched goals when he was only two majors behind Jones (they counted US Ams back then), but nearly 50 wins behind Snead. I did get a kick out of a different article, which showed that "excessive celebration" did not begin with Tiger, or even Tom Watson or Hale Irwin: The article titled "Open Course Rich in Golf History" says that in 1934, Bobby Cruickshank "became so excited about his second shot on the 11th hole that he threw his club in the air and let it fall on his head, knocking him out." Jack would never have done that, although he almost knocked Doug Sanders out with a similar stunt.

[x129]

We are saying the same thing. At some point Jack switched from most wins to majors (and we can debate how major the US amateur was. Heck you can debate how many wins Snead had. It is somewhere between 80 and like 94 depending what events you count).  Why? You can argue it was because of how much easier it was to catch Jones (Jack had like 10 majors including his amateurs when he was 31) and was obviously going to happen before he caught Snead or a reflection of the times where majors had become more important than wins.

Originally Posted by Elvisliveson

LOL, but I provided you in a following post an actual newspaper article from 10 years later (at age 31 when he was still well ahead of Snead's overall victory pace and it was well within reach) that states the 13 majors goal again! What are you going to do, claim it was Photshopped?  You Tiger sycophants are really too much. I am done here.

[Elvisliveson]

Originally Posted by x129

We are saying the same thing. At some point Jack switched from most wins to majors (and we can debate how major the US amateur was. Heck you can debate how many wins Snead had. It is somewhere between 80 and like 94 depending what events you count).  Why? You can argue it was because of how much easier it was to catch Jones (Jack had like 10 majors including his amateurs when he was 31) and was obviously going to happen before he caught Snead or a reflection of the times where majors had become more important than wins.Y

No we're not.  Jack said at age 20,Jones' 13 majors was the goal and he said at age 31 that Jones' 13 majors was the goal. If he ever did switch, it was from most majors first, to most wins and then back to most majors. But the bottom line in all of this, is Tigers Woods' own clear stated main goal from the beginning was to surpass Jack's 18 professional major championships. That was his definition of attaining ultimate greatness.

[brocks]

LOL, but I provided you in a following post an actual newspaper article from 10 years later

I would think that a smart fellow like yourself can tell from the timestamps that I was still writing my post when you posted that. I freely concede that your link gives the earliest date I've seen that shows Nicklaus switching back from victories to majors as his "only goal." I disagree that it doesn't show that he was cynical in doing so, because at that time he needed only two more majors to catch Jones, but he needed 47 more wins to catch Snead (remember that the PGA didn't consider Open wins official at that time, so by my count, the score in PGA victories in mid-1971 was Snead 81, Jack 34). I think it's obvious that Jack didn't like his chances for catching Snead. Yes he was ahead of his pace, but as any golf fan knows, Snead was much more prolific later in his career than when he started out, not to mention having WW II severely limit his opportunities just as he started winning regularly. And Jack was the opposite. He began his career like a house afire, but he was burning out by the late 60's, so he stopped playing as often. He would play 25 or 26 events a year early in his career, but as few as 12 in the late 70's. He had only five PGA wins after the age of 40, compared to Snead's 17. Even going by the numbers on Jack's website, he had 33 wins from 1962-1970, for an average of 3.67 per year. If he could keep up that pace, it would take him another 13 years to catch Snead, and he knew that he was going to play fewer events in the future, so he probably couldn't keep up that pace. And of course, even though he unexpectedly had his best years in 1972 and 1973, he did fall well short, in spite of having an amazing 25-year winning span, which I'm sure was longer than he expected. So again, congratulations on finding that link, which I will happily add to my collection, but it doesn't contradict anything that Turtleback or I have said.

[brocks]

If he ever did switch, it was from most majors first, to most wins and then back to most majors.

LOL, "I was for it before I was against it, but now I'm for it again." You do realize that Jack changing goals back and forth according to what he's already achieved doesn't help your case, right? As for Tiger, what else can he say? "Most majors" has become the de facto standard, and he'd look silly if he tried to say WGC's, or weeks as WGR #1, should be the new standard, although it would make almost as much sense as Jack comparing his majors to Hagen's or Vardon's.

[camper6]

Originally Posted by brocks

LOL, "I was for it before I was against it, but now I'm for it again."

You do realize that Jack changing goals back and forth according to what he's already achieved doesn't help your case, right?

As for Tiger, what else can he say? Majors has become the de facto standard, and he'd look silly if he tried to say WGC's or weeks as WGR #1 should be the new standard, although it would make almost as much sense as Jack comparing his majors to Hagen's or Vardon's.

Off topic.  Your avatar is intriguing.  So I looked for a solution and this is what I got.

Everyone here will probably leap to answer this as it is such a beautiful chapter of mathematics, but i got here first, so i will try my turn. Basically one needs to understand the connection between exponential functions and trig functions.

One way is via differential equations. e.g. the equation f'' + f = 0, has 2 independent solutions. that measn that given any two numbers a and b, you can find a unique solution f such that f(0) = a and f'(0) = b. This is also true for imaginary numbers.

So let a = 1 and let b = i. Then f(x) = e^(ix) is the desired solution, since then f'(x) = ie^(ix), and e^(i0) = 1, and ie^(io) = i.

But also f(x) = cos(x) + isin(x) has f'(x) = -sin(x)+ icos(x), hence again f(0) = 1, and f'(0) = i.

But there is only one solution with these initial conditions so we are forced to conclude that e^(ix) = cos(x) + isin(x). Now set x = pi and what do you get?

[brocks]

Not true at all. What he was referring to was Jone's 13 major championships. Jack already made up his mind to turn pro at that time [1960], which he did the next year at age 21 after graduating college.

You are mistaken about that. According to his 1997 autobiography, he had planned to remain a lifelong amateur throughout 1960, and didn't seriously think about turning pro until the latter half of 1961. He even said that when reporters started bugging him about turning pro after the 1961 US Open, his response was that he couldn't emulate Bobby Jones if he did. My source is "Jack Nicklaus: My Story," page 58 of the hardback first edition, which I bought the day it came out. I have been a lifelong Nicklaus fan, and I still think he's the second best of all time.

[brocks]

A better link to the article I cited about Jack's goal of "most career wins," so you don't have to go through all the gymnastics: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=l-8qAAAAIBAJ&sjid;=1IgFAAAAIBAJ&pg;=3429%2C1549725

[turtleback]

Quote:

Originally Posted by camper6

Off topic.  Your avatar is intriguing.  So I looked for a solution and this is what I got.

Everyone here will probably leap to answer this as it is such a beautiful chapter of mathematics, but i got here first, so i will try my turn. Basically one needs to understand the connection between exponential functions and trig functions.

One way is via differential equations. e.g. the equation f'' + f = 0, has 2 independent solutions. that measn that given any two numbers a and b, you can find a unique solution f such that f(0) = a and f'(0) = b. This is also true for imaginary numbers.

So let a = 1 and let b = i. Then f(x) = e^(ix) is the desired solution, since then f'(x) = ie^(ix), and e^(i0) = 1, and ie^(io) = i.

But also f(x) = cos(x) + isin(x) has f'(x) = -sin(x)+ icos(x), hence again f(0) = 1, and f'(0) = i.

But there is only one solution with these initial conditions so we are forced to conclude that e^(ix) = cos(x) + isin(x). Now set x = pi and what do you get?

Brock's avatar is a tautology.  I does not have a "solution" because it does not have a variable or an unknown.  You would do as well trying to find a "solution" to 1+1=2.

Quote:

Originally poster by brocks:

A better link to the article I cited about Jack's goal of "most career wins," so you don't have to go through all the gymnastics:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=l-8qAAAAIBAJ&sjid;=1IgFAAAAIBAJ&pg;=3429%2C1549725

Interesting article.  Note how Jack's supposedly superior competition fared and how Jack won.

1) Palmer never got started and never contended.

2) Snead 3 putted 16 and bogeyed 18

3) Player bogeyed the last 2 holes