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

[iacas]

4 minutes ago, ChrisP said:

No need for insults. I’ve got a Masters Degree from one of the best colleges in the country. I think I read fine. 

I don't read it as an insult. You took comments I made completely the wrong way, for example, and seem to be confusing longevity with durability, as @turtleback also pointed out.

[Pretzel]

12 hours ago, Vinsk said:

Once Tiger won three Ams he claimed Ams aren’t counted.

Once he realized he can’t beat Snead he claimed total wins isn’t the key..it’s major wins.

 

No, he wouldn't say that because he knows it would make it more likely for him to be beat.

Once Tiger won 3 Ams saying that Ams don't count made it less likely for him to be beat. Him claiming that senior tour wins should count only makes it more likely for him to be beat, rather soundly, and Jack is smart enough to know this.

[iacas]

9 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

Once Tiger won 3 Ams saying that Ams don't count made it less likely for him to be beat. Him claiming that senior tour wins should count only makes it more likely for him to be beat, rather soundly, and Jack is smart enough to know this.

I don't know… I don't see Tiger playing much on the PGA Tour Champions.

[Vinsk]

13 minutes ago, iacas said:

I don't know… I don't see Tiger playing much on the PGA Tour Champions.

Agree. And Jack probably thinks the same.😀

[turtleback]

4 hours ago, iacas said:

I don't know… I don't see Tiger playing much on the PGA Tour Champions.

I'm not so sure.  In 7 years Sam will be off at college and Charlie will be a year away.  Tiger has built his whole life around golf and even now I doubt anything gives him more joy than just hitting golf balls - so long as he can do it pain-free.  I think he will play the senior majors at some point if for no other reasons than Jack did it and some of his old 'rivals' like Phil, Ernie, etc. will be out there sometimes.  I hope so.  I'd like to watch him play winning golf as long as possible.  Maybe he'll be the first to win the US Open and US Senior Open in the same year.

[saevel25]

I don’t see him competing on the Champions Tour. 

[Vinsk]

Hank Haney talking with Jim McLean is just frustrating. Hank always hypes himself as this big ‘statistics’ guy yet he says, ‘ I don’t think anybody has ever played golf better than Tiger, I mean...Jack’s the greatest because of his 18 majors and that’s how we rank players...but Tiger played the best golf we’ve ever seen.’

Statistics? Why don’t you go over those statistics Hank.  I called in the other day and got thru to his show. Hank had a caller who said the top players of Jack’s time were really strong players with multiple majors yet admitted the SOF was weaker in Jack’s day at the same time. I mentioned that the weaker field wasn’t only in Jack’s favor it was an advantage for those guys too. So just as Jack’s majors included some very weak fields so did the wins from his top competitors. If you were a top 10 player in the 50’s-60’s you had a huge chance of winning as the fields were shallow. If you’re a top 10 player now..there’s several dozen players in any tournament who have a damn good chance of winning. 

[Dr. Manhattan]

2 hours ago, saevel25 said:

I don’t see him competing on the Champions Tour. 

 

Agreed. I would be very surprised if Tiger plays any senior tournament. Maybe the senior USGA and R&A events. That would be about it. 

[Slim_Pivot]

What if Bobby Jones or Hogan were actually the greatest ever...just food for thought.

Ill take Tiger on this one, best overall game.

Driving accuracy-went away for a while. And I don’t necessarily mean fairways hit, but foul balls. His driving accuracy has been seemingly much better in this comeback. If it continues, the argument for his game being the most complete ever will be easier to make.

His wedge game and his insane recovery ability are the reason I’m taking him over Jack btw.

Devils advocate: I do think Jack deserves credit for preserving body mind and spirit to accomplish longevity and set the record. Because Tiger didn’t- he gets a pass of “oh he broke his body, or he would’ve set it”.

Those are strong and probably unfair words-but there is debate over whether it was self inflicted or his back just wore out.

[Vinsk]

I just think Tiger has always wanted the highest level of competition and the want to win. As he said when he was a rookie when Curtis Strange said, ‘You’ll learn..’ Of course Strange later apologized and said , Yeah...you are that good.’ So I don’t see Tiger having much desire to compete on the Champions Tour. He may finally want to have his life out of the spotlight and enjoy his fortune.  But if his health remains good, I bet if he did he’d beat all of Langer’s records...and without anchoring.😉

3 minutes ago, Slim_Pivot said:

Devils advocate: I do think Jack deserves credit for preserving body mind and spirit to accomplish longevity and set the record. 

He didn’t ‘last’ any longer than Tiger and he actually accomplished less than Tiger. Except for racking up 3 more majors than Tiger against a much, much weaker field. And again, nobody is discrediting Nicklaus. He’s the second greatest of all time. 

[iacas]

@brocks, @turtleback, and anyone else who is interested: I'd like to ask a favor of you. Though, full honesty, I feel like I asked this last year perhaps and that we did a bit of this.

I'm going to spend a little time today trying to find that post, because if we can find that one, that'll either render this request moot OR at least greatly reduce the amount of time required to find other good posts.

In other words, if we could, let's make a list of good links that state definitively many of the things we find ourselves repeating over and over again.

For example, I have these three posts:

Jack on "superstars" in his autobiography:

Jack on the depth of field at the 1968 PGA Championship:

Jack changing the determinant for GOAT:

 

13 minutes ago, Slim_Pivot said:

What if Bobby Jones or Hogan were actually the greatest ever...just food for thought.

It's really not.

[Vinsk]

On 4/18/2019 at 5:35 PM, turtleback said:

That is a key point.  Jack shouldn't get to decide what the criteria for GOAT is, yet he did.  Several times.  With changing definitions, tailored to what he could achieve or thought he could achieve.  From winning a 'Bobby Jones' type slam as a career amateur, to winning a professional grand slam (which Tiger arguably has done, with the only argument on the meaning of grand), to beating Snead's PGA victory career total (which Tiger is about to do but which, with any set of consistent criteria on what counts and what doesn't was surpassed long ago).  He couldn't do any of them.  So except for that quixotic notion of being a career amateur, Tiger has actually met Jack's first couple of drafts of GOAT criteria a lot better than Jack ever did.

And then someone pointed out his number of majors was closing in on Jones' total (of different majors) and virtually out of the blue, majors became the sine qua non for judging greatness.  Before the early 70s majors were significant events, but nothing like what the have become.  Now it is unheard of for a healthy player to skip any major he is eligible for.  Not so for the 60s and before.  In fact, no player before Jack was ever considered the GOAT based on number of majors.

But it led to one of the most intellectually dishonest self-serving statements of all time, when Jack said the since money, equipment, and playing conditions change so much, the fairest way of comparing players of different eras was number of majors won.  Totally ignoring the fact that when he said it he knew that he had WAY more opportunities to *play* in majors than anyone before him.  When he said it his competition for GOAT would have been maybe Arnie, except Arnie had already stopped winning so Jack had him covered.  The other guys, Hogan, Snead, maybe Hagen, were all covered because none of them had anywhere near the number of opportunities as Jack.  Fairest way, indeed.

But as Brocks has pointed out, Tiger did NONE of this kind of conniving to puff his record.  The accepted standard was majors, and although he is a smart enough guy to understand what a bad standard that is, never tried to change it.  Jack's 'fairest way' statement is why I said, in one of these threads, that if Tiger behaved like Jack he could have made the same statement about number of premium world class events - majjors, WGCs, and Players.  At first blush we would all look at a statement like that as ludicrous.  But that is exactly how we got that lame majors standard in the first place.

And lest you think I'm spinning tales, this has all been verified upthread, down to citations and direct quotes.  It was put together years ago by Brocks.  These wars are old, and Brocks and I, among others, are seasoned campaigners, LOL.

On Jack determining the ‘criteria for GOAT’

1 hour ago, iacas said:

@brocks, @turtleback, and anyone else who is interested: I'd like to ask a favor of you. Though, full honesty, I feel like I asked this last year perhaps and that we did a bit of this.

I'm going to spend a little time today trying to find that post, because if we can find that one, that'll either render this request moot OR at least greatly reduce the amount of time required to find other good posts.

In other words, if we could, let's make a list of good links that state definitively many of the things we find ourselves repeating over and over again.

For example, I have these three posts:

Jack on "superstars" in his autobiography:

Jack on the depth of field at the 1968 PGA Championship:

Jack changing the determinant for GOAT:

 

It's really not.

 

[iacas]

12 minutes ago, Vinsk said:

On Jack determining the ‘criteria for GOAT’

Jack’s Evolution: What Constitutes “Greatest of All Time”? « Persimmon Golf Today

---

In an internet awash with junk, every once in a while you stumble onto gold. I wanted to document this little piece that was well researched and presented. I was surprised at how little I knew of t...

 

That's also quoted here:

 

[turtleback]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

@brocks, @turtleback, and anyone else who is interested: I'd like to ask a favor of you. Though, full honesty, I feel like I asked this last year perhaps and that we did a bit of this.

I'm going to spend a little time today trying to find that post, because if we can find that one, that'll either render this request moot OR at least greatly reduce the amount of time required to find other good posts.

In other words, if we could, let's make a list of good links that state definitively many of the things we find ourselves repeating over and over again.

For example, I have these three posts:

Jack on "superstars" in his autobiography:

Jack on the depth of field at the 1968 PGA Championship:

Jack changing the determinant for GOAT:

 

It's really not.

This fits, I think.

https://thesandtrap.com/forums/topic/2203-jack-vs-tiger-whos-the-greatest-golfer/?page=301&tab=comments#comment-1366814

[iacas]

3 minutes ago, turtleback said:

This fits, I think.

https://thesandtrap.com/forums/topic/2203-jack-vs-tiger-whos-the-greatest-golfer/?page=301&tab=comments#comment-1366814

Okay, but FWIW I'm thinking of the seminal, cornerstone types of posts.

What would you title that post?

[turtleback]

8 minutes ago, iacas said:

Jack’s Evolution: What Constitutes “Greatest of All Time”? « Persimmon Golf Today

---

In an internet awash with junk, every once in a while you stumble onto gold. I wanted to document this little piece that was well researched and presented. I was surprised at how little I knew of t...

 

That's also quoted here:

 

I just want to point out that in that post I attributed the real stuff to a guy from the GC boards named jugglepin.  It was actually put together by our own @brocks from the days when GC had boards.  And again, apologies to @brocks for the misattribution.

2 minutes ago, iacas said:

Okay, but FWIW I'm thinking of the seminal, cornerstone types of posts.

What would you title that post?

? Dominance?

I actually had done a search for such messages a little while back, where I unearthed that post.  One of the problems is that when I did a search it only seemed to go back to some time in 2011, and I think that a lot of those really comprehensive and devestating posts came before that, when Tiger was in the thick of things.

[Dr. Manhattan]

On 7/11/2018 at 12:59 AM, turtleback said:

Tiger was never lucky enough to have someone blow a 2 foot putt to hand him a major.  Or did Sanders do that because of Jack's skill.

Tiger was never lucky enough to have the guy who had the Masters won duck hook into the water to open the door.  Or did Seve do that because of Jack?

Tiger was never lucky enough to have the guy who should have been the runaway winner 3 putt 10 times to allow him to get into a playoff.  Or did Arnie do that because of Jack.

How about some examples from you of instances where Tiger won a major because of one of these kinds of 'luck'.
 

 

Haha, well it happened now! 4 of the top contenders go in the water at Augusta's 12th hole. Molinari goes in the water at 15 as well on top of his water ball at 12. Tiger finally got some of that luck he needed to come from behind after 54 holes in a major. Still cannot believe Molinari & Koepka both went in the water. These guys are very strong with the mental part of the game. 

[Vinsk]

12 minutes ago, Dr. Manhattan said:

 

Haha, well it happened now! 4 of the top contenders go in the water at Augusta's 12th hole. Molinari goes in the water at 15 as well on top of his water ball at 12. Tiger finally got some of that luck he needed to come from behind after 54 holes in a major. Still cannot believe Molinari & Koepka both went in the water. These guys are very strong with the mental part of the game. 

Well....imo the fact that 4 strong players did it makes it less ‘rare’. And hitting a tee shot in the water is considerably more excusing than missing a 2’ putt like Hoch did to hand Faldo the win. Or to have a the leader blow a six shot lead in the final round....that’s uniquely lucky.