FiveThirtyEight: Rory vs. Tiger vs. Jack Though 3 Major Wins

[jamo]

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/how-rory-mcilroy-stacks-up-to-tiger-and-jack/ [QUOTE]With his British Open victory Sunday, Rory McIlroy captured the third major championship of his career. This puts him in some incredible company — only 44 players in the history of golf have won three majors, and just 19 have done so since the PGA Championship adopted stroke play in 1958. On top of all that, McIlroy is barely 25 years old; as was noted often Sunday, only Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods were younger when they won their third career major. Predicting whether Northern Ireland’s McIlroy will pass the major counts of Nicklaus or Woods is beyond the scope of this piece (that would probably involve a process similar to our analysis of whether Rafael Nadal would win more majors than Roger Federer in tennis). But we can look at how Nicklaus and Woods performed in their first three major victories and see how McIlroy stacks up. Woods’s first three major wins include two of the nine most dominant performances in a major since 1958 (according to the Z-Score system developed by our Grantland colleague Bill Barnwell), so it’s tough for McIlroy to compete with Woods’s average of 19.5 strokes below the field in those tournaments. But McIlroy’s first three major titles have been more dominant than Nicklaus’s, and it’s not just an artifact of McIlroy blowing away the field in the 2011 U.S. Open. By both strokes relative to the field and Z-Score, McIlroy’s second- and third-best major victories were better than Nicklaus’s second- and third-best performances. The difference, though, is that McIlroy hasn’t done as much as Nicklaus did in the majors he wasn’t winning. Before grabbing his third major title, Nicklaus finished third at the 1963 British Open with a total score 14.6 strokes better than the field average. If we convert his Z-Score to a probability of winning, Nicklaus’s performance relative to the field was generally good enough to win a major 62 percent of the time (unfortunately for Nicklaus, Bob Charles and Phil Rodgers were both 15.6 strokes better than the field; Charles would win the tournament in a playoff). In addition, Nicklaus’s performance in the 1962 PGA Championship would typically win a major about 10 percent of the time. In all, Nicklaus had 0.76 “expected wins” in all the majors he didn’t win before his third major crown. By contrast, McIlroy only piled up 0.16 expected wins before winning the British Open. (If you’re curious, Woods had 0.43.) Yes, McIlroy has a trio of third-place ties to his name, but none of those performances would typically be good enough to win a major more than 8 percent of the time. When Nicklaus lost, he often played well enough to win but didn’t get a lucky break here or there (he finished second in more majors, 19, than anyone else has won). The same can’t be said for McIlroy, at least at this stage of his career. Even so, McIlroy belongs in the conversation with Woods and Nicklaus. A lot will have to go right for him to challenge Woods’s major championship count (let alone Nicklaus’s), but we should appreciate the greatness we’ve seen from McIlroy thus far.[/QUOTE] Z-score is an interesting metric, and a very simple one. It's a measure of how many standard deviations a golfer's score is from the field average. A more negative number is better. This is a bit of a flukey situation just because Tiger and Rory won two of their events BIG, which doesn't happen that often. Rory's first two wins could end up being the biggest major wins of his career pretty easily.

[acerimusdux]

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/how-rory-mcilroy-stacks-up-to-tiger-and-jack/

Z-score is an interesting metric, and a very simple one. It's a measure of how many standard deviations a golfer's score is from the field average. A more negative number is better.

This is a bit of a flukey situation just because Tiger and Rory won two of their events BIG, which doesn't happen that often. Rory's first two wins could end up being the biggest major wins of his career pretty easily.

Yes, I would like to see this used to look at other achievments. For example, Ben Hogan didn't do anything before age 25, but I wonder what this metric would say about his run from 1949-1953. Or maybe look at Byron Nelson in that one amazing 1945 season, where he won 18 times, including 11 in a row. I wonder what his Z-scores were that year compared to other great single seasons.

[boogielicious]

I hope Rory keeps it up.  Great story of a kid from a small country.

[turtleback]

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/how-rory-mcilroy-stacks-up-to-tiger-and-jack/

Z-score is an interesting metric, and a very simple one. It's a measure of how many standard deviations a golfer's score is from the field average. A more negative number is better.

This is a bit of a flukey situation just because Tiger and Rory won two of their events BIG, which doesn't happen that often. Rory's first two wins could end up being the biggest major wins of his career pretty easily.

And it will all change if/when Rory wins #4 because that was another big win for Tiger - British Open by 8 shots at St. Andrews.  If we were just looking at combined winning margins, Rory would have to win his next major by 18* shots to match Tiger's cumulative winning margin for the first 4.

Not many guys have won 4 majors at all, and I think I am on fairly safe ground in believing that none of them other than Tiger won their first 4 by an average winning margin of 9 (or 8.75*) strokes.

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* I awarded Tiger a 1 shot margin for the '99 PGA since he won it, albeit in a playoff.  If someone wants to get picky and wants to take that away then Rory needs to win his next major by 17 to match Tiger's cumulative margin for his first 4 major wins.