Who is the biggest underachiever in the Majors?

[ChrisP]

If we are talking about ONE specific major, I've never seen one player underachieve as much as Colin Montgomerie has in the British. The guy has like a hundred European Tour wins yet HASNT EVEN SNIFFED a British. The closest he came was in 2001 when he led after two rounds and then choked away on the weekend. Never even really in contention. It's just incredible a guy from Scotland with that many wins overseas can't even come close to winning one on or near his home soil.

[bubble]

can't say it's Sergio because he is the example of total counter performance. he rarely got close in a major. 

i'm more for mickelson.

 

 

 

 

[boogielicious]

9 minutes ago, bubble said:

can't say it's Sergio because he is the example of total counter performance. he rarely got close in a major. 

i'm more for mickelson.

 

 

 

 

Mickelson has won 5. I would not call that underachieving. 

[SavvySwede]

Finally decided to vote for Greg Norman. I think his level of talent is head and shoulders above the other candidates even when you account for the two majors he did win. Really should have finished with 6-8 total.

[natureboy]

On 1/6/2016 at 11:47 AM, DeadMan said:

In reality, it's probably Greg Norman. He was the world number one for nearly 6 years in total and won 2 majors. A lot of it was due to bad luck, but that's a paltry total for someone that good.

See below.

On 1/8/2016 at 4:03 PM, Wally Fairway said:

If we are going to include Norman (who won majors) then I feel compelled to nominate Freddie Couples.

See below.

On 1/15/2016 at 4:05 PM, MSchott said:

I don't see how anyone can vote for Norman in the same poll with prominent players with no majors. No doubt that he did not live up to his potential but having 2 majors is significant. The others definitely have underachieved more than him. I voted for Monty over Sergio because Garcia still has a lot of chances to cash in.

See below.

On 1/16/2016 at 7:48 PM, saevel25 said:

Norman was maybe the 2nd most consistent golfer. Yet he only has 2 majors. I think he majorly underachieved at the majors for how good he was. 

See below.

On 1/16/2016 at 0:23 AM, Broke100Once said:

That list makes me think Luke Donald should've been in the poll.

See below.

On 1/16/2016 at 1:20 AM, cmherrbach said:

Rickie Fowler.

See below.

On 1/17/2016 at 10:49 AM, ChrisP said:

If we are talking about ONE specific major, I've never seen one player underachieve as much as Colin Montgomerie has in the British. The guy has like a hundred European Tour wins

See below.

On 1/17/2016 at 0:32 PM, bubble said:

i'm more for mickelson.

See below.

On 1/17/2016 at 0:43 PM, boogielicious said:

Mickelson has won 5. I would not call that underachieving. 

See below.

On 1/17/2016 at 1:00 PM, SavvySwede said:

Finally decided to vote for Greg Norman. I think his level of talent is head and shoulders above the other candidates even when you account for the two majors he did win. Really should have finished with 6-8 total.

 

I did a comparison chart below that includes a lot of the names listed in your posts. The stats I think are most telling are major win % (wins / start), average major rank, and major wins as % of official wins.

Before doing it, I was in the camp that Norman was the most underachieving. However, I came to understand that when the Official World Golf Ranking was begun it used three years of prior performance and included results from many tournaments that had relatively weak fields. A lot of Norman's 31 wins on the AustralAsia Tour were probably the equivalent of state opens in the U.S. or maybe web.com level. But they significantly boosted and sustained his world ranking points. When Tiger began his run, the new 'reformed' ranking system was in. So I think that Norman's ranking dominance is overstated. When you compare his PGA wins total and his majors as percent of official wins on the row where I removed many lesser AustralAsia tour event wins his percentage is closer to others who won about the same amount. Billy Casper had a lot more PGA wins and a similar number of Vardon / Nelson awards, but only one more major.

I also did a special shaded row for Peter Thomson too where I knocked down his official win numbers due to a large number of official wins in New Zealand and regional Australian events. His majors results may also be a bit less apples-to-apples, because he played about twice as much in the Open Championship as the U.S. Open and Masters combined (and none in the PGA). I don't know if he had so few starts in other events due to choice or opportunity.

After reflecting on the rankings flaws, I'm now switching my vote from Norman to Colin Montgomerie. Compared to others with similar official / sanctioned wins he has the fewest majors. Lee Westwood has as many official wins as Monty, but a bunch are from the relatively weaker events. If Monty craftily managed his Order of Merit pursuit by targeting less competitive Euro events to bump his ranking and win total up then his perceived 'potential' for Major win(s) might be a bit overstated like Norman's.

Sergio is now my new 2nd, because he has a lot of major starts, 8 PGA wins (showing he's competitive with the field) and ~20 official worldwide wins and has a better than average rank (among the Major champions on my list) for the U.S. Open and Open Champ, though this may fade as he completes his career and possibly performs worse in his later years than the 'majors' group.

IMO, too soon to tell on DJ and Rickie. If they have twice as many major starts with twice as many PGA wins, but zero majors, then I'd agree they underachieved. But Zach Johnson has twice as many as DJ with about the same number of wins so maybe he's my new 3rd.

Anyone have a thought how Nicklaus was able to win 55 PGA events and 18 majors across several decades while avoiding taking a single Vardon Trophy?

 

 

The Average Rank for majors was calculated by tallying results and assigning an estimated cut rank at ~ 15 spots above the typical cut line position for the tournament.

I used Raymond Floyd's results through age 50 because he had a run of historic form.

Edited January 19, 2016 by natureboy

[SavvySwede]

Numbers are one thing @natureboy, but can you really consider Monty and Sergio underachievers when people didn't really expect them to win? They were talented but everyone knew they were mentally fragile.

[natureboy]

30 minutes ago, SavvySwede said:

Numbers are one thing @natureboy, but can you really consider Monty and Sergio underachievers when people didn't really expect them to win? They were talented but everyone knew they were mentally fragile.

I'm just talking about expected 'potential' based on golf games strong enough to win repeatedly against competitive fields in official sanctioned tournaments. Sergio is getting older, but he could still pull one out of the hat. Tommy Bolt won at 42 when he mellowed a bit. But yeah, tossing your shoe after a bad tee shot is probably not major champ stuff.

I have my own interpretations of the chart, but am curious to what others see or notice.

What really is exciting to me is Rory, Jordan, & Jason all have a historic winning percentages fairly early in their careers. Should be a good few years to come.

Edited January 19, 2016 by natureboy

[boogielicious]

7 hours ago, natureboy said:

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I did a comparison chart below that includes a lot of the names listed in your posts. The stats I think are most telling are major win % (wins / start), average major rank, and major wins as % of official wins.

Before doing it, I was in the camp that Norman was the most underachieving. However, I came to understand that when the Official World Golf Ranking was begun it used three years of prior performance and included results from many tournaments that had relatively weak fields. A lot of Norman's 31 wins on the AustralAsia Tour were probably the equivalent of state opens in the U.S. or maybe web.com level. But they significantly boosted and sustained his world ranking points. When Tiger began his run, the new 'reformed' ranking system was in. So I think that Norman's ranking dominance is overstated. When you compare his PGA wins total and his majors as percent of official wins on the row where I removed many lesser AustralAsia tour event wins his percentage is closer to others who won about the same amount. Billy Casper had a lot more PGA wins and a similar number of Vardon / Nelson awards, but only one more major.

I also did a special shaded row for Peter Thomson too where I knocked down his official win numbers due to a large number of official wins in New Zealand and regional Australian events. His majors results may also be a bit less apples-to-apples, because he played about twice as much in the Open Championship as the U.S. Open and Masters combined (and none in the PGA). I don't know if he had so few starts in other events due to choice or opportunity.

After reflecting on the rankings flaws, I'm now switching my vote from Norman to Colin Montgomerie. Compared to others with similar official / sanctioned wins he has the fewest majors. Lee Westwood has as many official wins as Monty, but a bunch are from the relatively weaker events. If Monty craftily managed his Order of Merit pursuit by targeting less competitive Euro events to bump his ranking and win total up then his perceived 'potential' for Major win(s) might be a bit overstated like Norman's.

Sergio is now my new 2nd, because he has a lot of major starts, 8 PGA wins (showing he's competitive with the field) and ~20 official worldwide wins and has a better than average rank (among the Major champions on my list) for the U.S. Open and Open Champ, though this may fade as he completes his career and possibly performs worse in his later years than the 'majors' group.

IMO, too soon to tell on DJ and Rickie. If they have twice as many major starts with twice as many PGA wins, but zero majors, then I'd agree they underachieved. But Zach Johnson has twice as many as DJ with about the same number of wins so maybe he's my new 3rd.

Anyone have a thought how Nicklaus was able to win 55 PGA events and 18 majors across several decades while avoiding taking a single Vardon Trophy?

 

 

The Average Rank for majors was calculated by tallying results and assigning an estimated cut rank at ~ 15 spots above the typical cut line position for the tournament.

I used Raymond Floyd's results through age 50 because he had a run of historic form.

Nice post. Thanks for the well thought analysis.

[natureboy]

13 hours ago, boogielicious said:

Nice post. Thanks for the well thought analysis.

Thanks. See anything interesting that I missed?

One general note on the chart...the summary average and STD Deviation is for the group shown on the list. If I included all major winners since ~ 1950 then the average would be much lower and the average ranking likely quite a bit higher since there are 24 double winners and 79 single winners. I'll try to add the other active double major holders (Bubba, Kaymer, & Cabrera) and maybe Julius Boros.

Edited January 20, 2016 by natureboy

[natureboy]

Updated list. Added Bubba, Kaymer, Cabrera & Boros.

My personal ranking among the poll choices is now 1. Monty  2. Sergio  3. Westwood. An old-timer, Harry Cooper, might be argued as he had 31 PGA wins without a major - unless you count the Western Open, which he won once.

Edited January 20, 2016 by natureboy

[Vinsk]

I vote Tiger Woods. Before you laugh, I'm considering what was projected to happen when Tiger was in his prime. Definitely surpassing Nicklaus and setting a new record that would seem unsurpassable. Never did I think back in early to mid 2000 that Tiger would play the way he played in 2015. It's been a real disappointment I feel.

[boogielicious]

8 hours ago, Vinsk said:

I vote Tiger Woods. Before you laugh, I'm considering what was projected to happen when Tiger was in his prime. Definitely surpassing Nicklaus and setting a new record that would seem unsurpassable. Never did I think back in early to mid 2000 that Tiger would play the way he played in 2015. It's been a real disappointment I feel.

We are laughing. He's been hurt. He won a major on a broken leg. What a choker!

Nicklaus had back injuries too and may have won more majors if he didn't. He came in second a bunch of times. Is he an underachiever?

This thread is really about players who had the hype and didn't deliver. Anyone who has won more that a few majors is really not underachieving. Golf is hard.

[Thrash13]

Dustin Johnson hasn't won a major, but he has been in contention in tons of them.  I definitely wouldn't consider that underachieving at all.  A LOT of pros would take his record in majors without a doubt.  The same can be said for Sergio in the early 2000's and Colin Montgomerie through the years.  In recent years, however, Sergio has underachieved a bit in the majors.

When I see this topic, guys like Jim Furyk, Steve Stricker, Hunter Mahan (other than the one year where he contended in a couple), etc.  Furyk has won a major, but he has also disappeared in a lot of them over the years.  Matt Kuchar is another guy who hasn't fared nearly as well as I would expect.

[natureboy]

I came up with a very rough expectation of achieving a major with ~ 13 PGA wins, ~ 16 Euro wins (Euro win = .81 of PGA win), & ~ 20 'Other' wins ('Other' = .67 of PGA win). I limited 'Other' wins to real 'national open' type non-regional events. I think this reflects what we see as a generally stronger PGA field (due to the attraction of the prize money) and stronger fields in general for the world wide 'open' events that the majors are.

By this measure I still view my revised ranking the same. Norman was about average in majors to win performance if you include all the other double and single major winners. Larry Nelson stands out as the clear major overachiever. Among major winners with less than 5 total, Payne Stewart, Angel Cabrera, Rory McIlRoy, Bubba Watson, & Jordan Spieth, have won majors at roughly double the 'expected' rate relative to their totals of PGA equivalent wins.

IMO, both RIckie & DJ haven't really had enough bites at the apple to rate them as underachievers yet, though they have both placed pretty well in the majors - DJ more competitively so far. Rickie seems to have an issue with the U.S. Open.

Edited January 24, 2016 by natureboy

[Broke100Once]

And even with Rickie's "issue with the US Open," he's still recorded a T10 and T2 in the tournament within the last three years.

[natureboy]

Added some well known names just for fun even though it's really apples to oranges before 1960 because of the overlapping schedule with The Open Championship & the PGA as well as the fact that PGA Championship was match play prior to 1958 so the placings are much more approximate and penalizing to an exit in the early round.

 

On 1/26/2016 at 10:35 PM, Broke100Once said:

And even with Rickie's "issue with the US Open," he's still recorded a T10 and T2 in the tournament within the last three years.

I just meant that he does much worse there than the others (largely due to 3 cuts in 7 starts). Looks like he's on an upward performance trajectory now so that's likely to carry over to the U.S. Open and other majors.

Edited January 30, 2016 by natureboy

[Mr. Desmond]

On January 20, 2016 at 9:01 PM, Vinsk said:

I vote Tiger Woods. Before you laugh, I'm considering what was projected to happen when Tiger was in his prime. Definitely surpassing Nicklaus and setting a new record that would seem unsurpassable. Never did I think back in early to mid 2000 that Tiger would play the way he played in 2015. It's been a real disappointment I feel.

Divorce and Injuries will set one back... so I would not classify Tigs as an underachiever the past 8 years -- his game died of natural causes ...

[onthehunt526]

Hi Guys,

I mentioned this over in @Wally Fairway thread about "Lightning In A Bottle".

So let's take a different approach, I'm wondering which PGA Tour winners should have won at least one more major than they have won, and non-major champions that really should have 1 or 2 are counted here.

I'll start, Fred Couples had 15 wins on Tour, but only won the 1992 Masters... he was close in other majors, most notably the '98 Masters, when he led after each of the first three rounds, and had the disaster at the 13th Hole...

And I didn't even pick the obvious one... I saved that for the community... Let the debate begin.