GWAA's Players of the Year

[Alex B]

The Golf Writers Association of America voted Tiger Woods, Lorena Ochoa, and Jay Haas the best players of the year for their respective tours. In the ESPN.com article about these awards ( http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=3162010 ), it is reported that Tiger earned 205 out of the 210 first place votes, with Mickelson receiving the other five. Let's compare their 2007 seasons:

Tiger : 16 events, 16 cuts, 7 wins (including The PGA Championship, 2 WGC events, and 2 FedEx Cup events), 12 top tens, 1st on the money list (with $10,867,052), 1st in the FedEx Cup, 1st in the OWGR (with 19.62)

Lefty : 22 events, 16 cuts, 3 wins (including THE PLAYERS Championship and 1 FedEx Cup event), 7 top tens, 2nd on the money list (with $5,819,988), 3rd in the FedEx Cup, 2nd in the OWGR (with 8.72)

How could anyone be so... well... stupid as to vote Mickelson's year above Tiger's? Does anyone have any possible explanations?

[themasteroncbs]

The Golf Writers Association of America voted Tiger Woods, Lorena Ochoa, and Jay Haas the best players of the year for their respective tours. In the ESPN.com article about these awards (

Tiger won 7 times including a Major, and Mickelson won 4 times including the unofficial fifth major. I wouldn't call the people who voted for Phil stupid because he did have a great year, but Tiger was unquestionably the best.

[Bluenoser67]

Chalk it up to Subjectivity of the individual. The fact that he earned 98% of the first place votes tells you of his dominate performance. Usually awards like this have the winner getting about half the votes and the remainder spread around to about 5 or 6 other guys 98% is spectaculor.

[Alex B]

Tiger won 7 times including a Major, and Mickelson won 4 times including the unofficial fifth major.

Where's Phil's fourth win?

[Jeepthrills]

Whenever you have an award that is voted on by a group of people, there will always be a few that want to go against the norm. Phil had a nice year, but it was clearly only second best to Tiger.

It's like the Hall of Fame voters for baseball and the NFL. There are guys that don't get in their first year because some guy out there think's they are not worthy of a "First Balot" induction. Either you are a Hall of Famer or you are not.

Michael Jordan didn't win the MVP every year he was in the league. He should have. No one was better or more valuable, but there would be a ground swell for a guy and he would steal the award. Charles Barkely and Karl Malone both won it then had Jordan crush them in the Finals.

A case could be made for some of these situations. However, how do you compare 3 wins w/ no majors to 7 wins with a major and 2nd at two others and say it was a better year. Tiger almost lapped him in money and did it in 6 fewer events. The only knock you can have is that he only plays in a select number of events, but it's not like Phil was playing 30 times a year.

[themasteroncbs]

Where's Phil's fourth win?

HSBC Champions Tournament in China against a top quality field of highly ranked players.

[Alex B]

HSBC Champions Tournament in China against a top quality field of highly ranked players.

We could then use Tiger's win at the Target World Challenge as well, except I believe the award is restricted to the PGA tour, as implied by the Associated Press article, which reads:

Tiger Woods, Lorena Ochoa and Jay Haas were voted players of the year on their respective tours by the Golf Writers Association of America on Wednesday, the second straight year they won the awards.

Whatever it is, Tiger still clearly had the better year.