How "Done" is Tiger Woods?

[iacas]

1 hour ago, DwightC said:

Wait a few decades for history's verdict on the GOAT question--young Tom Morris, Bobby Jones, yeah, maybe, Jack, Tiger?  I dunno.  And the game changes enough over the years that the answer doesn't mean much.  Tiger was definitely the BOHE (Best Of His Era), and a sad twilight vs. a beautiful sunset isn't going to change what happened at high noon.

Plenty have already sided with Tiger on that one.

I think it's really not all that close. I think Tiger is the GOAT.

So there you go…

[DwightC]

Well, I would never argue with you about golf (especially after that thread on conscious/unconscious incompetence/proficiency), but on the matters involving the judgement of history, I'm here to say it's way too early to even try to assess (except as entertainment) Tiger Woods' place in golf history.  The man is still a competitor, wounded, yes, lame, yes, his best behind him, certainly.  But he's still on the course.  What if at age 59 he were to pull off what Tom Watson almost did a couple of years ago, and actually win the British Open?  So, it's too early to weigh Tiger in the balance.  That means, for me, contemporary opinion on the GOAT issue and Tiger doesn't carry much weight.

We are just getting to the point that we have enough distance on his glory years to assess Nicklaus.  Apocryphal story--when the Chinese political leader Zhou En Lai was asked (1972) about the historical impact of the French Revolution (1789), he supposedly replied that it's still too early to know, only time will tell.

By the way, I really don't want to highjack this thread into a Tiger vs. Jack argument, and I'm sorry if I have.

[iacas]

8 minutes ago, DwightC said:

Well, I would never argue with you about golf (especially after that thread on conscious/unconscious incompetence/proficiency), but on the matters involving the judgement of history, I'm here to say it's way too early to even try to assess (except as entertainment) Tiger Woods' place in golf history.

That's your opinion. Mine differs.

8 minutes ago, DwightC said:

The man is still a competitor, wounded, yes, lame, yes, his best behind him, certainly.

So? At some point in the minds of people he will have surpassed Jack as the GOAT. Nothing he does after that can really take away from it, unless he admits to having cheated to win a bunch of tournaments or something.

People erect finish lines in their minds. Everything after the guy passes that is gravy, to mix some metaphors.

8 minutes ago, DwightC said:

What if at age 59 he were to pull off what Tom Watson almost did a couple of years ago, and actually win the British Open?

Then he'd pull even further ahead to those who already see him as the GOAT.

8 minutes ago, DwightC said:

We are just getting to the point that we have enough distance on his glory years to assess Nicklaus.

I don't agree.

[Pretzel]

Spoiler

 

1 hour ago, DwightC said:

On the matters involving the judgement of history, I'm here to say it's way too early to even try to assess (except as entertainment) Tiger Woods' place in golf history.  

I'm here to say you're wrong. It's pretty clear that Tiger Woods is one of the all-time greats of the game, if not the best in history. It doesn't matter if he fades into obscurity or flounders, what he did completely revolutionized the game and he held a dominance over his competition like nobody else ever did. He's the only golfer who made entire fields score worse simply because he was in the tournament. During some of his winning streaks his competitors played up to two shots worse than they should have simply because Tiger was playing in the tournament. For crying out loud, the guy won 54/219 tournaments (a 24.66% win percentage) in his first decade as a professional golfer and placed in the top 10 132/219 times (60.27% of the time). Tiger Woods also sparked a trend of "Tiger-proofing" golf courses, literally changing the way golf courses were designed and played because of how talented he was. 

Even if you look at current stats, Tiger has played 328 events and won 79 times. Jack played in 595 events and only won 73 times. That's a 24.09% win percentage compared to only 12.27%, and Tiger has consistently played against stronger fields throughout his career. 

Nicklaus has Tiger beat for the number of major championship wins, but when you consider all the other factors it doesn't seem like much of a contest.

 

I think that Tiger's career is in the twilight in that he won't win more than a few more times, but I certainly thing that has cemented his place in history by now. You don't have to wait 30+ years to figure out if somebody was an incredibly influential golfer.