brocks

He got that from the helpful tape I sent him:

Yes, Jack's financial situation is yet another reason that "most majors" is biased toward Jack. He was guaranteed so much money from endorsements (McCormack guaranteed him $100K his first year, even if he didn't win a nickel in prize money) that he was able to pick and choose which events he played, build his schedule around the majors, and scout and practice at the major venues weeks in advance. He also had his own plane to get from place to place. It gave him a tremendous advantage over 99% of his competition, who didn't have those luxuries. Today, almost all the top players do all of those things, so a player like Tiger has no advantage over them.

They could pair him with Robert Mueller.

Pretty sad when we have better records from first-century chariot racing than from pre-1970 pro golf. Thanks for a very interesting post. BTW, at first I misread Lance Armstrong as Louis Armstrong, and I thought he was a pretty good example, too.

Can you give some examples? The only sports I've followed even casually for the past few years are golf and football, so I may be way off, but it seems to me that Brady has replaced Montana, James is about to replace Jordan if he hasn't already, Federer has replaced Sampras, etc. I guess Ruth might still be the GOAT in baseball for people who consider drug-enhanced results invalid.

When Brooks Koepka was born, he drove his mom home from the hospital.

If you Google Varner 81 worst final group, you will see a ton of articles saying Varner had the highest score from the final group in a major. I happened to see one of those articles, and like an idiot, I trusted it. The same article said it was the first round in the 80's from a final group. Last night while I was brushing my tooth (I'm very old), I thought, wait a minute, Rory shot 80 in the 2011 Masters. So I knew then that the article was wrong. I checked just now, and at least in USA Today, they have corrected it to say Varner's score was the highest in the final round of this year's PGA, which is about as different as you can get, and hardly worth a separate AP article. I guess it's possible that it's the first time that the highest score of the final round came from the final group, which would be worth an article, but I'm too lazy to check if that's true. It was from the AP. Ten years ago or so, on the old Golf Channel board, I used to get into arguments with a guy called Robo about Doug Ferguson, the chief golf reporter for the AP. Robo was evidently a friend of his, and took it personally when I would complain that Ferguson got his stats wrong in almost every article. No excuse for that with somebody having the resources of the AP to back him. I don't think Ferguson wrote this one, but it looks like the AP is still very sloppy on its stats. So, you are right, I was wrong, and I will never use info from an AP article again without checking it first.

I don't know if it's the highest, but Fred Herd shot 84-85-75-84 to win the 1898 US Open. And I can tell you that Varner's 81 today broke the record for worst score by a player in the final grouping on the final day of a major (they typically didn't assign tee times by score until the TV era). If you allow events where they only played two rounds, Bob Martin won the 1876 Open with 86-90.

The change in the fields between 15-20 years ago and now is incremental. The players are from the same talent pools. Yes, they are better on average, but the very best players are always outliers, so it's not likely that, say, the five best players of 2005 are much worse than the five best players of today. The change between 1965 and 2005 was not incremental; it was a quantum leap. We went from having only 40-60% of the world's best players in the majors, to having nearly all of them. We also went from having European fields still feeling the effects of WWII's devastation to being full strength. It was probably twice as hard to win a major in 2005 than in 1965. It may or may not be 10% harder today than in 2005. The fact that a 43-year old golfer with a fused back just won the Masters indicates that 10% may be too generous. There is another quantum leap coming, when Asian golf reaches its potential, stoked by golf now being an Olympic sport. Koreans have practically taken over the LPGA. 20 years from now, half of the world's top men golfers may be Asians. When that happens, I'll acknowledge that it's a new era, with a new talent pool, and that winning 10 majors may be a greater accomplishment than 15 today, or 20 in the Jack era.

The PGA has usually had 98 or 99 of the top 100 for decades now --- a conscious decision to try to distinguish itself as the strongest field in golf. And this is why some of us are so adamant that you can't compare majors in this century with majors in Jack's era. In the 1960's, the PGA had only about 50 of the top 100, the US Open maybe 65, the Masters maybe 60, and the British Open maybe 40.

In this century, in most years, the PGA is the strongest field in golf. Occasionally, the British is stronger. The British and US Opens are usually 2 and 3, and the Players is usually 4th. The Masters was as low as 7th as recently as 2014, with the Players and two WGCs, along with the other three majors, ahead of it. It makes sense if you think about it. The Masters is a short field to start with, and a dozen or more of the players have no chance to win -- amateurs, seniors, or players from very weak Asian tours who got invitations. Honestly, I'm surprised that it isn't behind two or three WGC's every year. You can find the strength of field of events on the world golf ranking site. Click on events, pick a year, and click on the strength of field column header to sort them. www.owgr.com

Wait, did I say Varner? I meant DJ.

That hundred grand I put on Harold Varner III is beginning to look better.

Very interesting survey of guys who are the ultimate insiders. The last question was who's the GOAT, and the results were: Tiger Woods 71.4% Jack Nicklaus 26.8% Ben Hogan 1.8%

Yup, only one behind Bernhard Langer's 42 wins for second place. Seve is #1 with 50. Tiger has played more pure European Tour events than most PGA members, but of course the main reason he's so high is all the majors and WGCs he's won. I may be misremembering, but I dimly recall that he actually did lead the official Euro money list in 2000, by a mile, and they weren't happy about it, so they changed the criteria to require membership, and made it retroactive. I'm a little more sure that a few years later, he had played enough Euro events during a season that he only needed one more to be eligible for membership that season, and he was already in England for a WGC or Ryder Cup or something, and people speculated he might play in Europe the following week so he'd be eligible for both titles, but he passed.

The bad news is that I am really strapped for time right now, because I'm hosting several family members from around the country as we gather for a funeral. The good news is that I posted some material last month when you asked for foundational posts, that I think might translate well to twitter. In particular, the year-by-year analysis of Jack's alleged dominance in post #6430 could probably be trimmed down into one tweet for each year, especially if you remove my editorial snark. I've found that most golf fans are surprised to see how thin Jack's "dominance" was when you look at the Jack era year by year. He really had only one year that compared in dominance to any of seven years of Tiger's career. He had five years where he was clearly the best in the world (but not necessarily dominant), compared to 10 for Tiger. He only wins when you look at how many years he was arguably in the wold top ten -- 20 years to Tiger's 16 (so far). Being top ten in the world is very hard to do, but it's not domination. And I am as puzzled as you are how Brandel can be so oblivious to the strength of the fields in the pre-1980's majors. You only have to look at the Open.com website to see that in the 11 years 1959-1969, when the "Big Three" won five British Opens, there were never more than a dozen Americans in the field, and if you eliminate the amateurs and seniors, seldom more than half a dozen (zero in 1959, when Player won his first Open). There were never more than 30 (including seniors and amateurs) all through the 1970's. To be specific, look at 1968. The British Open paid $7200 to the winner. All but five regular PGA events paid over twice that much in 1968, and the Greater Milwaukee Open, played the same week as the British Open, paid the winner $40,000. In today's terms, that would be like having a regular PGA event with a first prize of 11 million dollars played the same week as the Open. There were 11 Americans in the field, but only six of any distinction, along with an amateur and four pros with a combined total of one career PGA win. And as inconvenient as trans-Atlantic travel was then, it wasn't nearly as tiring or expensive as travel to Britain from Australia or South Africa, which meant that even though the Open had far more prestige outside of the US than in it, it was missing a large percentage of international stars, as well as 90% of US stars. The field of the 1968 PGA Championship was described by Jack himself as "absurd and unfortunate," with about 50 touring pros and about 110 club pros. Just about the only way a non-PGA member could get in was to win one of the other majors, so foreign players who didn't want to devote a year or more to the PGA Tour were effectively shut out. The US Open was indeed open, but you had to qualify in the US a few weeks before the tournament, which meant that someone in Europe, South Africa, or Australia had to either commit to over a solid month of his time away from home, with no guarantee he would actually get to play, or make two overseas round trips in a month. As a result, only a handful of international players entered. All but one of Europe's leading money winners for the years 1955-1975 never played in either the US Open or the PGA Championship in their entire careers. The one exception, Peter Oosterhuis, never did it before 1975. After discounting amateurs and seniors, the 1968 Masters had only about 60 players in the field. Credit to the ANGC, they did make an effort to invite international players, but the time and expense (plus the fact that majors weren't MAJORS then) caused many invitees to decline. Peter Alliss was one of the best players in Europe for nearly 20 years. He won the Order of Merit twice, and beat the biggest American stars like Palmer, Venturi, and Casper in his Ryder Cup matches, but he was invited to the Masters only five times, and he only accepted twice. Too far to travel, he said. The result of all this is that the US Open was probably the strongest event of the Jack era, but with a virtually all-American field, it was only about half as strong as a full field major today. The PGA Championship, with two club pros for every touring pro, was probably no stronger than a regular PGA event of that era, and weaker than a regular PGA event of today. The Masters, with only 60 touring pros, was not much stronger. And the British Open, with just a handful of players from outside of Europe, was weaker than almost any regular tour event then, and much weaker than any of Tiger's official wins. Since the GOAT debate though most of the 60's was between Snead and Hogan, neither of whom had as many majors as Hagen, there was nothing like the pressure of majors today. A major was especially nice to win, but it wasn't a life-changing event like it is today. "Most majors" wasn't the most important stat until around 1975, thanks largely to years of lobbying by Jack, the only man who played all four majors every year. Note that this comparison doesn't depend on the fact that there is a much larger talent pool today, or that athletes in every sport have gotten much better than they were 50 years ago. Even if the players of the Jack era were as good as the players today, from the best in the world to the 100th in the world, it's still an incontrovertible fact that it was rare for half of them to show up for any given major. Also note that the relative strength of the US versus the rest of the world doesn't matter. Today, the world golf rankings show a pretty even distribution of Americans and non-Americans in the world's top players. But suppose it was 90-10 in favor of Americans in the Jack era. That would make the US Open relatively stronger, but still nowhere near today's majors. It wouldn't help the Masters or PGA much, since there were still only about 50 Americans in their fields. And it would make the British Open even weaker. The bottom line is, the reputations of the "Big Three" were built on winning majors with fields no stronger, and sometimes much weaker, than a regular PGA event today. Jack was less dominant, for fewer years, over weaker fields, than Tiger.

It that rough is as bad as it looks in the pictures, a missed fairway will mean a pitch-out. I'm glad Tiger seems to have found his driver swing.

Come on, I clearly said I was talking about when they were young. You even quoted it. When Phil was winning NCAA titles, he had exemptions for the asking, or maybe he didn't even have to ask, and he could take a short drive from Tempe to Tuscon to win his first PGA event on a lark. When Vijay was a kid, he played with coconuts because he couldn't afford golf balls, and had to work his way up through the Asian Tour, the Safari Tour in Africa, and the Euro Tour before he was finally able to become a PGA rookie at age 30. Norman apparently had a middle class childhood, but he was still working as an assistant club pro for $A38/wk at the same age as Phil was when he won his first PGA event, and he didn't join the PGA until he was 28. Obviously the competition was weaker the farther back you go, but there is no way to quantify it, and by the time you get to Arnie, it's risky to put too much emphasis on it. By the time you get to Watson, let alone Norman, it's dangerous to use it for anything more than a tie-breaker. Dominance transcends field strength. I have no doubt that the field strength was weaker in 1980 than in 2010. But I have very grave doubts that Tom Watson, the #1 golfer in 1980, was weaker than Lee Westwood, the #1 golfer of 2010. A second tier player from a weak era clearly ranks below a second tier player of a strong era. But you can't know that the best player of a weak era should rank below the best player of a strong era - he might be the golf equivalent of Bob Beamon. And you absolutely can't know that the best player of a weak era ranks below the second or third best player of a strong era. It looks to me like playing in the Tiger era helped Phil more than it hurt him, because people remember him being #2 to Tiger for year after year, and say hey, what could he do? It's yet another example of hazy memory syndrome. Phil's been a pro for 27 years. How many of those years do you think he was #2? 20 years? 15? 10? Nope, that's hazy memory. Adding up all the weeks he was at #2 gives you a total of less than three and a half years, and the bulk of that, two stretches of over a year each, overlapped the periods that Tiger was out for six months or more --- after his broken leg in 2008, and after he hit the hydrant in 2009. And as I said a couple posts back, Tiger only took 4 wins away from Phil. If Phil had those four extra wins, he would pass Hagen on the career wins list, but that's all. He'd still be behind Casper, let alone Nelson, Palmer, Hogan, and Snead.

Fair enough, if wins are your thing. But you appear to be considering only PGA wins, which seems a bit unfair to foreign players who couldn't afford to travel to Europe or the US when they were young, and who joined the PGA Tour when they were at or near 30 years old. And Norman was ranked #1 in the world as late as 1998, six years into Phil's career, so that's a pretty significant overlap --- not like, say, Hogan to Jack. I'm meh about Vijay, and I heartily dislike Norman, so that's as hard as I'm going to fight for them, especially when I mentioned them only because they played against Phil, and had dominant years during his prime. I can see how someone would rank Phil higher than them. But Hogan? Snead? Arnie? They all have more wins, more majors, and were more dominant. Along with those three, I'd put Watson ahead of Phil with no hesitation, even though he doesn't have quite as many wins. And I'd have to think long and hard, which I'm not willing to do over #3, before I'd put Phil ahead of Jones, Nelson, Hagen, or even Vardon. You know I understand the field strength argument; I've written about it at length. But you also have to look at what guys did in their era. If you just assume that it's harder to be #10 today than it was to be #1 in 1950, then we have to rank Rickie Fowler ahead of Ben Hogan, and I refuse to do that. For all I know, Rickie could beat Hogan head to head, but his impact on the game is infinitely less, and IMO that's a big part of greatness. Ask yourself this: 100 years from now, will Phil be one of golf's immortals? I strongly doubt it, but I think Vardon, Jones, Hagen, and Nelson will still be in the conversation.

Well, you're under no legal obligation to do so. But I'm curious what definition you do use that makes Phil #3 all-time, when I'm not even sure he beats out Norman and Vijay for #3 in his era.

I often accuse Jack's advocates of having hazy, rosy memories of him dominating every year, holding off a charging Arnie, Trevino, Miller, and Watson down the stretch every time he won, but it seems the same thing is happening with Tiger. Tiger was by far the most dominant player in the history of golf, but he didn't dominate every week, or even every year. At his best, Tiger did miss fairways, did miss greens, did chunk it, did miss crucial putts, and did lose most of the events he entered (except for the greatest two-year stretch of golf ever seen, from the 1999 Byron Nelson to the 2001 Memorial, when Tiger won an incredible 29 times out of 55 events, including 20 of 41 official PGA events, 5 majors, 3 WGCs, 3 Memorials, 2 Bay Hills, a Players, and a TC. A first ballot Hall of Fame career in two years!). He had several seasons where he was far from dominant --- 1998, 2004, 2010-12, 2014-18. And even during good years, he sometimes didn't win all the awards, mostly because (like Jack) he played less often than his competition, so a beast like Vijay could steal money titles by playing almost twice as many events. Tiger even gave a Vardon Trophy away in 2006 after winning six events in a row, when all he had to do was shoot below 80 for a few more rounds, but he thought he'd rather go spear fishing, so he didn't get his 60 rounds in. In other words, Tiger left a lot on the table. If Phil is #3 on the all-time list, he must have won a lot of the awards that Tiger didn't, right? Let's take a look. Phil turned pro just before the 1992 US Open, 1401 weeks ago, almost 27 years ago. Having won a PGA event the previous year as an amateur (and fair play to him, that was something that Tiger and Jack never did), he was exempt from the get-go. Tiger was number one in the world rankings for 683 weeks. That leaves 718 weeks Phil could have been #1 in the world. 17 other golfers did it, including journeymen like Westwood and Donald. Phil never did. Tiger was Player of the Year 11 times. That leaves 16 years Phil could have won it (and actually 32 chances to win it, since there are two different POYs, determined by entirely different methods). 14 other golfers did it, including Tom Lehman, who won only five PGA events in his career. Phil never did. Tiger was the leading money winner 10 times. That leaves 17 years Phil could have done it. 12 other golfers did it, including Vijay 3 times during Tiger's prime. Phil never did. Tiger won the Vardon Trophy nine times. That leaves 18 times Phil could have won it. 14 other golfers did it, including Matt Kuchar in a year when he won a single event, and forever endeared himself to me when he dropped a Jeepers-bomb after hitting a drive OB. Phil never did. The lesser-known Byron Nelson Award is the PGA Tour's version of the Vardon, and requires only 50 rounds. Tiger also won that nine times, and 13 other golfers won it the other 18 years, including Steve Stricker, who by all accounts is a super nice guy, but who is probably being mentioned in a GOAT-related thread for the first time in his life. Phil never did. Tiger had the most wins in a season 12 times. That leaves 15 times Phil could have done it. And hey, he actually did it one year, namely 1996, getting the last of his four wins the week before Tiger turned pro. Finally, Tiger has won 2 of the 12 available FedEx Cups, leaving 10 times Phil could have won it. 10 different golfers have won the other 10, including Bill Haas and Billy Horschel, who join Stricker in seeing their names in a GOAT thread for the first time. Phil never did it. So even if we concede that Tiger is inhuman, and absolutely unbeatable, and that nobody could possibly have challenged him for any of the awards he won that demonstrate sustained excellence over a season, he somehow left 110 awards available for others to win (assuming I counted right, and including both versions of the POTY) during Phil's winning career. Phil won only one of those 110, even during Tiger's slumps and injured periods when dozens of golfers, including some that most golf fans wouldn't recognize off the course, were winning them. And he never made it to World #1 during Tiger's slumps, even though 17 of his contemporaries did. Vijay, seven years older than Phil, and joining the tour a year after Phil, had 3 money titles, a wins title (won 9 times in 2004, more than anyone ever except for Nelson, Snead, Hogan, and Tiger), a Vardon, a Nelson, a POTY, a FedEx Cup, and was #1 in the world for 32 weeks. All after Tiger turned pro, and all before Tiger hit the hydrant. Nor did Tiger take very many wins away from Phil -- Phil finished second (including ties) to Tiger in just 4 PGA events, including one major (the US Open at Bethpage). Phil didn't suffer nearly as much as Chris DiMarco, who finished solo second to Tiger in two majors and a WGC, or Ernie Els, who finished second to Tiger in five PGA events and two Euro events, including two majors in a row (to be fair, he lost those two majors by a total of 23 shots, so he probably didn't have high hopes of winning those weeks). We should be consistent. If dominance is the main criterion for GOAT, then the third GOAT should be the third most dominant. To me, Phil is the epitome of a golfer who was very good for a long time, but never dominant. Almost 20 years ago, when I was debating Tiger vs Jack on the old r.s.g. usenet board, I would sometimes invoke the hypothetical career of a fictional golfer who averaged a win or two a year for 30 years, maybe with an occasional major, compiling big career numbers but never the best golfer of the year, and use that unlikely scenario to prove that longevity was not greatness. Phil is now that guy. Don't get me wrong, I love watching Phil play, and I think he's a great guy for the way he treats the fans and his fellow players (like the time he rescued Mahan during a post-Ryder Cup press conference, when Mahan started crying. That was pure class.) But as fellow Phil fans can sadly attest, even after he pulls off an incredible shot, you're sort of waiting to see how he'll blow it. It's a pleasant surprise when he actually wins. That is the opposite of dominance. Unless you played before there were world rankings or the awards listed above, I don't think you're even sniffing dominance until you can say you've been #1 in the world, and have won at least four of the sustained excellence awards -- most wins, money title, scoring title, POTY, FedEx Cup. There are three players under 30 --- Thomas, Spieth, and McIlroy --- who have already done that. Spieth and Thomas are only 25 years old, born a year after Phil joined the tour, and they've already been more dominant than Phil ever was. Phil turned 25 over a year before Tiger joined the tour, and had over four years to duplicate the feats of Spieth and Thomas against fields almost completely lacking in star power. But Norman was far more dominant during that time than Phil, so how can you rank Phil ahead of Norman? IMO, when you are talking GOAT you have to go through all the golfers who dominated for at least a couple or three years before you look at players who were pretty good for a long time, but never dominated. Even omitting the pre-WWI golfers who averaged only one major a year, you have at least Jones, Hagen, Nelson, Snead, Hogan, Arnie, Casper, Trevino, Miller, Seve, Watson, Norman, Faldo, and Rory, and you could make an argument for several others. For me, it's a tough call between Hogan and Watson for #3, but it's an easy call to put Snead, Arnie, Casper, and even Norman above Phil.

From your keyboard to the Golf Gods' ears.

Tiger has more than earned the right to play whenever and wherever he wants, but it would be less than optimal if he broke Snead's career PGA wins record in a no-cut, short-field, mediocre strength, overseas event.

Check out this post from someone who was there: https://thesandtrap.com/forums/topic/96838-tournament-golf-history-offshoot-of-tigerjack-goat-discussion/?do=findComment&comment=1367927

For some reason, you have missed hundreds of posts that do accept that. I've often said I can't even prove that Tiger would beat Vardon head to head, although I'd bet on him. What I CAN prove is that Tiger was more dominant than Jack, for more years, against stronger fields. It is 100% certain that Tiger had twice as many years (10 to 5) as the undisputed best golfer in the world as Jack did. See my data in this post if you want to debate that. https://thesandtrap.com/forums/topic/2203-jack-vs-tiger-whos-the-greatest-golfer/?do=findComment&comment=1434179 It is 100% certain that, using the Official World Golf Ranking formula to determine field strength, several World Golf Championships had stronger fields than some of the majors held the same year. It is 100% certain that they had stronger fields than any of the majors Jack won before 1975. And it is 100% certain that during his prime (1996-2009), Tiger won 13 of the 20 WGC stroke play events he entered, a .650 batting average in a sport where a .100 average is Hall of Fame material (no other golfer won more than one stroke play WGC during those years). His worst finish was ninth, and he got top fives in all but two of them. - It is 100% certain that Arnie, Jack, and Gary became the "Big Three" in part by winning six British Opens (two each) from 1959 to 1970. But there were a dozen or less Americans in the fields of the British Opens of the 60's, and that includes amateurs, seniors, and club pros. Take those out, and there were zero to three Americans to beat in some of those "majors." - It is 100% certain that some of the PGA Championship fields of the 1960's were two-thirds club pros, a situation Jack himself called "absurd and unfortunate." https://www.si.com/vault/1968/09/16/614249/rebuttal-to-a-searing-attack It is 100% certain that of all the top European money winners (i.e., those who won the Order of Merit and its predecessor) between 1955 and 1974, all but one of them never played in the US Open or PGA Championship in their lives. The one exception, Peter Oosterhuis, never did it before 1975. Peter Alliss was one of the best players in Europe for nearly 20 years. He won the Order of Merit twice, and beat the biggest American stars like Palmer, Venturi, and Casper in his Ryder Cup matches, but he turned down over half of his Masters invitations. Too far to travel, he said. His Ryder Cup partner, Christy O'Connor, also won the OOM twice. He never played an American major in his entire career. It is 100% certain that before the world rankings were established in 1986, the only sure way for a non-PGA member to get into a US major was to win the British Open. In summary, it is 100% certain that there were only a handful of international players in the field of US majors, and only a handful of American players in the field of the British Open, before 1975, and that it wasn't until the 1990's that almost all the world's best players played all four majors each year. So how do we know that made a difference? It is 100% certain that the Ryder Cup was the US against the British Isles until 1979. Once continental European players were allowed to participate, the record has been 11-8-1 in favor of Europe over the US, indicating that even one on one, Europeans are as good as Americans. It is not mere speculation to say that only half of the world's best players were in the majors of the Jack era, especially when you consider what the Ryder Cup record might be if the opposing Ryder Cup teams had included players from Australia, South Africa, Fiji, etc. It is 100% certain that from 1926 to 1978, there were only three non-Americans who won majors in the US. It is 100% certain that since 1988, there have been only two years when a non-American did NOT win a major in the US. In the two years that didn't happen, an Aussie and an Italian won the British Open, so a non-native has won a major every year, even when Tiger was winning one to three majors a year. Non-Americans won all four majors in 1994, and have won three out of four in several years since then. Even four of the last six US AMATEUR championships were won by foreigners. The conclusion is obvious to anyone with an open mind. The field kicks everybody's ass. It beat Tiger 70% of the time in his prime, and it beat Jack 80% of the time in his prime. The stronger the fields, the harder it is to win. And half of the world's best players were not in the field for the majors played before the mid-70's, at least. Tiger was more dominant than Jack, for more years, against stronger fields. That is what we claim, and can prove.