brocks

Great link, thank you. I honestly don't see what's wrong with my reasoning, but if my theory conflicts with results, I guess my theory's wrong.

I've never understood that. Seems like a no-brainer to have the week off after the Dell, rather than after the BMW, so they get an extra week of rest after the Monday finish, instead of having only three days. Putting the off week right before the Tour Championship, as they do now, is meaningless for all but 30 players. I'm even more puzzled why the NFL players don't revolt against having Thursday night games right after a Sunday game, instead of after their bye week. It's just asking for injuries.

That's because they're only six years old. Nobody older than that would say such a thing --- except someone trying to set up an obvious straw man. It's pretty hard to find anything said in favor of Jack today (other than 18 > 14 --- an analogous argument is never made about Hagen) that wasn't said in the 60's about Jones, or even in the 20's about Tom Morris. People who grew up as fans of Player X just hate to admit that anybody could be better. Heck, I'm a WSU alum, and I say the jury is still out on whether Peyton Manning is better than Ryan Leaf. Here's what an old Scottish pro said about Jones in the 1920's: "I knew and played with Tom Morris, and he was every bit as good as Jones. Young Tom had to play with a gutty ball, and you could not make a mistake and get away with it. This rubber-cored ball we have now only requires a tap and it runs a mile." Recalling that incident in 1960, Jones wrote: "On a properly conditioned course today, it is almost impossible to get a bad lie," and went on to say how the steel shaft changed the game completely from the hickory shafts he had to use. And Arnie lamented in the 60's that the young guys weren't hungry enough, didn't need to win, because they got so much money from endorsements. So there is nothing new under the sun.

I think that must be only for seasons where he played a full schedule of at least 60 rounds. He had some truly dismal years between 2010 and now, e.g. 2014 where his SGA was actually below zero.

What makes me barricade myself inside my house is when the FedEx Cup champ isn't the Player of the Year, since they're both season-long awards for the PGA Tour. Why don't they fix THAT, huh?

Correct. There's no danger of him not qualifying for the next two events, but he'll have to play better to stay in the top 30 for the Tour Championship.

Wait, it's not on free TV, or even TGC? Well, that changes things. I've been a Tiger fan since his first US Am win, but I'm not paying to see him play a one-round exhibition, two months after I've seen him play 20 competitive rounds in six weeks. Let alone in the middle of football season. I'll catch the highlights on Youtube.

Yeah, I always get it mixed up with Nambia. I think they're both near the Cape of Good Horn. And now I'll just fade into Bolivian.

But in his last three rounds, out of nine par fives, he's only made one birdie. I'm guessing that he didn't practice much last week, and what little he did was spent on his driver. Can't blame him, with five events in six weeks this stretch.

Probably heading for his pot of gold.

He wears shorts almost any time he can.

I don't see a proximity stat for the tournament, but they do show that his strokes gained on approach this week is 3.8, even with a -0.4 the first day, which ranks 9th in the field. On the other hand, his strokes gained putting this week is -3.95, 76th in the field.

As opposed to those who think he is THE greatest of all time, I guess. I can't imagine anyone, no matter how important they think runner-ups in majors are, ranking him lower than third or fourth.

They are supposed to be miked up, and I expect the conversation will be more interesting than the golf, with both of them probably out of game shape by November.

Honestly, I consider the Ryder and President's Cups to be off-season exhibitions, so I don't follow them that closely. But it seems logical to me that you would rather have a somewhat volatile player rather than a Steady Eddie, because you want a guy who makes a lot of birdies and eagles to win holes, and if he makes a double or triple bogey along the way, it's no big deal. Same as making a par, if your opponent makes birdie. Of course, you might have to sit him during the foursomes, if nobody else is used to hitting it from where he drives it. That's probably why Tiger has such a dismal foursomes record, and it's a mystery to me why the RC captains keep putting him in foursomes. It was especially egregious in 2010 when because of a weather delay, Corey Pavin had to put Tiger in either foursomes or fourball on Sunday, and he inexplicably chose foursomes, which predictably resulted in a lopsided loss. That made it a perfect 100% for Pavin doing practically everything wrong a captain could do --- the plane he chartered was too small to hold the team, the rainsuits he ordered didn't keep the rain out, and he used a pick to take Rickie Fowler, who is a good player now, but at the time was winless for his PGA career, and was a liability on the team. Pavin singlehandedly convinced me that it really does matter who the captain is.

Not that often. Lee Westwood became the World #1 on Oct 31, 2010. He had only two wins (the St. Jude on the PGA Tour, and the Dubai World on the Euro Tour) in the 52 weeks before that, and neither of them were worth as many points as Tiger's 2nd place finish in the PGA. Tiger is certainly capable of getting to #1 next year, but it's a big ask. Getting into the top 5, though, shouldn't even require him to play "a little better." All he has to do is keep playing the way he has in the last two majors, which is pretty damn good. Tiger has four high-point, short-field events coming up in the FedEx Playoffs. Coming off two top tens in a row in majors, it's not overly optimistic to expect him to average about ten points per event, which would move him up to about #15 in the world rankings after the Tour Championship. At Bellerive, he played well enough to win anywhere, missing the all-time scoring record by one shot, so it's not overly optimistic to expect him to win an event or two next year, always with the caveat that he stays healthy. Since he only plays elite events, a win or two means a boatload of points. If he continues to play as well as he has lately -- and IMO there's reason to expect he will play even better next year -- moving up to top 5 over the course of next year isn't wildly optimistic at all. Sure you could say the same about anyone, but as @iacas said, Tiger isn't just anyone.

From the link you gave: "The top 125 players from the FedExCup competition, after the Wyndham Championship, will be eligible to play in the first playoff event. In the event that one of those players is unable or chooses not to play, the field will be shortened and no alternates will be added." So nobody outside the top 125 can play. Same for the rest of the events --- nobody outside the top 100, 70, or 30 plays in the next three, even if players withdraw.

Seriously? Tiger's C game just came within a couple shots of beating Koepka's A game. Let's give him a few more months of practice and see what he can do from the fairway. I know everybody wants to think Koepka is unbeatable right now, but he's not unbeatable, he's just hot. He's won two majors in a single year, and three in 14 months. That's pretty hot, but not as hot as Padraig Harrington was in 2008, when he won two majors in a row, and three in 13 months. By your logic, he should have torn up the tour after that, but his next (and only) PGA win since then came 7 years later, even with Tiger out of the picture most of those years. And Harrington didn't win any Euro events during those years, either. The field most likely is deeper now, but only incrementally, not a quantum leap. Tiger was playing fairly well in 2000, and Bob May pulled even with him on the front nine of the final round of the PGA, then kept pace as Tiger shot a 31 on the final nine, to force a playoff. Tiger was playing fairly well in 2002, winning the first two majors, and finished the PGA with four birdies in a row to "intimidate" the field, but Rich Beem didn't get the memo, and cruised in to win just like Koepka did. If journeymen like Beem and May could do that when Tiger was playing the best golf the world has ever seen, then the fields were plenty deep back then. If Tiger can win now at all, he can win a major. His best showing this year, solo second, came against a star-studded leaderboard whom he spotted three shots at the beginning of the tournament. It's not a matter of whom he's playing, it's only a matter of how he's playing. Yes, if DJ or Brooks or YJS gets hot, they can beat Tiger if he isn't hot. But if a barely lukewarm Tiger makes a guy break the all-time scoring record to beat him, then a hot Tiger can still beat anybody -- if he stays healthy.

I know how you feel, but I prefer to think it's the country that's going crazy, not me. I'm hoping that if Tiger starts winning, the universe will start making sense again.

I'm not seeing the 1-2-putt you are in the past. Youtube has the final rounds of the 1997 Masters and the 2000 PGA, among others, and it seems to me that for all but very short and very crucial putts, there's 3-4 seconds between setting his feet and starting the stroke. A bit shorter for trivial putts, a bit longer for difficult putts. I have YoutubeTV for the Golf Channel, and while I'm not thrilled with its interface, it does have the benefit of storing everything you watch for nine months. I looked at the Genesis Open from Feb of this year, and it looked like he was still waiting 3-4 seconds for most putts. But starting with the Quicken Loans, which is when he switched to the mallet putter, it looks more like 6-7 seconds for a typical putt. So up to twice as long for a typical putt, which seems to confirm your observation.

It's probably just confirmation bias, but it seems to me that Tiger has had way more bad breaks than good breaks this year. A lot of his missed fairways last week were drives that were so good that he gave his club a twirl and picked up his tee, only to have the ball just trickle into the rough in the last couple of yards, and end up in a lie so bad he either had to lay up, or his approach couldn't hold the green. It seemed like his ball never bounced over a bunker like the other guys, it always dove right in. He had the worst weather draw of any of the final top ten players at the Open, plus a lot of bad bounces there. He seemed to hit an amazing number of approaches that were a couple feet away from being perfect, but were one inch on the wrong side of a ridge that caused his ball to roll 40 feet away. To be fair, that drive on 17 last week would have been in the creek if it had been a little better, so he did get a break there. And I'm sure all this evens out over the course of a career. But sometimes not over the course of a week, so it may have cost him two majors. I'd like to think the golfing gods are getting his bad luck out of the way, so the floodgates can open next year. Let's see if he can play the Masters without clanking one off the flagstick and into the pond.

Correct; I worded that poorly. Obviously the PGA Tour still has business and licensing agreements with the PGA of America, just as it does with the USGA. But they are separate in almost every meaningful way, even to the extent of having different Player of the Year and lowest scoring average (Vardon Trophy and Byron Nelson) awards for the touring pros.

I believe it was in 1969, the first year the players gained control of tournaments. The latter part of 1968 was filled with disputes between the touring pros and the PGA, resulting in over 200 of them, including most but not all of the big names (Sam Snead was one who sided with the PGA), forming their own tour, called the American Professional Golfers, in August of 1968, a few weeks after the PGA Championship that Jack had lamented in the article I cited earlier. After months of bitter wrangling, with suits, countersuits, and restraining orders, the touring pros agreed to come back under the PGA umbrella, but as an autonomous group called the Tournament Players Division, which later severed ties to become the PGA TOUR. It's difficult to reconstruct that period, because the PGA seems almost ashamed of the way they ran things before the player rebellion, and with good reason. They didn't get rid of the whites-only clause until 1961, and even after that made it extremely difficult for international players to compete in the US. They also had stupid rules based on it being an organization of club pros, which resulted in things like Jack not being allowed to play in the Ryder Cup in 1965, when IMO he was easily the best player in the world, or win the Vardon Trophy during some years when he had the lowest scoring average AND had played well above the minimum number of rounds, because he hadn't completed the PGA's apprenticeship program (which included ridiculous requirements like courses in pro shop management). They also refused to award a Player of the Year award in 1968, probably because Billy Casper would have won it, and he was one of the rebels. At any rate, and for whatever reason, it's very hard to get even official tournament statistics for the 1960's, let alone objective accounts of the organizational disputes.

You won't hear me saying that. You won't even hear me say Tiger could beat Vardon or Hagen under equitable conditions. When you're talking about the very best players of different eras, there's no way to accurately compare them, although it stands to reason that the farther back you go, the less chance there is that the best player of that era is the best of all time. However, that is an argument based on probability, rather than empirical fact. Sometimes, the best receiver at Mississippi Valley State really is better than any of the receivers in the FBS. But when you compare field strength, where hundreds of players (over the course of a few years) are involved, then things become more certain. Never 100% certain, but even diehard Jack-for-GOATers concede that the fields overall are stronger today. What they dispute is whether that matters. Some say that once you get past the top dozen or so, the rest of the field isn't important. Some are more liberal, and say the top 20. A few say the top 30. I don't think I've ever heard a Jack advocate go much higher. But the fact is that tons of PGA events, even majors, are frequently won by players ranked outside the top 50, even the top 100. In 2011, there were two in a row -- Darren Clarke won the Open when ranked 111, and the next month Keegan Bradley won the PGA when ranked 108. And we all remember the only time didn't win a major when leading after the third round. He was beaten by YE Yang, who was ranked 110. Head to head. And one of my favorite stats -- during his prime of 1996-2009, Tiger played in 20 WGC stroke play events, and won 13 of them -- 65%. During the same period, he played in 159 regular PGA events (i.e., PGA events other than majors and WGCs), and won 41 of them --- 25.8%. The WGCs typically had the top 75 or so players in the world in the field. No amateurs, no club pros, no legacy champs who had won a major 30 years ago. The cream of the cream. And Tiger won them twice as often as he did events with far fewer players ranked in the top 100, and far more outside the top 100. It's true that he played mostly very strong PGA events, but other than the Players, none of them were as strong as the WGCs. You might think it was because the courses, like Firestone, were perfect for him, but no. As @iacas said, " Narrow fairways. Thick rough. Gotta hit a lot of drivers. " How about the WGC Amex as it was then called, where Tiger won six times? Actually, those six wins came on six different courses, in four different countries -- Spain, Ireland, England, and the US. No, the only thing that explains why Tiger's winning percentage at WGCs was more than twice his already phenomenal rate at regular tour events was the field size. Most of the regular PGA events had full fields of 140-150. Even though every single extra player was ranked below, often far below, the players at the WGCs, they made the difference. The chance of any one of them winning in a given week might be one in two hundred, but the collective chance of all 80 of them was more like one in three (see the Birthday Paradox). So I don't really care if Watson was better than Phil (I think he was), or Casper was better than Ernie (I'm not sure). It's impossible to know. Maybe the top 6 players of Jack's day were as good or better than the top 6 of Tiger's (although it's important to remember that Arnie, Billy, Lee, and Tom all peaked at different times, so Jack never had to face any two of them at their best). But it doesn't matter, because it's all but certain that the top 20 of Jack's day weren't as good as the top 20 of Tiger's, and once you go into the top 50, let alone the top 100 or 200, it's not even close. And players outside the top 50, even outside the top 100, make it much harder for even the best player of his time to win.

I detect sarcasm, but in fact, it was worse than that. In the PGA Championships of the 60's, most of the competitors weren't one step above club pros, they were club pros. "There were only 56 touring pros in the starting field of 168 players at [the 1968 PGA Championship in] San Antonio. One day a writer asked me about this ratio, and I said, "It's absurd and unfortunate." Only a third of the players at the PGA were regular tour competitors—or, in other words, the best players in the world. The PGA's antiquated qualifying system prevented top players such as Bob Murphy, Lee Elder and Deane Beman from playing at San Antonio. As a member of the Tournament Committee, I spoke out against the system. I had nothing to gain for myself; I was exempt from qualifying for the PGA tournament. I wanted a proper tour representation at the pros' own championship. The PGA should be the No. 1 tournament in golf because it is our own championship. It cannot be No. 1, though, when many top players—the tour players—cannot tee the ball up. " --- Jack Nicklaus https://www.si.com/vault/1968/09/16/614249/rebuttal-to-a-searing-attack