brocks

You missed TB's other point, which was that the standard of greatness changed. Many considered Sammy the greatest by virtue of his PGA win total, not his major total. Nobody has surpassed his PGA win total yet. I'd be surprised if that's true five years from now, though. The record for most professional major wins that Jack broke was set, not by Snead, but by Walter Hagen, who had 11. And he had only about half as many opportunities to play majors in his prime as Jack did. Hagen won the US Open two years before the first PGA Championship was played, and 20 years before the first Masters was played. And playing in the Open was so time-consuming and expensive (not to mention it being cancelled for five years during WW I) that he only played it 8 times before he turned 40 (winning four of those 8). So by your logic, we should give Hagen 22 majors, and say he's the GOAT. But nobody does. More remarkably, almost nobody said he was the GOAT even before Jack broke his record. So where does that put your little factoid?

Among others, McIlRoy, Donald, McDowell, Kaymer, Westwood, Schwartzel, Clarke, Harrington, Garcia, Day, Choi. Oh, and Woods. AFAIK, Tiger's never seen the course before, and some of the above play it every year, so he's got his work cut out. But if he could pull off a win against this field, there would be no doubt that he's back.

To anybody who doesn't think that the bottom third of the field can make it harder to win, look at Tiger's record in the majors. Up through 2009, he won about 28% of them. Not too shabby. Then look at his record in the stroke play WGC's. Their fields comprised the top 70-75 players in the world. Through 2009, Tiger won an incredible 62% of the stroke play WGC's. Same top 75 players in both. But the majors had another 20 (Masters) to 80 (British Open) second-tier players. And those second-tier players cut Tiger's winning percentage by more than half. Any major tour pro (as opposed to the handful of amateurs, legacy champions, club pros, and the like who are invited) who is good enough to play in a major today is good enough to win. Ben Curtis was ranked 396th in the world when he won the Open. The difference between the top ten and the 110th player is not that the latter can't win, it's that he doesn't do it very often. But if he has a hot week, he can look like Hogan and Jones combined. The battle between Bob May and Tiger at the 2000 PGA was every bit as good as the "Duel in the Sun" between Watson and Jack. May broke the record for lowest score in the PGA by shooting -18, a record that still stands, although Tiger has tied it. He played head to head against Tiger that Sunday, and shot a 66, making birdie after birdie on the final nine. He didn't need to "learn to win," he just needed a field without Tiger in it.

IMO you are throwing the flag at the guy who hits back (StephenGSX especially went out of his way to be snide, as well as wrong), but you have a point. I actually tried to edit my last post to change the last line, but it was too late. I apologize to the group.

I am assuming that people have the intelligence to distinguish between Keegan Bradley beating Tiger Woods at the 2011 PGA, where Tiger missed the cut, and YE Yang beating Tiger in the 2009 PGA, when they battled head to head in the last group on Sunday. Yes, Bradley "beat" Tiger, but come on. Any ten-year old can see the difference. I don't insist that Jack actually had to be in the same group as Trevino for it to count as a battle, but I do think that Trevino had to be somewhere on the leaderboard with a chance to win. The guy I was responding to was making a point of how tough it was for Jack to win majors because he had to beat the likes of Watson, Player, and Trevino to do it. But the fact is, anybody with a PGA card could have beaten those three when they had an off week, just as anybody with a PGA card today can beat Tiger when he has a bad week. The significance of beating a big name is when you beat him at his best, and the fact is that Jack didn't do that as often as people like to think. Jack had Arnie's number when they actually battled head to head, but Watson had Jack's number. That doesn't mean Watson was the better player all-time, if you define "better" as playing well enough to win a major more consistently than anyone else, but it does mean that the rosy-hued memories of Jack beating a Hall of Famer down the stretch every week are a bit exaggerated. People act like Jack faced down Palmer, Casper, Player, Trevino, and Watson every week, but he didn't. They didn't peak at the same time. Palmer's major-winning years were almost over when Jack turned pro. He won his last major in 1964. Casper's peak was the late 60's, and he was the best golfer in the world at that time, better than Jack. And Watson was better than Jack from the mid-70's on. Jack was one of the best golfers in the world for nearly 25 years, but he was THE hands-down, no-discussion, best player in the world only about six of those years. Tiger has been far and away the best player in the world almost twice as many years. And to get back to the main point, just like Tiger, Jack didn't always have to beat a big name to win a major. Sometimes he had to beat Arnie, but other times he had to beat the likes of Dave Ragan, or Dave Thomas, or Simon Owen, all of whom finished second to Jack in majors, and all of whom have to buy a ticket to get into the Hall of Fame. I can't explain it any better than that. Anybody who wants to have a serious discussion will understand it. People who want to pretend they don't are welcome to have fun playing with themselves.

I really appreciate you taking the time to lend some of your vast knowledge of golf history to us. But I have a few corrections. Jones never got a ticker-tape parade for winning the Grand Slam, and he certainly didn't win it in 1933. He got a parade in 1926, for winning the British Open (which was still a big deal back then), and he got another in 1930, for winning the British Open and Amateur. The 1930 parade took place BEFORE he won the US Open and Amateur that year. By the way, ticker-tape parades were not awarded after in-depth research by the Cabinet, Supreme Court, and National Academy of Sciences. They were thrown when the mayor and his cronies felt like it, and when it was convenient. In the case of Jones, it was convenient to do it after his British wins, because the ship he returned in docked in NYC. To show you what a big deal ticker-tape parades were, there were five of them in 1930, honoring six people. In chronological order, they were: 1) Jacques de Dampierre 2) Julio Prestes de Albuquerque 3) Richard Byrd 4) Bobby Jones 5) Captain Dieudonne Coste and Maurice Bellonte. Richard Byrd got a total of three ticker-tape parades for flying his plane over various polar regions (refuting the popular misconception that Jones is the only man to ever get two). Nobody alive has ever heard of the other four people, and probably nobody cheering for them in the 1930 parades had, either, but when there is no TV, you get your entertainment where you can. [quote] and Hogan got one in '53 (Nicklaus age 13) for the "triple crown." So I am not sure that the majors became important because of Dan Jenkins, but I guess you are! [/quote] The Open was at its nadir in 1953. I know this is asking a lot, but think about it --- if the Open was so important in the early 50's, why didn't the PGA even bother to avoid schedule conflicts with it? By that standard, the Open was about as important as the Reno-Tahoe is today, and not as important as the John Deere. Hogan played it because he was physically unable to play the PGA, but the fact that he never returned, not even to defend his title after the people of Scotland had all but adopted him, shows that he thought once was more than enough. He did get a parade, not so much because the Open mattered to anyone but golf historians, but because he was a big celebrity following the success of the greatest golf movie of all time, "Follow the Sun." Again, the fact that he returned to America via NYC made it convenient to have the parade at that time. But for most Americans, the British Open was not very important. That's just a fact. You can verify it for yourself by seeing how often Nelson, Snead, and Hogan played it. There were only two years, namely 1951 and 1953, where it conflicted with the PGA, and a few minor pros of the post-war era, like Johnny Bulla, played both events several years, so obviously it could be done. But it simply wasn't worth the time and effort for the top pros. Even Arnie, who rescued it from obscurity, never played it in the 50's. Jack Nicklaus was the first golfer in history to play all four majors every year of his pro career, until he became too old to do so. And it worked the other way, too. Peter Thomson, five time Open winner and probably one of the top five players in the world from 1954 to 1965, rarely played the US majors during that period. Four-time Open champ Bobby Locke may have been THE best player in the world in the early 50's, but he was actually banned by the PGA, and seldom played the US majors. So yes, majors were important, but they were not the standard of greatness --- at least, not in the minds of the pros. "Most pro majors" was not considered the sole measure of greatness in golf until Nicklaus and Jenkins lobbied to make it so. You can refute me by finding a single cite that shows most people, or even a large minority, considered Walter Hagen the greatest golfer, or even the second greatest, in any year after WW II. [quote] Even though circumstances had it that someone on this list finished second only once to Nicklaus in a major (still haven't taken the time to verify--however, I know that Palmer did as well as Player so you are already wrong),[/quote] I was responding to a post that specifically named Player, Trevino, and Watson, and I specified those three as combining for a total of one time as runner-up to Jack in a major. It's true that Palmer also did, most famously in Jack's very first win, but nobody was talking about him. [quote] that does not mean that Jack did not have to beat them in order to win his majors.[/quote] As most people understood, we were talking about beating them in the pressure of a head to head battle, not winning a major after they finished 25th. [quote] Please help me understand how you don't see the competition that Nicklaus faced. (not only in memory, but in fact--as you say). [/quote] I am happy to acknowledge the great players Jack faced, including some who rarely get their due today, like Billy Casper, who IMO was better than any of the "Big Three" in the late 60's, and Bruce Crampton, who never won a major, but finished second to Jack four times, more than anybody else. But I also thoroughly agree with the analysis that Jack himself wrote in his 1996 autobiography, quoted in another post by Turtleback, where he said that because of the much deeper talent, the middle of the pack of the 1996 PGA Tour was as good as the top players of his day. And players have only gotten stronger since then. By the way, I do not think it's obvious that Tiger is better than Jack because athletes in other sports have gotten measurably better. Tiger and Jack are both outliers; they can't be measured by what the average does. It's my opinion that Tiger was better, but it's just an opinion. But I DO think it's obvious that Tiger's competition was better than Jack's. If not, golf is the only sport in history where the quality of play has gone down, in spite of much larger talent pools, and much bigger money. [quote] Also, the interesting thing about Tiger is that he DOESN'T say that the WGC's are as important as the Majors. Gee, I wonder why?! (actually, I don't, that's just sarcasm)[/quote] Neither did I. I was making what adults call an analogy.

It's a common misconception that Hogan was prevented from attempting a Grand Slam because the PGA and Open overlapped. It's true that they conflicted in 1953, when Hogan won three majors (NOT the first three majors, because the Open was the fourth major that year), but that was one of only two years that has happened since WW II. In fact, they were separated by seven weeks the year Sam Snead won the Open. Hogan wouldn't have entered the PGA in 1953 no matter when it was scheduled. The US and British Opens of that era had a 36-hole final day, and Hogan could barely manage that on his shattered legs. The match play format the PGA used prior to 1958 required the winner to play several 36-hole days in a row, and Hogan's legs simply weren't up to that, so he never played the PGA during the 50's. He could have played the Open every year if he had wanted to. Look it up.

I was stunned by the stats you quoted, because Boo had a terrible year. No top tens, only one top 25, missed ten cuts. Drive for show, put for dough.

I think Tiger's the best golfer ever, but I don't think he's the smartest. But since you seem to value Tiger's opinion so highly, would you go along with him if he suddenly decided that the NEW gold standard should be WGC's, rather than majors? Nobody cared who had the most pro majors when Jack started his career. The record was held by Walter Hagen, but nobody considered him the best golfer of all time, just as nobody considers him the third best of all time today. And right after Jack won his first Masters, he told the press that he hoped to become the best golfer ever, and how he intended to go about doing that --- he had to break Sam Snead's record for most career wins. Ten or so years later, Sam's "most wins" record still looked out of reach, but Jack had passed Walter Hagen for most pro majors, and was about to pass Bobby Jones for most total majors. And Jack, with the able assistance of his pal Dan Jenkins, the chief golf writer for Sports Illustrated at a time when that was still influential, started lobbying to get the gold standard changed to "most majors." And damned if they didn't pull it off. It was totally unfair. Vardon played only one major per year most years. Hagen hit his prime before the PGA was founded, long before the Masters was founded, and at a time when a round trip to the Open took almost a month. He also had a bunch of majors cancelled during his prime for WW I. Snead, Nelson, and Hogan had a bunch cancelled for WW II. And none of those three considered the Open important enough to include in their regular schedule. They each played it just once during their primes. So if Jack can come up with a standard that is unfair to the greats who played before him, why can't Tiger do the same, and say WGC's are the new standard?

No. But Tiger's reign at the top of the golf world ended when he was 33, and Tom Watson won his first major when Jack was 35. You are falling into the common trap of comparing a 25-year career with one half as long. Maybe in 15 years, McIlroy will have a record to rival Watson's. [quote] Does anyone come remotely close to Gary Player's? How about Lee Trevino's? These are the people that Nicklaus had to beat to get his majors. He didn't do it every time, but he did it more than anyone else.[/quote] Well, no, he didn't. You are falling into another common trap of compressing Jack's 25 years into one or two, and acting like he battled Player or Watson or Trevino down the stretch almost every time he won a major. The fact is, those three guys finished second to Jack in a major one time. Not once each. Just one, combined grand total for the three of them. It was Gary Player at the 1965 Masters, and that happened to be Jack's greatest performance, the one he won by nine shots, so there was really no pressure from Player or anybody else. He never finished second to Jack at any other major, and Watson and Trevino never did at all. Glowing memories are great, but they are no substitute for the facts.

Assuming a minimum requirement of three wins, to help eliminate flukes, I'd guess it would be Young Tom, who batted .444.

2008 was an exceptional year, or half-year, even for Tiger. But even with his crappy last two years, and his other slump in 2004, and his other slump in 1998, he's averaged about five wins per year, and one major per year, over his entire career. If he could do that, and everybody else plays the way they've been playing, he should still be #1 by the end of 2012. Predicting he won't win five times is about as hard as predicting Rory won't win the 2012 US Open by eight shots. But the point is he doesn't need a super duper year with 8 or 9 wins to regain #1, like some people in this thread speculated. He just needs an average year. And he doesn't need Rory or Luke to play poorly. I don't understand why, but everybody thinks that golfers have gotten a lot better in the last two years. They haven't. The names have changed, but the results are about the same. The World #1 has a 10 point WGR average, and #2 has about an 8. That's about the same as #2 and #3 had for most of the last 15 years. It's just that Tiger made them look like dog meat, because his average was often 20 or more. Nobody cared much when #3 knocked off #2, because they were both a mile behind Tiger. Now, with Tiger out of the picture, the same two players with the same two records will be #2 knocking off #1, and all the idiot writers and commentators talk about how the field has caught up to Tiger, but that's crap. They didn't catch up to Tiger; he fell down to them. If he gets his game back, they'll go back to fighting for second. The only question is, will he get his game back? He looked pretty good at the President's Cup and the Chevron, but he looked pretty good at the 2010 Ryder Cup and Chevron, too. If I had to bet, I'd say he needs another year to get completely comfortable with his new swing, but I'd be very surprised if he goes winless again. And I really like his chances at Augusta.

Freddie is no dummy, and he was asked the question a hundred times, so he knew it was coming. He could very easily have said, "Tiger is the best player in the world," or even "Tiger is the best American player," and totally justified his pick. He didn't have to bring "forever" into it unless he meant it. [quote] Woods' off course transgressions will always be a part of his biography, but I can't see anyone using themto denigrate his record - unless they are completely stupid. [/quote] You may be on to something there. :-)

If it was only 3/4, then they were tougher than Jack's competition, because Jack famously said he only had to worry about five or six guys at a major. And in his 1996 autobiography, Jack said that because of the big money and much larger talent pools, the fields were much tougher then (1996) than in his day. He said that the average pro of 1996 was as good as the top players of his day. I would imagine it's only gotten tougher since then.

I think even Justin Bieber knows Tiger has 14. [quote] The consensus is that a player's career is in large part measured by their success in majors, at least in modern times, and certainly when it comes to judging the GOAT.[/quote] I agree that's the most popular criterion. It doesn't mean it's right. For one thing, as I said in my other post, it puts too much emphasis on luck. A good bounce for one player, or a bad bounce for another, could decide it. For another, it's totally unfair to anybody who played before Jack. Jack was the first top player to play four majors a year, every year. Even Arnie, who rescued the Open Championship from obscurity, only played it about every other year. And the guys in contention for GOAT who played before Arnie had zero majors to play some years, and played only one or two in most years. [quote] As for people who say that no matter what he does he'll never be GOAT? Seriously? [/quote] Yes, seriously. To be fair, I remember one guy who wasn't quite in the "no matter what" camp, but he was pretty close. He reasoned that Jack's competition was five times tougher than Tiger's, so Tiger needed to win 90 majors to be better than Jack. [quote] Many current and past players will say that Tiger is the best player they have ever seen or played with. [/quote] And they have seen or played with Jack. One whom you may have heard of is Byron Nelson. [quote] Name one that says he is the GOAT. [/quote] If you demand it word for word, you're unreasonable. As you just admitted, many have said he's the best they have seen, which is just a way of saying they have no way to evaluate the likes of Vardon and Jones (it's called admitting your opinion is not a fact; you should try it some time). But plenty have said it in so many words. Most recently and prominently, Fred Couples, who justified his selection of Tiger for the PC by saying, repeatedly, that he was "the best player forever."

Well then, obviously it's never happened. Sorry to bother you. But before you set me straight, I would have said that a good 20-30% of people feel that way, at least among those who post to golf DBs. Maybe it's different on this board, but I assure you that my estimate was conservative for the old TGC board. [quote name="Shorty" url="/t/54927/tiger-will-never-be-the-goat#post_669449"] The only people who think he is the GOAT now are the golfing equivalent of 12 year girls who think that Justin Bieber is the greatest singer of "all time". [/quote] So among other things you've never read or heard is that several past and current top pros consider Tiger the greatest of all time.

Several people have asked what Tiger would need to do to become #1. Assuming the other players hold steady in the rankings, the answer is easy --- he has to do what he did in 2008. In 2008, Tiger played seven events in six months --- six PGA events, plus the Dubai. He won the Buick, the Dubai, the WGC Match Play, Bay Hill, and the US Open. He finished second in the Masters, and fifth in the WGC/CA. That gave him a total of 427 WGR points for those seven events. Divided by the minimum divisor of 40, and ignoring depreciation (as I have ignored the fact that he's not starting from zero), that would give him an average of 10.675, which is comfortably above Luke Donald's current average of 10.03. Tiger is actually starting with about 140 points this year, so allowing for depreciation, he probably needs about 300 points to give Luke a run for #1 in the spring (he'll need more points if it takes longer). A win at the Match Play, Bay Hill, and the Masters, and high finishes in his other early events, would do it.

They would end up pretty close. The rankings put a high premium on wins, but top tens add up, too. Since we're talking about good players here, we'll assume that they play mostly first tier events --- majors, WGC's, Quail Hollow, Memorial, FedEx Playoffs, etc. Kind of like Tiger's schedule. Those events will award between 60 (Memorial) and 100 (a major) points to the winner. Solo second gets 60% of what the winner gets, i.e. 36-60 points. Fifth place gets 24%, and 10th gets 14%. Assuming everybody is playing the same events (so their depreciation is the same, and everybody has the same minimum divisor of 40), if you want to rank higher than a guy who wins five events and MCs everything else, you need to finish 10th 36 times, or 5th 21 times, or solo second 9 times --- assuming you MC the other 11 events. So a guy who plays 20 times, doesn't win, has a couple runner-ups, and is seldom below 5th or 6th will probably come out a bit ahead of the guy who wins five times and does nothing else. It will depend on which events they do well in --- if the guy who won five times MC'd in the majors, while the other guy got top fives in the majors, then the second guy would come out on top for sure. If the second guy got his highest finishes in the weaker events, then the five wins guy would come out first.

There seem to be three camps when it comes to the discussion on the Greatest Of All Time: those who think Tiger has already done enough, those who think Tiger will be the GOAT if and only if he breaks Jack's record of 18 majors, and those who think Tiger will never be the greatest, no matter what he does. I'll admit to being in the first category above --- I think Tiger has done enough, and in fact he had done enough when he completed the Tiger Slam in 2001. I think the greatest of all time is the golfer who is the most dominant over world class fields, not the one who can manage to win a major every couple of years over a long period of time. Accordingly, I don't see how it adds anything to what Tiger did in 1999-2001 (or 1996-2009, if you think two years is too short a time frame) if he manages to win five more majors over the next ten years, and I don't see how it subtracts anything if he doesn't. That said, I can certainly understand the logic of people who say Tiger has to break Jack's record before they acknowledge him to be the GOAT. I think it would make a lot more sense if they said he only had to tie Jack, because Tiger can't win four more majors without breaking Jack's career PGA victories mark of 73 (Tiger would have a minimum of 75 wins if he won four more majors), and that would leave Jack with no important records held by himself, and only two held jointly (tie with Tiger for most majors, and tie with Arnie for most consecutive years with a PGA win). Meanwhile, Tiger would hold, by himself, the records for most POYs, most Vardons, most consecutive majors, most times leading money winner, most weeks world #1, most WGCs, etc. And if you don't think those last two are fair because Jack wasn't in his prime when World #1 and WGCs were available, then you know how Hogan and Snead feel about Jack's major record, since they had a bunch of majors cancelled for WW II, and didn't consider the Open Championship important enough to put in their regular schedule, let alone something that would determine their place in golf history. I also think that judging an entire career by one stat, especially a stat that involves so much luck (and Jack and Tiger would be the first to say that luck plays a part in winning a major, much more so than winning a Vardon or even a FedEx Cup, because it's just four rounds), is misguided. But at least I can understand the reasoning. But I can't understand the logic of people who say Tiger can't be the GOAT, no matter what he does. I mean, we are talking about golfers, not candidates for husband of the year. If you don't want him to date your sister, fine, but give him his due as a golfer. There's also a lot of hypocrisy involved. I know for a fact that many of the same people who pretend to be disgusted at Tiger's private life consider Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle to be among their favorite baseball players of all time, and they made Tiger look like a choirboy. So until today, I pretty much ignored those people. I figured they are entitled to their opinion, but I have no obligation to take them seriously. But on TGC today, Golf Central devoted the entire show to Tiger, and within the first five minutes, Brandel Chamblee said he would not consider Tiger the greatest, even if he won 20 majors. Of course, Brandel is well known for knocking Tiger, and I thought he often went overboard in doing it, but I also thought that he gave him his due as a golfer. In fact, in the same show, Chamblee said that he considered today's golfers to be on three different levels. First Tiger, then a gap, then Rory McIlroy, then a gap, then everybody else. So I was surprised that he would say --- and not only on national TV, but in a setting where he had probably prepared his remarks, rather than blurting something out --- that he would never acknowledge Tiger as the best ever. I don't especially care for Chamblee, but unlike many of the Tiger haters you see in these discussion groups, he can't be dismissed as someone with little or no knowledge of the game and its history. So I'm willing to revise my opinion of people who say Tiger will never be first on their list of great golfers. But Brandel didn't explain his reasoning, so I would like to ask those of you who agree with him, why not? Why wouldn't Tiger be the greatest golfer ever, even if he won 20 majors? Is it that you can't separate his off-course conduct from his golf, or is it that you automatically disqualify someone who swears after a bad shot, or is it that you (god help us) think Bobby Jones faced tougher fields than Tiger, or what?