This is the dumbest argument ever. If he thinks these are the only things that matter why has he won 79 total events?

Also, Barry Bonds could claim something stupid like hitting opposite field basehits is the only way to judge a hitter but it doesn't matter what he says. What matters is what is true. If Tiger claimed winning the Shell Houston Open was the only thing that mattered then he'd be the worst golfer ever - he hasn't even played it!

Like 3 hours ago you literally thought Jason Dufner had 0 majors. He won a major in 2013. But tell us again how people only remember the majors?

Meaningless what he says. You could claim low melanin level is how to judge a golfer but it doesn't make you right.

So how would the great and powerful ARC judge a golfer? Do you think Tiger thinks he has been a success golfwise since 2008? Because I think its pretty obvious he doesn't. But hey keep on spewing that nonsense I am sure that Tiger is really happy that he won money he doesn't need and won the same 3-5 tournaments he wins most every year in 2013.

You're comparing apples and oranges.

Specifically, about Jack, you give him credit for 1961-82, which includes years where he was competitive in majors, but didn't win. For Tiger, you're only counting years he won:

Only counting from 1999 ignores 1 win and 5 other top 10 finishes in 1997-98. It also fails to count 2009 (3 top 10s), 2010 (2 top 10s), 2011 (1 top 10), 2012 (1 top 10), and 2013 (2 top 10s).

So you're giving Jack all this credit for being "competitive" but somehow believing that Tiger wasn't competitive despite finishing in the top 10 14 times during those years.

Counting 1977 onward as Jack's "peak" is a bit silly considering that Watson was clearly a better golfer than Jack by then (Watson was POY 1977-80), while Jack would never finish in the top 10 in money after 1978. Hint: Tiger was the best golfer in the world last year.

Shocker,

It doesn't matter what Tiger thinks. It matters how he's performed against his peers. You know, those guys who are way more competitive top to bottom than the dudes who played golf in the '60s.

God damn I just realized you are that guy from the golf forum with a new name.

He also won POY in 2009, and won 14 tourneys (more than anyone on the tour) since the beginning of 2009.

There are professional basketball players who think the Kobe vs Lebron debate is actually close. Doesn't make it true.

The span I quoted includes 2 years Tiger won 0 majors. If you want to include the 97 Masters and 08 US Open then go ahead. He won all his majors in 12 years. He hasn't won one after 32. If he never wins another major his "peak" or whatever you want to call it will have been shorter than Jack's that isn't really up for debate. The run Tiger went on from 99-02 and 05-07 were really really sick and will probably never be matched again by anyone. That peak or peaks depending on how you want to look at it was greater than any golfer ever.

I think the real question is IF Tiger never wins another major and never really regains the form he had during that era, how do you rank him against someone like JN who had a 65/84 Top10 stretch in majors. I mean that is an absurd level of consistency in majors that has never been seen before or after even by Tiger.

The person earlier in the thread who said Tiger is Usain and JN is Carl Lewis is sort of on the right track. Tiger was probably better at his best, but JN had unrivaled consistency in the majors and has won the most.

Jack had unrivaled consistency in the majors. Yet you went on a rant earlier about how it was the same 5 LEGENDS OF THE GAME that finished runner-up to him in all those majors.

You are truly WOATish.

Here is an example of how poorly Major wins does in describing how well someone played in a particular year.

Thanks to shotlink, a very smart guy has calculated how many shots Tiger gained per round over the average Tour player in every year dating back to 2003. (Basically how much better Tiger was than average)

So I have listed year, majors won, events won, and strokes gained(SG) over the average Tour player.



If you check the correlation between SG and Majors Won, there is a very weak correlation from a statistical stand point. As you can see, Tiger failed to win a major in 2 different seasons with his 3rd best strokes gained of the period at 3.71 strokes per round. And in 2005 he managed to win 2 majors despite having his worst pre-fire hydrant SG stat.

However, SG is very well correlated with total events won. It should be noted that the 2013 SG stat is not available yet. However I used his SG from previous years and events won from previous years to predict what his 2013 SG was and it gave me 3.2625 which is probably not to far off as he seemed overall to play quite a bit better than 2012. You can check the accuracy of the prediction when his actual # becomes available.

I also then used that Forecasted SG # to forecast how many wins he "should" have had in 2013 given his forecasted SG #. It gave a result of 4.6 wins, pretty good since he had 5.

But really as you can see, majors just generally suck as any sort of real measuring stick due to a weak sample size.

In this case however i think most people think the Tiger v. Jack debate is close. And I also think there is a general consensus that winning majors is a good indicator of skill because of the fields and difficulty of the courses. It isn't like saying the majors are the most important tournaments is some outlandish thing. Its the most important thing to the players, the fans, the media, etc.

Saying majors don't matter now and He won player of the year! and He won at Firestone again! He was money leader! is just goalpoast shifting from fanboies who 5-6 years ago had already crowned Tiger as the GOAT because 18+ was inevitable.

I'm not close to a Tiger fanboi. I don't give a **** about the dude.

I just hate racists who are anti-logic.

I get that there is variance in winning majors because there are less of them. What you also see from what you posted is that Tiger lately with the exception of your fictional 2013 SG has been trending downward as far as his SG stat. You can also conclude that he probably has ran worse lately and ran better previously if you are going to use this type of analysis. Also Jack would have faced variance as well.

Once you start looking at a 100 major sample (which Jack has and Tiger is getting close to) you have a statistically significant sample that can be looked at as a whole. So I am not sure you can just say LOLVARIANCE if tiger doesn't get there.

Then there is the elephant in the room of the fact that golf more than most sports is as much about what is going on between the ears as just about anything else. Tiger has put himself in position to win majors heading into the 4th round several times since the car accident. However he has almost always blown up by the end of the front nine and eliminated himself. I'm not sure if he is putting too much pressure on himself or what but it is obvious that who he was between the ears in majors from 1997-2008 is no longer there. And lets be fair what made Tiger great wasn't his ball striking, it was his insane ability to get up and down and make 10 footers with pressure on in key spots. Lately he hasn't been doing that for whatever reason in the majors. In non-majors last year he had a good year. In the majors he put himself in position in a couple of them and faded. Maybe variance but it seems like a trend in the post car accident era.

Events won is a much better predictor of someones skill level compared to majors won AINEC.

And you listed a bunch of subjective reasons majors are the most important(people's opinions of them). Luckily we can look at depth and strength of field from an objective stand point and realize that there are plenty of events that are just as hard or even harder to win than some majors(The Players for sure).

In an ideal rating world you would just look at raw data, tournaments wouldn't even have names, they would just have dates played, strength/depth of field and winner.

Everyone goes "well, majors are worth more because the conditions are brutal and that makes them harder to win." No, that makes them harder to win for some, but in fact easier to win for the best players because harder conditions widen the skill gap.

Just like the US Open challenge where they get a 10 handicap or whatever who can't break 100 on a US Open layout. The gap between him and a Tour player is monstrous on that layout, way more than the likely 18 shot difference in their handicaps(assuming a Tour pro is around a +8). The same trend exists on a lesser scale to the entire field of the US Open.

At least the US Open, British, and PGA have pretty large fields. Like 90 guys, and a little more than 80 that even have a shot at winning are teeing it up next week. The Masters caters to the best players in the world.

I haven't seen one racist comment in the thread. I've said over and over how good Tiger is, that he has had the highest peak of any golfer ever etc. So not sure who you are referring to. It seems to me that you get off on taking some extreme position and constantly trolling every thread you touch. For someone who hates "anti-logic" you sure do speak in hyperbole and throw out illogical accusations rather than actually talk about facts.

Pretty sad when you are so simple minded that your fall back is just to scream OMG THIS PERSON SAID TIGER WOODZ MIGHT BE THE #2 GOLFER EVER IF HE NEVER WINS AGAIN HE MUST BE A RACIST!

Personally I think an argument can be made for either of them being GOAT which is exactly the point of the discussion. This seems to be lost on you as you try and validate your existence through 70k posts of this drivel. I can see why you post so much on here rather than engaging in any real world interaction. If you actually talked to a person in real life as illogically and tempermentally as you post here you would be laughed out of the room.

I do agree with a lot of what you are saying. Especially with regards to majors changing the skill gap potentially between golfers. I guess where this gets interesting to me is clearly majors should have SOME weight in the argument. Tiger will almost certainly end with a better resume in regular tournaments. Jack has an unreal track record in majors that up to this point in wins is better, and Tiger has 0% chance to match the consistency. I guess I just have a hard time knowing how to balance all of this to really figure out how to rank the two of them. I mean 18 v. 14 majors is a pretty big difference. If Tiger wins 2-3 more majors and keeps winning and in the top 5 in WGR for the next 8-10 years I think the case for Tiger being GOAT without the most majors is stronger. As is he has 6 more PGA wins. He has 4 less majors.

The other problem I have is that at 32 years old I basically wasn't alive for Jack's career so I am basing my comparison on whatever I can get my hands on statistically. I do know from watching golf avidly from the early 90s that Tiger was and hopefully still is something that I have not seen from a golfer ever in my lifetime. I remember watching US Am Finals in the mid 90s and he just had insane WIM that you rarely ever see out of any athlete. I can't really say one way or another with regards to JN because I never saw him play until he was like 50.

It's conveniently the exact opposite of the bolded above, but I doubt you will be willing to believe it.

Overall since 2003 Tiger has gained on average 2.79 shots per round over the average Tour player.

.58 of those shots from Drives
1.28 of those shots from Approach Shots
.3 of the shots from Short Game(inside 100 yards but off the green)
.63 o those shots from Putting.

Ball striking(drive + approach shots) account for 1.86 of the 2.79 shots Tiger gains per round vs the average Tour player or 2/3rds of his advantage over them.

So tell me how putting and short game are the reason Tiger was so dominant?

Analytics is literally making a mockery of the golfing world.

The sport goes around parading the 4 majors as the events that define you're entire career(you will be lucky to play in probably 40 of them) and then the 4 events aren't even the hardest events to win during the year.

The "majors" basically got the name because in previous era's they were the only events each year the just about all of the best players showed up to. Today that is nowhere near the case.

Isn't The Players harder to win than The Masters? Especially for lefties.

So they are the events the players try to win the most and prepare for the hardest

Seems important

I'm all for analytics making a mockery of conventional wisdom but this isn't the spot to do so (at least for me). part of sports is excelling (or capturing variance, however you want to look at it) in the events that matter most. It's why we generally still have Montana GOAT and we still won't even entertain the idea that MJ won't be forever number one. I think the coolest thing about professional golf is the fact that we have 4 random (albeit very old) tournaments that are worth way more than the others. It's not like the players don't know that too

Again, you're missing the point. You say Jack was competitive from 61 to 82 while Tiger was only competitive from 99 to 07. So you're extending Jack's peak to include years where he didn't win majors, but came close. And you're ignoring years where Tiger actually won majors (97 and 08). Moreover, you're ignoring years where Tiger came close to winning majors (09 through 13).

So, just by comparing them on an apple to apple basis, you see that Tiger's peak has been 97 through 13 (basically his entire career). Even if you want to complain that's shorter than Jack's peak, that's only because Tiger is still young. If it turns out in 2018 that Tiger's peak ended in 2013, that would be a fair complaint. But to make that complaint in 2014 is just stupid.

Let's use your criteria for "peak" for Phil Mickelson. He won his first major in 04 and his last in 13. Using your Tiger criteria for calculating peak, you ignore his first major and last major, thus his peak was 2005-10. Clearly he sucks!

Let's use the top 10 in major criteria for Phil's "peak": his first top 10 was in 1993 and he finished in the top 10 at least once every year except 2007. So his "peak" was 1993-2013. Let's use a broader measure for peak--money. Phil was second in money in 1996, finished out of the top 10 in 97 and 99, then was pretty regularly in the top 10 since 2000. So his peak can be considered to start 96 or so, through today.

Which seems to be a more accurate measure of Phil's peak: 1996 through today or 2005 through 2010?

Now, if you're asking the question "is Tiger as good in 2013 as he was in 2000 or 2005" the answer is pretty clear to everyone. But that's not the criteria you're using for Jack. Your definition of Jack's peak includes decline years where he was pretty clearly not as good as he was in the early 1970s. If you want to include those years, fine. But include those years for both Jack and Tiger.

This is a pretty clear case of lol olds

I don't even disagree with your stance on events won, but isn't the bolded basically saying "Sure you won, but only because you were better than everyone else."?

I prefer lolds