First of all, who says Erik isn't some sort of freak as well. As I've said before around here somewhere, to play on the PGA Tour you need to do everything well and 2 things world class. What those two are depends on your personal skills.

With that said, Erik is middling in most stats and then is a VERY solid putter. Currently ranked 15th in putts from 5-15', and 19th in Strokes Gained Putting. Pretty strong year in the making for sure.

However, he has played in 102 career PGA Tour Events with 4 Tops 10's and 11 Top 25's. Or take his 105 web.com starts producing 10 top 10's and 1 win. I would certainly agree he is having a breakout year for him, but I would hardly call him competitive.

So I would offer you that he doesn't compete because of his poor ball striking. Which gets back to the best players in the world are the best ball strikers. Sum them all up and somebody is going to get hot that week which is what has kept Erik out of the winners circle and for the most part out of the Top 10 during his career.

In before "his career is better than yours". Yes, it is.

Of course it would. If Jack said his priority was to set the all time wins record and he didn't do it, it would diminish his all time accomplishments. In all honesty, I had never thought of all-time PGA tour wins as being as important as majors. But if Jack stated clearly that he needed to have that record to be considered the GOAT, and didn't get there, well, the end result is pretty obvious.

Hopefully someone can post it then because it is true. He himself changed the goalpost from # of wins to # of majors once he realized he wouldnt break Sneads record

Phil Mickelson played in 23 majors: won 2, 6 other top 5s, and 1 top 10.

I disagree with the best players are the best ball strikers. pretty much every one on tour hits it solid. The best players make putts. Like tiger did for almost two decades. In the 50's and 60's it was different.the greens were slower bumpier so hitting it close to the hole was paramount. ball striking meant more back then.

Cue NXT, I don't have the patience.

Reality is if in your ming the GOAT declares he needs to have the most majors to be the GOAT argument solved

This sums up to me what I've always thought about making it on the tour. I watched a lot of Nationwide (back then) guys when they played at my club and you could see how most were so close to the big tour, but just lacking a little bit here and there; ball striking, short game, course management mistakes, what have you.

Some who stood out as possibles in my mind moved up and are big time (Bubba, Jimmy Walker) and some not so much (Brent Schwarzrock).

I think with the talent to make the tour, any given week someone who isn't an athletic freak can win, but to have a shot week in and week out, you better be in much better shape than you had to be 20 years ago.

I'm pretty sure this isn't true however Jack basically failed in his stated goal.

At 20 Jack claimed(I believe when he was still an amateur) Bobby Jones was the GOAT and he wanted to surpass his record of 13 Majors.

The "majors" at the time being the US/British Opens and US/British AMs.

Bobby Jones never played in the PGA since he was an AM and he founded the Masters after retiring from golf though he played in that 1 event the few years after he started it.

By the end of Jack's career he magically was able to change his goal to include the PGA and the Masters to get to 20 total majors claiming GOAT status. However if you take away his PGA(5 wins) and Masters (6 wins) victories he really never passed Bobby Jones.

Actually if you go just off the Bobby Jones majors the counts would be
Jones- 13
Woods- 9
Nicklaus- 9

And if you went with just the 3 that all of them played on a regular basis (take away British AM) it would look like
Jones- 11
Woods- 9
Nicklaus- 9

So Nicklaus is using his totals in 5 "majors" to claim he surpassed Jones' total in his 4 "majors".

If we're just allowed to add tournaments as "majors" can we add one of the WGCs to Tiger's major count? Just randomly pick 1 of those events and at worse he will tie Nicklaus and potentially could pass him by 5.

Sounds like a good compromise to me.

Yeah cause Jack kept losing the US Am during his pro years then unilaterally made the Masters a major to compensate.

And how about counting the PGA that Jones never participated in?

It was Jack's decision to turn pro. He wanted to take down Bobby Jones' record, except instead he turned pro and then added some new "majors" to do it. Easy game.

If we're now measuring golfer's on whether they achieve their goal then I don't see how Jack can possibly be the GOAT unless you allow some amazing goal post shifting.

Is there really evidence that Jack wanted to win the exact same tournaments that Bobby did? Considering he turned pro, it seems a lot more likely that he wanted to win more tournaments that were majors in his era than Bobby won that were majors in Bobby's era.

Really don't get why you think this is some sort of gotcha. They each played in 4 majors a year during their primes

Maybe it wasnt you then NXT and maybe it was on golfwrx but I am certain that I read a quote that pretty much stated what I was saying.

Yea I don't understand the problem at all either when you are gunning for someone's record and then you play more/different events to surpass it and claim you succeeded.

Lol

Well at least you've come around to the idea that a guy gunning for a record should be judged on whether he beats that record, so we can stop pretending that number of majors doesn't matter between jack and tiger.

I actually haven't come around on that at all. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of Jack GOATers who don't think Tiger is better than Jack, yet Jack somehow leapfrogged Jones despite falling short on his stated goal.

As far as judging people on their "goals"...

If their "goal" is a complete representation of how good someone is at their job then yes I'm fine measuring athletes based on "goals".

Unfortunately this "goal" is a very incomplete picture of golfing prowess. Is it somewhat highly and positively correlated? Sure. Fortunately, there are other metrics that are much higher correlated with skill. I'll stick with using those to judge players.

Again, could you provide a source for this?

Here's what I was able to find on the issue.

Nicklaus often tells the story of winning the 1970 Open Championship in a playoff over Doug Sanders, only to be told afterward where he ranked on the all-time ledger.

"I was at St. Andrews and I walked into the press room after I won and Bob Green of the AP said to me, 'Jack, that's 10. Only three more to go to tie Bobby Jones.'" Nicklaus says. "Honest to goodness, I can promise you, I had never added them up. That's the honest truth. I said, 'Really?' He said, 'Yeah.' And I said, 'Gosh, I never even dreamed of approaching Jones' record.' So obviously, once that was said to me, then Jones' record became a focus. In 1973, I passed Jones' record at Canterbury and then I played golf to be just the best I could be and still play my majors. But I never had a focus on a number; a number was not an important thing to me. It was just to be able to play my best and be the best at what I did."

So, according to Nicklaus, he started focusing on Jones' record in 1970, not when he was 20.

Here's the link. http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/columns/story?id=4834542

You must be a horrible putter.

Case in point that Total Wins is a MUCH MUCH MUCH better measure of skill than Major Victories.

Below is a chart of the 18 best guys(minus Rory and Fowler because their careers don't span the entire data set) from the shot link era(2004 and beyond). I have their strokes gained/round, total wins, major wins, and regular wins all in listed.

At the bottom I ran a correlation analysis of Total Wins, Major Wins, and Regular Wins vs Strokes Gained to see which is best correlated with the stat, and therefore the best measure of a players skill level.

AINEC. Total wins and regular tour wins are about the same and are very highly correlated with Strokes Gained while majors are correlated but not to a level where anyone would consider it significant. That correlation # as to be above .6-.7 depending on who you ask for it to really mean something and Major Win correlation falls under that threshold. SHOCKER!



Worth noting:
1. How unreal hot Padraig Harrington ran in majors
2. How lol bad Jim Furyk has run(Luke didn't play as much in the US early on in this data set which explains his lack luster win total somewhat)
3. This chart would be better if you got everyone's win % over the time span

The most important take away: Major victories is a terrible stand alone measure compared to total wins for measuring how good some is at golf.

Of the 40 best golfers since 2004 here's how their edges on the field break down.

They average 1.13 strokes per round better than average.

28% of their edge (.32 shots) comes from Tee Shots
40% of their edge (.45 shots) comes from Approach Shots
17% of their edge (.19 shots) comes from Short Game
15% of their edge (.17 shots) comes from Putting

So no, putting is not even close to being the most important aspect of being a top tiered golfer.

For the record, if Tiger Woods was just an average putter since 2004 he would still be the best player in the world by a pretty good margin.

jack's not even the goat jack. (bauer)

Hey at least Jack does the booth at his tournaments and presents the trophy. Tiger cant be bothered

Jack ran tournaments when he was still on the active PGA Roster?

"From the very beginning, an annual tournament had been part of Jack Nicklaus' plans for Muirfield Village Golf Club. The name, Memorial Tournament, followed from Nicklaus' desire to theme the tournament around a person or persons, living or deceased, who has contributed to the game of golf with conspicuous honor. Tournament dates were secured from the PGA TOUR and, with tremendous fanfare, Jack Nicklaus' lifelong dream became a reality in the spring of 1976."

so tiger beat him there too huh