Quote:
Originally Posted by leoslayer
who said players dont get better? i never did. but i think you are way off when yu talk about the older players. you act like they couldnt hit the ball.
i contend if you took the all time greats and put them in the game today at the age of 20 they would have won just as much.
You're whole argument hinges on players not getting better. LOL. If you assume players do get better, than you can look at Tiger results vs his generation and Jacks results vs his generation and the only conclusion you can reach is that Tiger was more dominant, hands down, its not even close.
Quote:
Originally Posted by leoslayer
heres an analogy. you take alabamas football team next year and put them in the sunbelt
conference. alabama will crush. if you take any of those sunbelt teams and take them back to the 70s and put them in the sec they would crush (if they got to keep all the advances in football over the years and the 70's sec teams had only access to the knowledge of the period)
then you can look at the alabama team of the 70's playing other sec teams of the 70's everybody has equal access to knowledge.
who is playing tougher competition bama in 70's in sec or bama '12 playing sunbelt?
Your analogy is hilarious...
heres an analogy. you take
Tiger Woods from the 2000's and put him on the
Nationwide Tour.
Tiger Woods will crush. if you take any of the
Top Nationwide Tour guys and take them back to the 70s and
put them on the PGA Tour they would crush (if they got to keep all the advances in
golf over the years and the 70's PGA Tour players had only access to the knowledge of the period)
then you can look at
Jack Nicklaus of the 70's playing other
PGA Tour players of the 70's everybody has equal access to knowledge.
who is playing tougher competition
Jack in 70's on the
PGA Tour or
Tiger in '12 playing on the
Nationwide Tour?
Answer: Who the f knows how you can compare golfers from different generations. It's almost as dumb as looking at the absolute score was for a particular tournament was and deciding whether it was good enough to win, rather than compare the score to the rest of the field
What you can do is compare a golfers relative performance to a generation. Here's an example. From the farthest back I can go and still get a PGA Tour scoring average.
1980-
Scoring leader- Lee Trevino 69.73
Tour average- 72.26
Standard Deviation of scores- .7849
So Lee Trevino was roughly 3.22 standard deviations better than the average Tour player.
Tiger at his best-
Scoring average- 67.79
Tour average- 71.24
Standard Deviation of scores- .8099
So Tiger was roughly 4.27 standard deviations better than the average Tour player.
Even if you assume that the "average" Tour player today is basically the same as the "average" Tour player from the 80s, then you can see how much more ridiculously dominant Tiger was. Unfortunately I don't think the average player from today is the same relatively to the average player of decades ago. The advances in teaching, technology, training, and the influx of many many many more players wanting to play golf on the professional level speaks to the average golfer today probably being better. If you agree with that, then again Tiger's performance vs his "better" generation is significant in the GOAT argument.