Jack Nicklaus Verses Tiger Woods

Great research for a fab article, although golf is not my thing.

You forgot to mention Tiger’s 65 PGA Tour Victories, which are only eight shy of Jack’s 73, and Sam Snead’s all-time record of 82. And upon winning his 14th Major today, I think Tiger is well on his way to stating his case as the Greatest Golfer of all time.
Plus now only Tiger and Jack have three career grand slams.

Bottom line is this. Tiger will shatter Jack’s records just like Gretzky shattered Gordy Howe’s records in Hockey. I grew up watching Nicklaus and thought he was the greatest. And he was. But as much as I never wanted to see it happen, Tiger is simply phenomenal and stands further above all others. And so many more people play the game now, so there is PLENTY of competition.

Jack was fantastic, as was Arnie and Hogan and Nelson in their day. But today and so many tomorrows belong to Mr. Tiger Woods, the best there ever was!

I think my bottom line was clear. Tiger will go down as the best ever. I was simply trying to remind people it isn’t as much a no brainer as some say it is. Jack did play against a stronger group. I don’t know where the media says today’s group is stronger. Just look at the list of Major winners.

And Mr. Baggs you are clueless. No one is lessoning the greatness of Tiger Woods. He will be but he isn’t quite there yet.

And Duffer it isn’t that hard. In fact Golf analysts did it for me. A top ten finish is when you placed 6-10. A top five is when you placed 4-5. A second is obviously a 2 and a win a 1. Not that hard.

Thanks for the comments though everyone.

Hats off to Tiger! THIS WAS PROBABLY ONE THE MOST IMPRESSIVE WINS.

Duffer’s right: there’s a difference in counting. Go to the Wikipedia pages for the two, for an easy table to use for counting.

Jack has 73 top 10 ONLY if you include all 1-10.

By the same counting, Tiger has 29.

And another thing: this is the 14th season that Tiger has played in Majors. In 14 seasons, Jack had 26 top tens and 8 wins, Tiger has 29 and 14.

Or if you look at it by starts, Tiger has started 52 Majors, with 29 top 10s and 14 wins. With 52 starts, which got him through the 1972 season, Jack had 33 top tens and 11 wins.

I don’t think the numbers favor Jack at all.

As for the numbers I totally mixed something together.
Jack Majors 73 times in TOP 10 total as mentioned.

My point is still Tiger will go down as best ever but I find it odd that people shrug off the serious counterparts that Jack faced. Mickleson, Els, Singh? They aren’t Gary Player combined. There was way more than Arnold. See above you had Player,Trevino and Watson all with 6 or more majors. Then you had a group of guys equal to Phil, Ernie, and Vijay.

The numbers are mind numbing for Tiger and deserve recognition. I am just sick of the media pretty there is as strong of a field today when their isn’t. Look at the run of first timers we have seen? Tiger is the only consistant golfer out there.

To me the streak not missing the cut is way more impressive. That is why I think Nelson should be hailed more than he is.

To say that Jack is better is the same as saying Babe Ruth was better than Barry Bonds. I won’t through terms like, innate fallacy, skewed data, uneven playing field, etc. around in this conversation, because those things are obvious.

Just like Babe, when Jack played there were far less “people in general” playing golf. I would argue just the opposite with Andy. I would say, in fact, that the competition now is far greater than it was then primarily because you don’t just have 7 or 10 guys winning all the tournaments. You have so many good players now, the mediocre players (at least on paper) would have been competitive in Jack’s day.

There is perspective in golf though. You can make apples to apples comparisons in golf far easier than you can in baseball, basketball and football. I do agree that equipment is superior today, but aren’t courses longer and more difficult? But physical conditioning is better today, right (except for David Duval)? While there are some things that can skew the facts, you can still present data from certain golf courses and have a better comparison.

If you look at Bonds and Babe you have to judge the data much differently. For example, when Babe Ruth played, how many times did he face a pitcher in a given year? What percentage of his homeruns were hit in later innings when the pitcher he’d already faced 15 times that year was tired (they didn’t utilize the bull pen the same way they do today). What was the avg. MPH per pitch thrown to him? What about pitch styles? Was he behind or ahead in the count when he hit his home runs? Was Bonds on roids? For how long? Were the pitchers on roids too? Did that balance things out?

When you say Jack is better than Woods you must be saying that Jack would have done the same thing he did in the 60’s and 70’s if he were playing today or that Tiger wouldn’t, if he were playing in Jack’s day. How can you possibly know that, they wouldn’t have even let Tiger play in Jack’s day.

Here’s the bottom line. You can NEVER consider someone “the best” if they didn’t play in an inclusive environment where EVERYBODY had an opportunity to participate. if you participated during that time, how would you ever know you were the best? Babe’s not the best, Tony Hawk’s not the best, Johnny Unitas was not the best, Wayne Gretzky will not be the best, etc. And for that matter, if Europe ever catches up to the U.S. in basketball or the U.S. ever catches up to Europe or South America in soccer, you’ll have some “new best evers” in those sports.

Just ask Chuck Liddell (surpassing Gracie as the best in MMA about 2 years ago) if he still thinks he’s the best. Once Pride Mixed with the UFC, he was a whopping 1 and 4 in his MMA career. Not only is he “no longer the best” he was actually one of the worst. Inclusion breeds competition.

Tiger’s fascinating, but 31 events in his supposed 142 consecutive cuts made didn’t have a cut to begin with. I think it’s pretty safe to say Tiger will eclipse 18 major wins, but he will never touch the overall depth of Jack’s record in majors (i.e. 37 top 2s, 46 top 3s, 56 top 5s, and 73 top 10s).

Alright! I’ll admit that greatness can’t be compared with such a margin in time. However, I can’t help using common since. Can you compare an athelete of the past with those of modern times? No you can’t! just look at football. Todays quarterbacks are as big as lineman of yesteryears. So are the 6′8″ forwards and over 7′ tall centers in the NBA. I also recall a man trotting past Carl Lewis’ 100 meter dash record this past olympics. Tigher is 6′1″ tall and twice the physical player as Jack. When compared to Jack during their first 10 years, Tigher wins most all stats including major victories. One can’t argue with the facts. Golf is way more popular today than ever. In turn leading to more players, more veiwers, tougher courses and yes better equiptment. All and all considered, Jack couldn’t carry Tigers Jock strap. Ok! His bag. I honestly believe Jack would have a tough time on todays tour with the modern athelete. Jack’s driving avg. = 264-267yds. Tigers is 289yds. Greens in reg. favor tiger. Scoring avg. you guessed it Tiger. Nothing against Jack, but those oldies who won’t admit when they have seen the better, simply need to ask Jack. He would either tell you this story or would simply be wrong. Tigher is the best. Did I mention he’s not finished! Not by a long shot. We are just accustomed to seeing him always win.

I find it amazing that supposedly learned students of the game still don’t understand that a HUGE part of the reason Tiger’s “premier” opponents don’t have the resume of Jack’s opponents is because TIGER IS WINNING MORE THAN HIS SHARE. Tiger is winning about 28% of all majors he plays, where Nicklaus was 16%. You take that additional 12% of his majors away,which would be about 6, and spread them around his opponents, all the sudden they look that much better, don’t they? Not to mention the fact that Nicklaus’ overall win percentage is around 9%, less than a third of Tiger’s, meaning that’s ~46 more PGA wins overall that could be spread around them, including those majors. Not to mention the overall competition is FAR better, and even up until the 70’s, few US pros even played the British Open other than the top ones, which made them tourneys of 6-8 top players and a bunch of scrubs. The above argument is even worse than if someone said Michael Jordan isn’t the greatest because he didn’t win until Bird and Magic retired, since his contemporaries only won when he retired. There isn’t a single measurable metric by which Nicklaus is ahead of Tiger that isn’t longevity-based, and within about 3 years, all of those will be gone too. Actually, there is one he may never get; most 2nd’s in majors – Tiger is too great a closer. I swear, when TIger has 30 majors, we will STILL be hearing about how Nicklaus was better because of the competition….

Another thing to consider is the fact that Jack was a far more travelled / international player, winning many international individual, team & Euro tournaments & competitions. Tiger has but a few.

To compare Tiger’s competition (Vijay, Phil, Ernie, Retief) to Jack’s (Palmer, Player, Trevino, Watson) is ludicrous. If you’re into “counting”, compare the majors that Jack’s 4 or 5 career rivals won compared to Tiger’s rivals – no comparison.

To acknowledge Tiger’s competition as comparable to Jack’s is to say that Faldo’s six majors are as good as Watson’s or Trevino’s titles. Who did Faldo beat again – Greg Norman, Seve Ballesteros, Curtis Strange. Sergio could have won majors on the PGA Tour in the ’80s to mid-90’s

It\’s an interesting debate. Tiger will surely, injury permitting, surpass all the records and lay down a gap that will take generations for someone to fill.

The area of debate that interests me most is that about career rivals. On numbers for individuals there seems to be some strength in the argument of Jack\’s peers being better however I think no-one seriously debates that depth of world golf in Jack\’s time approaches that of golf today. The top 100 are dramatically better now than ever.

The importance is that a golfer is not playing a few of his rivals but rather all of them. Today\’s top 100 are more capable of stepping up and winning a major than in Jack\’s time leading to the next best in his time having inflated figures compared with the next best in Tiger\’s time.

The situation is analogous to the state of play in current world tennis in my opinion, specifically the difference between men\’s and women\’s tennis. The current depth in men\’s tennis equates to that of golf in Tiger\’s era, the depth in women\’s tennis to that of Jack\’s era. Frankly, the next best won more in Jack\’s time because there weren\’t many good enough to have a day out to stop them when Jack wasn\’t winning.

So the best peer\’s comparison is not really relevant in my opinion. It\’s about what they achieve against the entire field. Jack is the greatest of all time against the entire field, Tiger\’s demonstrably better against the whole field at the same age. He will put a gap on the man who put a huge gap on the rest.