Would Tiger Woods playing to the peak of his powers in the 1990s or 2000s have beaten the Jack Nicklaus of the 1960s and 1970s?
Today we take a look at a selection of criteria to try and determine – Is The Greatest Golfer Of All Time Tiger Woods Or Jack Nicklaus?
⛳ Majors: This is where Jack has an obvious edge – He secured 18 Major titles compared to Tiger’s current tally of 15. Jack completed the career Grand Slam three times over, so has Tiger Woods, so they’re even on that front.
In terms of top-10 Major finishes, Jack recorded an astonishing 55 further of those, aside from his 18 wins. In 19 of those top-10 finishes, he was runner-up. Tiger has had 26 further top-10 finishes in Majors, and seven of those have been second, or tied second place finishes.
⛳ Victories and Orders of Merit: Jack Nicklaus secured 73 PGA Tour titles between 1962 and 1986, he won three times in Australia and picked up 24 further event wins in (pre senior competition) – a total of 100 professional victories then.
Tiger Woods has won 82 times on the PGA Tour – Equal with Sam Snead for the most ever on the circuit. He has won another 28 times around the world for a total of 110 professional victories to this point.
Nicklaus topped the PGA Tour money list eight times between 1964 and 1976. Tiger topped the PGA Tour money list 10 times between 1997 and 2013.
⛳ Team Events: In the Ryder Cup – Jack played in six instalments of the famous biennial trans-Atlantic contest and was in the winning side for five of those matches, the other (1969) was a tie. Jack’s record in the Ryder Cup is 17 wins 8 losses and 3 ties. That’s a win percentage of 61%.
Tiger played in eight Ryder Cups and has only once been on the winning side – 1999 at Brookline. Tiger’s Ryder Cup record is 13 wins 12 losses 3 ties. That’s a win percentage of just 46%.
So where do we stand? If it’s purely down to The Majors, Jack wins. If it’s down to individual, overall performance, Tiger wins.
Let us know in the comments who you think is the greatest golfer of all-time.
4 Comments
dif type of balls, diffrent tech in clubs. everything.players today have such a huge advantage just because the Tech we have now. try using clubs from the 60's lol of Balls even
The Golden Bear has had the harder clubs and balls. Today, golfers have it a lot easier with the balls, golf club designs, and physical training for the golfers.
The Ryder Cup for a lot of Jacks time was Britain & Ireland, then Europe. European golf was also underdeveloped at this point in time. So comparing the Ryder Cup is like comparing apples to oranges. The rest is sound though.
Jack is the greatest, but Tiger could have been.
Jack. Love Tiger but he made too many bad life decisions.