IS TIGER THE G.O.A.T

Is Tiger Woods the Greatest Golfer of all Time?

That’s again the question as Tiger Woods returns to competition on the PGA Tour at this week’s Genesis Open contested at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, California.

Tiger has not participated in a regular PGA Tour tournament since 2020. It’s also his first official PGA-sanctioned start in seven months since last year’s Open Championship, where he missed the cut at St. Andrews, Scotland.

And it will be only Tiger’s seventh PGA tournament in the previous three seasons after nearly three years of part-time participation from full-time competition because of significant health issues, including a life-threatening car crash in February 2021 that almost ended his professional career.

Tiger has undergone numerous back surgeries during his time away from the Tour, including fusing his back in April 2017.

At the same time, he’s repeatedly made remarkable, somewhat miraculous comebacks, trying to regain the brilliance, fortitude, and strength of mind that made him the undisputed number-one ranked player in the world in his heydays during the first years of the twenty-first century.

Reclaiming the resolution, doggedness, and perseverance of yesteryear led him to another implausible return to the challenge, winning the Tour Championship in 2018 and claiming the 2019 Masters at forty-three years old.

Tying Sam Snead for most wins on the PGA Tour at eight-two and bringing him one win closer to Jack’s eighteen Major Professional Championships record.

Like the energizer bunny-He just keeps going and coming back.   

It doesn’t matter if you follow golf or care less about rummaging for a little white ball around an oversized park.

Whether you’re a Tiger fan or not, the excitement and worldwide media attention generated by Wood’s return to the action this week will dominate sports headlines in newspapers, television, radio, talk shows, magazines, and chat boards worldwide.

Once a weekend machine, he holds the record for consecutive cuts made. Tiger has struggled in the last few years to recapture the superlative consistency that defined his previous virtuosity and brilliance in all facets of his game.

 Tiger is seeking to salvage some of that magic that produced a record unmatched in modern golf history: 82 PGA Tour wins, 18 World Golf Championships, 15 Major Championships, 9 USGA Championships, 2 FedEx Trophies, 11 PGA Player of the Year awards, 142 consecutive cuts made and 683 weeks as the World number one player.

And Tiger is one of only five players in modern golf history to capture the “Grand Slam of Golf.” Joining Jack Nicklaus, Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, and Gary Playerr to have won all four Professional Majors, The Masters, the United States Open Championship, The Open, and The PGA Championship.

How his 47-year-old body withstands the rigors of even a limited PGA Tour schedule will predicate Tiger’s decision to play more tournaments in 2023 and beyond.

Tiger has been vocal about his intentions, insisting he will limit his schedule to the Major Championships and other selected tournaments depending on his health. Tiger’s return will include playing all the majors this year, starting with the Masters in April, as he continues his quest for more records and accolades in the twilight of a magnificent and stellar career.

Albeit, not everyone is a Tiger Fan. Fame is a harsh spotlight that shines brightly and magnifies even the slightest limitations or weakening in talent.

When foisted against the towering achievement he has accomplished in his career, the public is seldom ambivalent in its praise or condemnation of personal failures, transgressions, or lack of success.

I’ve heard more than one comment about the over-the-top media coverage of Tiger’s playing anywhere or in any tournament while neglecting other players on other tours. It is a common complaint often heard when Tiger competes, and the press, media, and cameras follow his every movement.

Sportswriters, media pundits, and talking heads have all voiced their opinions that Tiger moves the needle on golf telecasts. He alone, of all the players in the game today, is the catalyst that draws spectators to the venues and broadcasts. He sells tickets, shirts, hats, and concessions.

Golf and sports need him in the hunt as he makes this last run at golf immortality.

The anticipation of how Tiger will fair at this year’s Masters after such a long, interrupted layoff from competitive golf is a question everyone connected to the game of golf has been asking and will continue to ask as he mounts one last charge at surpassing Jack Nicklaus’s record of Major Championship trophies in professional golf.

How that drama plays out remains to be seen. And the world will indeed be watching every step of the way. But the question that resonates throughout golf, and the one I’m asking you today, is this: Has Tiger Woods done enough in his illustrious career to be called the best player who ever played the game of golf?

Here is my take on that question.

Any investigation into the greatest player in the history of golf must start with Major Championships. You can blame Bobby Jones for that. It was no contest in golf’s youthful years, which was in the early twentieth century.

Bobby Jones was the dominating player in the game. Winning four US Opens, three British Open Championships, five US Amateurs, and one British Amateur.

Bobby Jones won those thirteen significant championships, including all four “Major Championships,” in 1930. It was described as the “Grand Slam,” setting a standard for golf posterity, earning him a ticker tape parade down Wall Street in New York City and a fast-track entry into the history books.

Mr. Jones promptly retired from competitive golf, rejoined his law practice, and set about to build a country club that would become Augusta National, home to the Masters. In time, the Masters and the PGA Championship would supplement the United States and British Amateurs as “so-called” majors in golf jargon when professional golf replaced amateur golf as the domain of the best players in the world.

If, based on golf history, Major Championships are the gold standard for rating players, and I think they are, then Jack Nicklaus, with 18 majors, is the clear winner. Tiger Woods is second with fifteen. Bobby Jones is next with thirteen. Walter Hagen is fourth with eleven. Ben Hogan and Gary Player have nine each. Tom Watson is seventh with eight majors, and four players round out the top ten with seven: Arnold Palmer, Gene Sarazen, Sam Snead, and Harry Vardon; all are legends in golf and reside in the Hall of Fame.

And if you are keeping track, Patty Berg leads the LPGA with fifteen women’s majors, and Micky Wright is second with thirteen. And both reside in the LPGA Hall of Fame.

But here is my opinion: When measuring records and where players stand in the pantheon of greatness and you use just the Professional Championships (i.e., The US Open, The Open Championship, PGA Championship, and the Masters), then Bobby Jones won only seven.

You would have to discount his United States and British Amateurs titles, which, in my mind, is blatantly unfair, seeing as he was the one who set the original standard in 1930 by counting those among his totals, those two amateur championships and winning the original “Grand Slam.”

So, here’s the deal, if you use just the men’s professional majors as the standard of greatness, then Jack is the best to have ever played with Tiger second. And until Tiger beats Jack’s record of eighteen professional majors, Jack’s the best there ever was, no question about it.

But here’s the rub: if we weigh Bobby Jones’s six amateur championships towards his total as history does, then you have to count Jack’s two US Amateurs. That gives Bobby Jones thirteen titles, and Jack still holds the lead with twenty.

But if you count Jack’s two US Amateurs, you must also count Tiger’s six Amateurs.

People forget Tiger won three US Junior Amateurs and three US Amateurs consecutively. Something only Tiger has done and, given the quick turn-around from amateur to professional in today’s golf climate, likely will not happen again.

There is just too much money to be made in playing golf for a living.

But, before you start belittling the Junior Amateurs, remember this, they are the United States Golf Association National Championships against the best junior players in the world, all trying to punch their ticket to the PGA Tour. And most of the guys Tiger beat along the way went on to successful and lucrative professional careers.

Counting just the United States Golf Association Championships, Tiger and Bobby Jones share the record at nine apiece, and JoAnne Carner and Jack are second with eight each.

But counting all those amateurs gives Tiger twenty-one championships, one up on Jack Nicklaus’s total of twenty, and the player with the most major titles overall. Don’t think for a moment that Tiger doesn’t know this.

But let’s dispense with semantics. Casting those Junior Championships aside, you should know this. Tiger Woods is a proud and fiercely competitive athlete. He plays the game to win and has been chasing records his entire golfing career.

He knows full well what records to beat and which player holds them. He posted them as a boy on his bedroom wall.

Tiger also knows that regardless of all he has done, the records he now holds, the honors achieved, and the greatness of his overall legacy, there are still two prominent asterisks against his life history.

They will always be there until his comeback, and individual saga are complete.

Doubt as to his stature as the greatest player ever is always be present until he breaks the two records he still chases. Most Professional wins on the PGA Tour and Professional Majors (i.e., Masters, US Open, British Open, and PGA Championships).

Tiger and Sam Snead share the first record with eighty-two professional wins on the PGA Tour, and Jack has the latter with eighteen Major Professional Championships.

Jack also leads in total wins with one hundred-seventeen worldwide, and Tiger is second with one hundred-nine victories internationally.

Kathy Whitworth leads the LPGA with eighty-eight wins and ninety-eight worldwide tournament triumphs, respectfully as the winningest woman golfer of all time.

It stands to reason that if Tiger breaks Jack’s Majors’ record, he will also best Sam’s record for wins on the PGA Tour.

Remember that Sam was fifty-two years old, almost fifty-three when he won the Greater Greensboro Open for his last professional victory, and Jack was forty-six when he won the 1986 Masters.

Tiger, who just turned forty-seven in December, still has time, but he probably knows this is his last best shot at breaking those records if he is to fulfill his chosen destiny of being the greatest ever to play the game.

Tiger’s quest will be a challenging feat to accomplish. Only fourteen players in the history of professional golf have won five or more majors in their careers, and all are superstars.

To achieve his goals, Tiger must quickly win three more majors, with a badly broken and oft-repaired body that hurts with every swing and step he takes, starting this year. But his time is quickly running out.

There should be no doubt that Tiger must regain the brilliance that once made him the number one player in the world if golf fans, media, and historians are to pick up the conversation again about who is the best player in history.

There is also no doubt that, for the present moment, at this juncture in time, it’s between him and Jack Nicklaus. They are head and shoulders above everyone else who plays the game of golf.

What’s exciting to all who follow sports, and golf in particular, is that the conversation of the best player ever has started again and will continue for as long as Tiger Woods continues to play competitive golf.

As the 2023 golf season plays out, as Tiger continues his quest, if his re-constructed body holds up under the rigors and pressure of regular competition, and if the golf gods are willing, we should keep this one simple fact in mind.

In Tiger’s world, there are only four tournaments worth winning. The first one on the schedule, amidst the rolling hills and undulating greens of the Augusta National, begins the first week in April at the Masters, and this tournament will be the first definitive test of Tiger’s resolve, endurance, and courage.

As Tiger’s former coach, Butch Harmon, often stated,” you can win all the regular tournaments you can or want, but until you win a Major, you’ll never be an actual Champion.”

Tiger Woods is a Champion, but he must keep winning golf tournaments to cement his supersized legacy firmly in the annuals of golf history.

Make no mistake, whatever success Tiger has in this season and beyond and how he competes against all the contenders that have gotten rich in his exile while he has been away, will go a long way to answering the question I asked at the beginning of this narrative.

Is Tiger Woods, (The Goat), the greatest player in golf history?

My answer:  Not yet, but he still has a chance.

And, as of right now, in the current conversation and lineup of all the prominent, gifted, and most accomplished players on any professional tour anywhere in the world, he’s the only person still in that conversation.

Jeff Waters is a PGA Master Professional and a member of the Golf Writers of America.