With all due respect to the Lebron-MJ debate, the closest greatest-of-all-time (GOAT) race in all of sports is at the top of the golf list. Sure, the Jack fanatics would disagree with that notion, but the dynamics involved in comparing Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus are as convoluted as it gets. There is very little doubt that Nicklaus had the most consistently great career in history. Woods, on the other hand, dominated his contemporaries more historically than any golfer in history. Who you anoint as the golf GOAT depends entirely on whether you choose to emphasize dominance or consistency.
The Jack/Tiger debate must begin with acknowledging how difficult it was to succeed in their respective eras. While Nicklaus won more major championships, the competition level during the 1960s and 70s wasn’t remotely as strong as it has been in the decades since. Of the 11 golfers in history who won at least seven major championships, 10 were born before 1950. The other is Tiger Woods (b. 1975). This underscores the danger of placing too much of an emphasis on Nicklaus’s major total. The list of the golfers with the most major championship is top-heavy with players from 50-100 years ago because it was easier to win back then. Golf is more difficult now than it has ever been. Consider that Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Rory McIIroy, and Jordan Spieth are the only active golfers with more than two majors. High major totals are a relic of the past. Contrary to the zeitgeist that prevailed as Woods’s major total began to climb, he never needed to beat Nicklaus’s major record to stake his claim as the GOAT. That was a standard set by people who don’t understand how “competition level” factors into sports. Had Woods reached 18 majors, the debate wouldn’t even be a debate. Since he ended up with 15, the debate will rage until the end of time.
The debate itself involves a Rubik’s Cube of nuance. There is plenty of ammunition on both sides to get your bias on, or to simply give up due to analytical exhaustion. Typically, I reach a level of serenity at the end of GOAT comparisons. Whether it’s Lebron vs. MJ, Ruth vs. Bonds, or Brady vs. Rice, statistical analysis with an emphasis on degree of difficulty almost always yields a clear-cut winner. Spoiler alert: There will be no serenity here. This GOAT debate is a (golden) bear. In fact, alternating each at the top spot every other day is looking like a welcome resolution. Nonetheless, let’s make the best argument for both and see which is the most compelling.
Jack Nicklaus
Let’s start with Nicklaus and the angle that gives him the best shot at victory in this debate: longevity. Since Nicklaus holds the all-time marks for major championships, major championship runner-ups, top-five major finishes, and top-ten major finishes, it would be easy to assume an advantage over Woods not just in longevity, but dominance as well. However, that would be misguided, and we’ll discover why in a bit. Nicklaus’s argument must lean on the raw totals that resulted from his extraordinarily long peak. His record 18 majors have been well-documented, but his 19 second place finishes and nine third-place finishes deserve top billing as well. Both are records. In fact, Nicklaus’s 37 top-two finishes at majors are 15 more than anyone else. His 46 top-three finishes are 20 more than anyone else. His 56 top five finishes are 23 more than anyone else, and his 73 top ten finishes are 25 more than anyone else. Those margins are astonishing.
Nicklaus’s record consistency is best on display when looking at the most successful ten-year stretch of his career. From 1971-1980, he played in 40 major tournaments and finished in the top-10 a remarkable 35 times. Tiger’s best ten-year stretch saw him achieve the top-10 in 26 out of 40 major tournaments. Even more impressive is Nicklaus’s 29 top-five finishes during this stretch. Woods reached 22 top-five finishes over his best stretch.
Another area where Nicklaus excelled and Woods didn’t is at the Ryder Cup. Nicklaus’s Ryder Cup record is a robust 17-8-3, while Woods compiled a disappointing mark of 13-21. However, it is worth noting that five of the six Ryder Cups that Nicklaus played in were under the U.S. vs. Great Britain (or Great Britain and Ireland) format. These competitions were blowouts in favor of the U.S., and the caliber of opponent that Nicklaus faced was nowhere near what subsequent U.S. Ryder Cup teams would face. The format changed to the U.S. vs. Europe in 1979, which turned the Ryder Cup from a biannual U.S. coronation to a one-sided affair in favor of the Europeans (Europe is 10-4 in the last 14 Ryder Cups). Woods’s record is disappointing considering his standing as the greatest golfer of his generation, but it’s fair to speculate that his Ryder Cup record would look like Nicklaus’s had he been able to feast on the overmatched Great Britain teams of the 60s and 70s.
There really isn’t much more to Nicklaus’s GOAT case than his epic run atop the major leaderboards, and there might not have to be. He was, of course, the #1 golfer in the world for over a decade and he had the lowest scoring average on the PGA Tour for eight years. He also won three Players Championships (aka the TPC, The PLAYERS, or the unofficial “fifth major”). However, there isn’t much separation from Woods on those points. Woods actually led the tour in scoring nine times and was the #1 golfer in the world for 683 weeks. Woods also has the lowest single-season and career adjusted scoring averages in PGA Tour history, and he won two TPCs and had a second place finish. If you’re arguing for Nicklaus, the argument really needs to focus on his leaderboard success at the majors because Woods matches or exceeds him everywhere else.
Tiger Woods
With Tiger Woods, the track to GOAT status is all about his dominance over the most competitive era in golf history. Perhaps the most telling statistic on Woods’s resume is the fact that since he turned professional in 1996, he has won as many majors (15) as the next three highest major winners over that span combined [Phil Mickelson (6), Brooks Koepka (5), and Rory McIIroy (4)]. Read that again: over the last 30 golf seasons, Tiger Woods has as many majors as the next three most successful major winners combined. Among players born since 1975–the year he was born–Woods has three times as many major championships as anyone else. For all of Nicklaus’s greatness, he doesn’t come close to matching that level of superiority over his contemporaries.
Woods’s dominance doesn’t just extend to major championships. His 82 career PGA Tour titles are tied with Sam Snead for the most all-time. The difference between Woods and Snead (and everyone else for that matter) is that Snead played in an era where a lot of players won a lot of tournaments. The same can’t be said for Wood’s era. Of player’s born since 1975, Woods’s 82 PGA titles are more than the next four highest totals combined [McIIroy (27), Dustin Johnson (24), Justin Thomas (15), and Adam Scott (14)]. This would be the capstone statistic for every other golfer who ever lived with the possible exception of Nicklaus, but even something as spectacular as that statistic gets lost on the mountain of superlatives that have defined Woods’s career.
Woods’s 82 career tournament wins were buoyed largely by his success at marquee golf tournaments. Starting in 1999, the PGA tours across the world created three new tournaments (and later a fourth) called the World Golf Championships. These new tournaments were added to bring more high-profile events to the schedule. While not quite as prestigious as the four major championships and The PLAYERS (TPC), these tournaments carried considerable clout. From 1999-2023 (the tournaments disbanded in 2023), Woods won more World Golf Championships (18) than the next five most successful winners combined [Dustin Johnson (6), Phil Mickelson (3), Rory McIIroy (3), Geoff Ogilvy (3), and Darren Clarke or several others (2)]. All told, Woods won 38 marquee tournaments (15 majors, 18 WGCs, 3 Tour Championships, and 2 Players Championships). Nicklaus wasn’t around for the WGCs, but no other golfer born since 1975 has even won eleven marquee tournaments.
It should come as no surprise that Woods has been the #1 ranked golfer more often than anyone else. What should surprise is the fact that since the first Official World Golf Ranking was released in 1986, he has been ranked number #1 for a remarkable 683 weeks, which is more than the next three highest marks combined [Greg Norman (331), Dustin Johnson (135), and Scottie Scheffler (126)]. This, despite the fact that the rankings have existed for nearly 40 years. Woods’ place atop the year-end golf rankings a record 12 times was due, in large part, to his status as having the lowest single-season scoring average and the lowest career scoring average of all-time. In fact, he owns the six lowest single-season adjusted scoring averages in history.
Perhaps the most impressive measure of Woods’s dominance is his margin of victory at the biggest tournaments. Since 1896, nobody other than Woods has won a major by more than nine strokes. Woods won majors by 15 and 12 strokes, respectively. Since WWII, he holds the largest margin of victory at the U.S. Open (15 strokes in ‘00), the Masters (12 strokes in ‘97), and the Open Championship (8 strokes in ‘00). Even Jack Nicklaus never won a tournament by more than nine strokes, let alone a major. Woods won 12 tournaments by at least seven strokes. Nicklaus managed that just four times. Phil Mickelson–the greatest golfer of the past 50 years who isn’t Tiger Woods–has just one career tournament win of 7+ strokes.
From 1998-2005, Woods made an unthinkable 142 consecutive cuts at PGA tournaments. Byron Nelson has the second longest streak at a relatively meager 113. Even more impressive is that Woods won 22.8% of the tournaments he entered which is the highest winning percentage in history. That he accomplished such a robust winning percentage in the most competitive era in history makes it all the more impressive. In fact, he could lose 304 consecutive tournaments and still have a higher career winning percentage than Nicklaus. The list of extraordinary feats on Wood’s ledger is simply too innumerable to fit it all in. Like George Costanza trying to fit one more item into his wallet, I have no choice but to shove additional superlatives into random places. Like right here: Woods owns the tour records for consecutive holes without a bogie (an unfathomable streak of 110 holes) and consecutive rounds at par or below (an equally unfathomable streak of 52 rounds).
Woods put together dominant winning streaks on the PGA Tour that are simply hard to believe given how competitive the tour has been in the 21st century. He won seven consecutive PGA Tour events between 2006 and 2007, six consecutive events between 1999 and 2000, and then another five consecutive between 2007 and 2008. To put this in perspective, nobody in history has won five consecutive tournaments multiple times, and he did three times. Nobody else since 1953 has even won four consecutive tournaments. Woods’s seven consecutive tournament victories are the most in history among non-wartime PGA Tour seasons*.
Then there’s Woods’s greatest feat which is his eponymously named “Tiger Slam.” Of course, this refers to his record streak of winning four consecutive majors from 2000-01. Nobody has ever held the championship of all four major tournaments at the same time. Only two golfers, Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus, have even won three of the four majors, consecutively. Woods won consecutive majors five times in his career. Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus (both twice) are the only other golfers to do it more than once since the fourth major (The Masters) was added in 1934.
* Byron Nelson won 11 consecutive tournaments in 1945. However, many of the best golfers in the world did not compete in these events due to wartime obligations. Ben Hogan and Jimmy Demaret only competed in one of the 11 events each, and even then both were coming off a multi-year hiatus due to military service. While Sam Snead competed in seven of the 11 tournaments, he too was coming off a multi-year hiatus prior to the ‘45 season.
The Verdict
Conventional arguments regarding the golf GOAT are often superficial. For some, the thought process doesn’t go further than “18 is greater than 15.” However, there is so much more to this comparison than raw numbers. For instance, there’s no telling how many majors Tiger Woods would have won had he played in the 60s and 70s. It almost certainly would’ve been more than 18. On the other hand, Nicklaus almost certainly would have won fewer than 18 majors had he played in the loaded fields of the 2000s. Additionally, Woods was actually more successful at major tournaments than Nicklaus despite winning fewer overall. In the 24 years between Nicklaus’s first and last major victories, he won 18 of the 96 (18.75%) majors he entered. In the 22 years between Wood’s first and last major victories, he won 15 of 75 majors (20%).
The debate really comes down to one question: does Woods’s dominance offset Nicklaus’s longevity? Interestingly, the golf world is almost in universal agreement that Bobby Jones deserves to be rated higher than rivals Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen on the all-time list despite the fact that Hagen and Sarazen had a massive advantage over Jones in both longevity and raw totals. Almost nobody has a problem deferring to Jones’s dominant run. Yet, many of these same people get tripped up on Woods for the exact same reason. I deferred to dominance in the Jones vs. Hagen/Sarazen comparisons, and I’ll do the same in the GOAT debate. Nicklaus doesn’t come close to the mind-blowing statistics that Woods compiled. The list is so long that it is impossible to include them all, but here’s one more: From 1997-2013, Woods was 126 below par at major tournaments which is 251 strokes b