Best of the Players Championship: The 25 Most Dominant Performances
By Bill Felber
Among Jack Nicklaus’s three Players championships, statistically the most dominant occurred at the 1976 tournament played at Inverrary outside Miami. Nicklaus won by three strokes over J.C. Snead and by seven over the rest of the field. His performance translated to 3.34 standard deviations superior to the 286.38 average for players completing all four rounds on the 7,128 yard layout.
For the record, completing those four rounds was a challenge unto itself since Saturday’s scheduled third round was wiped out entirely by rain. That left plenty of casual water to be dealt with Sunday and prompted the movement of the final round back to Monday.
Nicklaus rarely let a small thing like rain bother him. One stroke behind Don January through the first 36 holes, he maneuvered around and occasionally through the wet conditions in Sunday’s third round to post a 68 that tied Snead.
On Monday, Snead fashioned a second straight 68, yet Nicklaus still wore him down with incessantly brilliant play. He seized the lead with a birdie at No. 5 and led by two at the turn. When Nicklaus eagled the 15th, people stopped asking “who?” and started asking “by how much?” The answer turned out to be “three.”
Snead could have taken solace from his own performance, which although not good enough to win still registered 2.77 standard deviations better than the field. That level of dominance would have won all but 13 of the 45 Players Championships ever contested.