Pro Golf Now
Fansided

Tiger Woods: Had he already beaten Sam Snead’s record?

By Kathlene Bissell

INZAI, JAPAN - OCTOBER 28: Tiger Woods of the United States celebrates winning the tournament on the 18th green during the final round of the Zozo Championship at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club on October 28, 2019 in Inzai, Chiba, Japan. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
INZAI, JAPAN - OCTOBER 28: Tiger Woods of the United States celebrates winning the tournament on the 18th green during the final round of the Zozo Championship at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club on October 28, 2019 in Inzai, Chiba, Japan. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit

Tiger Woods officially tied the all-time record for PGA TOUR victories with No. 82 at the ZOZO Championship…but had he passed Sam Snead long ago?

All the headlines say that Tiger Woods has tied Sam Snead’s PGA Tour record with 82 victories, but he may have surpassed it already.

What?

Yes. Exactly.

Sometimes records are fluid.  They shouldn’t be, but they are. In the case of Sam Snead’s victory total, it has been listed as three different numbers in the last 30 years. If Snead were still alive, he might be upset, or he might shrug his shoulders.  We will never know.

Right now, anyplace you look on-line for the total number of Sam Snead’s PGA Tour victories, will probably show the number 82. That includes his page on pgatour.com.

If you look up Tiger Woods on pgatour.com, you’ll also see 82 PGA Tour victories.

But did Woods really tie Snead’s number or has he already broken it?

You’d think there wouldn’t be any confusion on this matter, but it all depends on which source — all of them from the PGA Tour — that you use to measure.

Sitting in the back of many bookshelves, long forgotten by many writers and never seen by most who are covering golf today are media guides from the 1980s.  The 1983 PGA Tour media guide, for instance,  says, as clear as the nose on your face, on page 249, that, as of the end of 1982, Sam Snead was the leader in PGA Tour victories with 84.  Not 82, but 84.

What?

Yes. Exactly.

That number remained consistent throughout the 1980s including the 1989 PGA Tour media guide, which still credits Snead with 84.

Mysteriously, one season later, in 1990, the updated version of the media guide still has Sam Snead leading the number of PGA Tour victories, but his number mysteriously shrunk to 81.  What happened?

11 Apr 1999: Byron Nelson, Gene Sarazen and Sam Snead start the 1999 US Masters at the Augusta National GC in Augusta, Georgia, USA. \ Mandatory Credit: Craig Jones /Allsport
11 Apr 1999: Byron Nelson, Gene Sarazen and Sam Snead start the 1999 US Masters at the Augusta National GC in Augusta, Georgia, USA. \ Mandatory Credit: Craig Jones /Allsport /

He lost three victories through no fault of his own. Devious bean-counters were at work, subtracting some of Snead’s total. They decided some of his victories weren’t really victories. How can that be?  Nobody really knows.

He was not alone. Jack Nicklaus’ victory total also suffers from fuzzy math.

In the 1983 media guide, reflecting the conclusion of 1982, Nicklaus had 69 PGA Tour victories. By the 1989 media guide, he had 71, including the 1984 Memorial and the 1986 Masters. And yet in the 1990 media guide, he was given credit for only 70.

What?

Yes. Exactly.

Strangely, Nicklaus’ three British Open titles weren’t in any of those numbers because the PGA Tour didn’t count them then. In fact, they aren’t even mentioned in his list of victories on the PGA Tour’s website.  Even stranger, if you count the titles listed on pgatour.com, it’s only 68.

So somewhere along the line, Nicklaus got a victory cut from his career total, which is now officially listed as 73, but perhaps should be 74.  And someone at the PGA Tour has dropped several titles from Nicklaus’ record. You could call it the Case of The Disappearing Victories if it were fiction.  But it’s not.

MADISON, WISCONSIN – JUNE 22: (L-R) Jack Nicklaus warms up with Brett Favre on the practice range before they play in the celebrity foursome during round two of the American Family Insurance Championship at the University Ridge Golf Course on June 22, 2019 in Madison, Wisconsin. (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images)
MADISON, WISCONSIN – JUNE 22: (L-R) Jack Nicklaus warms up with Brett Favre on the practice range before they play in the celebrity foursome during round two of the American Family Insurance Championship at the University Ridge Golf Course on June 22, 2019 in Madison, Wisconsin. (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images) /

Ben Hogan didn’t lose any titles in that span. He was still at 62. Arnold Palmer remained at 61. But somebody had it out for Snead and Nicklaus!

But back to Sam Snead and Tiger Woods. Based on the 1990s media guides, you could make a case for saying that Woods already tied Snead last April when he won the Masters.  Then, you could say that he eclipsed Snead with his 82nd victory at the ZOZO.

Oh, not so fast.

Even though all the way though the 1990s, Snead’s victory total was held at 81,  the bean-counters got involved again. Somewhere in between the 2002 and 2003 seasons, Sam Snead got one victory back, putting him at 82, where he stands today.

Is this nuts?  Yes. Exactly.

Did Sam Snead win 81, 82 or 84 tournaments?  It depends on which year you want to check.

Currently the number is 82, and Tiger Woods just tied that. But anybody with an old media guide would make a case to say that Woods already tied Snead at last year’s Masters and surpassed him with the victory at ZOZO.

More from Pro Golf Now

The issue is how can anybody hope to match an historic record if the people keeping the records keep changing them?  Victories aren’t elastic. They are or they aren’t.

With this in mind, some golf historians and nit-pickers may prefer to say that Woods has to get to 84 before he ties Snead and 85 before he passes Snead.  Personally, I’m not in that camp.  I’m in the camp of county the events on the professional tour when Snead played and use them.  Don’t arbitrarily add and subtract.

Granted, Snead’s victory total includes some really strange wins that were against very small fields in events like the Palm Beach Round Robin (which he won four times) and the Inverness Four-Ball ( which he won twice). But Snead also won the Miami Four-Ball which was counted as a victory for him, just as it was for Byron Nelson when it was the first victory of Nelson’s famous streak in 1945.

The thing to remember is that professional golf wasn’t the same in the 1930s and 1940s and even the 1950s.  However, the good players played the events that were available, and the best players won most of them. Snead won more than anybody else, until now. That’s why the right number is important.

While Sam Snead and Tiger Woods played different kinds of events and against different fields, they both beat the top players of their day when they played. Neither mailed it in because they couldn’t if they wanted to win.

However, it would be nice to have someone go back and check on the REAL number of victories for Sam Snead, so we would know with 100% certainty.  It wouldn’t hurt to check those for Jack Nicklaus as well, because no matter what Snead and Nicklaus won, there shouldn’t be any doubt about their records. Right now, there is.

Next. Tiger's 82nd PGA TOUR win helps cement GOAT status. dark

All I know for sure is that Kathy Whitworth is ahead of both of them with 88 career LPGA victories.  At least, I think that’s the number, but what do I know? The LPGA has her height listed at 5’4,” and she’s closer to 5’10.” So, whose numbers can we trust anyway? Apparently nobody’s.

Home/Tiger Woods News