Tiger Woods: At his Peak, there were none better than Eldrick

Between 1998 and 2002, Tiger Woods dominated the game’s majors to an extent no player in history has ever done.

For sustained dominance over a defined period, no golfer in history has ever been better than Tiger Woods was from 1998 to 2002.

Not Jack, not Bobby, not Arnold, not Harry, not Walter, not Sam, not Ben. Nobody.

You can try to make an argument for some of the others.

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During his best period of five consecutive seasons, Jones won more majors (10 from 1926 to 1930) than Woods (7 from 1998 to 2002.) But four of Jones’ wins during that period came in amateur-only events, which meant he competed against significantly weaker fields.

Between 1971 and 1975, Nicklaus finished top two more often (17 times) than Woods (11 times) did between 1998 and 2002. So did Palmer (13 times) between 1960 and 1964. But they both only got to six wins during those peak blocks, one less than Woods.

You can try to make a case for any of those greats, or Hogan, or Hagen, or even Harry Vardon, the dominant British professional of the first decade of the 20th Century. But the data points decisively to Woods.

The best way to measure relative dominance, particularly across generations – given all the variations in equipment, course design, travel and conditioning imposed by time – is by calculating the standard deviation of the game’s great players compared with their peers. Standard deviation can revitalize excellence across periods because while all those factors cited above change over time, they are essentially equal for all the competitors during the course of any single weekend event.

Because they present a stable block of competitions attracting the world’s best, I prefer to look at the four major championships. To ascertain a rating for each player, I determine the standard deviation for their performance in every major in which they competed. Then, modeling my rating off the standard USGA method for determining a handicap, I throw out the player’s 10 worst ratings and average his 10 best.

If you remember standard deviation from high school, as a general proposition a score than is one standard deviation better than the field average in any set of numbers – say golf scores – will rate better than approximately two-thirds of all numbers in the field. At two standard deviations, we’re talking about a performance better than about 97 percent.

That’s not my rule; that’s a math rule.

Between 1998 and 2002, Tiger’s 10 best performances broke down as follows:

Year & Tournament Finish Score Std. Dev.

1998 British Open 3rd 281 -1.95

1999 U.S. Open T-3 281 -2.07

1999 PGA 1st 277 -2.53

2000 U.S. Open 1st 272 -4.34

2000 British Open 1st 269 -3.33

2000 PGA 1st 270 -2.44

2001 Masters 1st 272 -2.21

2002 Masters 1st 276 -2.55

2002 U.S. Open 1st 277 -2.77

2002 PGA 2nd 278 -2.62

The average standard deviation of those 10 performances is -2.62. (In golf, where low scores win, negative standard deviations are preferred.) Translated: During that period, Tiger’s average good performance was better than about 99.3 percent of all players on Tour.

Keep in mind that -2.62 figure is his average, not his pinnacle

Nobody else in golf history can match that under the same measurement yardsticks, but just for grins let’s do the math. Here are the five-year peak averages for the 10 best male players in the history of major tournament golf*:

Rank, Player Seasons Avg. std. dev.

1. Tiger Woods 1998-2002 -2.68

2. Jack Nicklaus 1971-1975 -2.35

3. Arnold Palmer 1960-1964 -2.32

T4 James Braid 1901-1910 -2.18

T4 Tom Watson 1977-1981 -2.18

T6 Bobby Jones 1926-1930 -2.11

T6 Walter Hagen 1924-1928 -2.11

8. Sam Snead 1947-1951 -2.10

T9 Ben Hogan 1950-1954 -2.06

T9 Phil Mickelson 2001-2005 -2.06

At his performance peak, Woods not only was the greatest golfer in history, he excelled by an extraordinary amount. The gap in peak rating between Woods at No. 1 and Nicklaus at No. 2 is as great as the gap between Nicklaus and the tandem of Jordan Spieth and Byron Nelson, who are tied for 13th place at -2.02.

Does this seal the case for Woods as the greatest golfer of all time? That depends on how you define greatness. There are two ways — peak value and career value — and neither is intrinsically better than the other.

If you prefer to assess a player over the entirety of his career, then no, Woods is not the best. He significantly trails Nicklaus, Snead and Hagen.

But if your definition of greatness primarily considers how high up the performance mountain a player rose, and how consistently he stayed there during his peak seasons, then yes, you can safely argue that Tiger Woods between 1998 and 2002 was the best that the game of golf has ever produced.

Next. What Would the Career of Tiger Woods be like without His “Lost Decade”?. dark

*For specific parameters governing the determination of these ratings, see The Hole Truth, by the author, published in 2019 by University of Nebraska Press.

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