Tiger Woods at Pebble Beach: The most dominant performance ever

Tiger Woods 2000 U.S. Open victory remains the most dominant performance in major golf history.

In the history of men’s major championship golf, there have been 452 winners. They include some memorable performances: Jack’s domination of Augusta National that awed Bobby Jones in 1965, Rory McIlroy’s eight-stroke runaway at Congressional in 2011, and Tiger Woods debut major win at Augusta in 1997, by a stunning dozen strokes.

Yet none of the 452 champions ever dominated a field as fully as Tiger did at Pebble Beach in 2000. It remains today what it was when Tiger accomplished it: the single most exceptional performance in the 159-year history of championship play.

The best way to measure exceptionality, particularly when dealing with accomplishments across generations, is by calculating the standard deviation of the performance from the field average. Standard deviation is the one tool that allows you to normalize all the variations in equipment, course design, travel and conditioning that would normally confound such a judgment.

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That’s because standard deviation is what we might think of as a “relative constant.” It assesses performance against a group of one’s peers doing the same thing with essentially the same equipment under essentially the same playing conditions and at the same time.

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.

When Tiger memorably lorded over the field by a record 15 strokes at Pebble in 2000, I calculate his score as 4.34 standard deviations better than the four-round field average.* Mathematicians would categorize a 4.34 standard deviation event as likely to occur in less than one-tenth of one percent of events. That puts Tiger’s Open in the 99.9 percent range.

For those too young to remember the 2000 U.S. Open, or whose memories may have faded over time, a brief refresher may be in order. Woods was 24 at the time, the world’s No. 1 ranked player and a two-time major champion by dint of his wins at the 1997 Masters and 1999 PGA. But he was not yet considered unbeatable; that status would largely follow Pebble Beach.

Indeed, there were six former Open champions in the field, at least a couple of whom – Ernie Els and Tom Kite – were viewed as capable of giving Woods a good run. So were 1999 British Open champion David Duval, Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson, at the time still seeking his first major title.

What most of the field failed to cope with was Pebble, whose intrinsically nasty weather lashed the field most of the week. The average opening round score of 75.0 rose nearly a full stroke on Friday when winds off the ocean played havoc with shots. Woods was virtually the only player oblivious to the conditions, backing up an opening 65 with a Friday 69 for a 36-hole total of 134 and a six-stroke lead over Thomas Bjorn and Miguel Angel Jimenez.

Thirty-six scores in the 80s were turned in during those first two rounds.

Of the most seriously considered contenders, Els, nine strokes behind at 143, was the only one within 10 strokes of Woods.

Saturday was a rerun of the first two rounds. Woods managed nothing better than an even par 71, but Els – at 68 – was the only player among the surviving 62 to beat it. He stood second through three rounds, but a solid 10 strokes behind Woods’ 205. For most the course played almost impossibly tough, the average score rising to 77.1 strokes.

Despite the utter absence of pressure and the continually challenging conditions that drove the field average above 82 strokes, Woods closed with a Sunday 67 to build his final margin over Els and Jimenez to 15. That broke a record for winning margin that had been set by Old Tom Morris back in 1862.

Before or since, nobody’s come especially close to dominating a major as Woods did in 2000. In fact, the gap between the exceptionality of Woods’ 2000 U.S. Open and the next most dominant performance in major history is as great as the gap between No. 2 and No. 23 on that list. Here is a table of the 10 most dominant major championship performances in history.

Rank, player Year Tournament Score

1 Tiger Woods 2000 U.S. Open -4.34

2 Shane Lowry 2016 British Open -3.72

3 Davis Love 1997 PGA -3.54

4 Henrik Stenson 2000 British Open -3.50

4 Louis Oozthuizen 2010 British Open -3.50

6 Jack Nicklaus 1975 Masters -3.48

7 Tom Watson 1977 British Open -3.38

8 Rory McIlroy 2011 U.S. Open -3.35

9 Jack Nicklaus 1980 PGA -3.34

10 Tiger Woods 2000 British Open -3.33

10 Ray Floyd 1976 Masters -3.33

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*The precise number hinges on methodology, and particularly on the handling of outliers. For specific determinants of this rating, see The Hole Truth, by the author, published in 2019 by University of Nebraska Press.

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