Measuring Greatness of Tiger Woods, by Numbers
By Bill Felber
Career greatness
Career scores represent the sum of the standard deviations of a player’s finish in all of his career majors between the day he turns pro and his 50th birthday. Here Woods’ standing among the greats suffers at least a bit.
Considering the careers of all male competitors in Major championships since the creation of the British Open in 1860, Woods ranks fourth with a score of 58.59.
Woods trails Nicklaus (108.71), Snead (82.23) and Hagen (76.19). His relative lack of success in recent Majors has left him in danger of being passed on the career list by several other stars, notably Gene Sarazen (57.67) and Hogan (56.03).
Contemplating Woods as only the fourth greatest male golfer in history is sure to befuddle and possibly anger those who forget two important criteria laid out above: We’re distinguishing peak from career performance, and we’re assessing only the performance-related quantifiables.
In fact there was a day not all that long ago when Woods appeared on track to challenge Nicklaus for the greatest career resume. When he hobbled off the course at Torrey Pines, having defeated Rocco Mediate to win the 2008 U.S. Open, Tiger’s career score stood at 68.59. True, that was about 40 standard deviations behind Nicklaus, but Woods was not yet 33 and he was gaining on Jack at the rate of 7.23 standard deviations per Major season.
At that rate of gain he would have overhauled Nicklaus on the career charts some time during the 2014 season. Woods would not yet have been 40, leaving plenty of time to expand his grip on career No. 1.