The U.S. Open’s 10 greatest players: career rating

They’ve played the U.S. Open 120 times, long enough for the tournament to have developed many magic names. That in turn poses a challenging question: Who were the best?

We could answer that question merely by counting championships won. By that standard, four competitors stand out. Willie Anderson, Bob Jones, Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus all won the championship four times.

The problem with that method is that even championship competitions have good years and bad years. Some fields are simply deeper, more competitive than others, just as some courses are more penal. To normalize the natural changes that occur across time, I prefer a standard deviation system.

Measuring the standard deviation of every player’s performance against a field that includes the best of his contemporaries on the same course and in the same conditions eliminates the variables that would otherwise confound an effort to rate Hogan ahead of Nicklaus or Jones, or to compare three-time Tiger Woods with any of them.

This is a career rating of the Open’s 10 most accomplished names. A career rating assesses players over the reasonable span of their competitive lives. The span I use is from the date they turned pro until either their retirement or reaching age 50.

https://progolfnow.com/2020/08/08/pga-championship-brooks-koepka-bids-status-among-timers/

You can also rate performance over the best peak period of a player’s career, and if you do you will get a different result. We’ve done that; search this site for U.S. Open peak rating and you’ll find that list.

With each entry you will see a number ranging from about -.50 to about -1.80. That’s the player’s average standard deviation; golf being a game where lower is better, the more negative the number the higher the player ranks.

I have only measured players who competed in at least seven U.S. Opens, a figure inclusive enough to give some of the better contemporary players a chance to qualify…as in fact one has.

Here’s the full top 10.