The U.S. Open: The 10 Best Players From Each Decade

The U.S. Open is America’s national championship.  Its stars rank among the game’s greatest.

Since the Open was first contested in 1895, most of the game’s greats dominated. Willie Anderson won four times during the tournament’s first decade.

In the 1920s, Bobby Jones won four times. Ben Hogan was the premier figure of the post-World War II period, followed in quick succession by Arnold Palmer and then Jack Nicklaus.

More recently, Tiger Woods delivered a succession of historic U.S. Open performances.

Each of those men will emerge atop a list of the 10 most dominant players for their decades of exceptionality. In other decades, though, there will be surprises.

Between the retirement of Jones in 1930 and the emergence of Hogan following World War II, no dominant figure emerged. As a result, the statistically most dominant player of the 1930s U.S. Opens is, by the standards of golf history, an obscure figure.

Here’s the system used to determine the best players of each period, beginning with 1895 through 1905 and continuing through 2010 to 2021.

• Players will be considered if they played four rounds in at least half of the U.S. Open competitions played during the decade in question. Depending on the period in question, that will either be five or six tournament finishes.
• The yardstick will be the standard deviation of the player’s performance in each U.S. Open. Standard deviation, which is a measure of relative exceptionality, is preferred because – unlike a raw score – it normalizes for season-to-season variations in course setup, equipment, weather, and numerous other factors.
• Keep in mind that because golf is a game where less is more, a lower standard deviation is preferable to a higher one. A decade-average standard deviation of -1.0 or lower would be of contending caliber.

The U.S. Open: 1895 to 1905

A half dozen names dominate the U.S. Open record book. Chronologically the first of those was Willie Anderson, who won four of the first 11 national championships with four additional top fives.

Like most of the country’s best early players, Anderson was a native Scot who came to America to seek his fortune teaching and playing the nascent game.

He entered the 1897 championship as a 17-year-old and placed second, one stroke behind Joe Lloyd. He was third in 1898 and fifth in 1899.

By the start of the 1901 championship at Myopia Hunt Club, Anderson, barely into his 20s, had learned all he needed to know. He beat Alex Smith that year in a playoff, tied for fifth in 1902, and between 1903 and 1905 reeled off three straight wins.

His -1.65 dominance score for the period has since been exceeded by only three men, all immortals. Those three are Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, and Tiger Woods.

Here’s the top 10 for the 1895-1905 era.

1.       Willie Anderson, -1.65

2.       Stewart Gardiner, -1.37

3.       Willie Smith, -1.35

4.       Laurie Auchterlonie, -1.20

5.       Alex Smith, -1.13

6.       George Low, -0.78

7.       Bernard Nicholls, -0.63

8.       James Foulis, -0.60

9.       Joe Lloyd, -0.53

10.   Gilbert Nicholls, -0.44

We do not think of this developmental period of the American game as having produced especially dominant players—aside from Anderson, of course. But it did.

In fact, it is the only decade until the 1990s producing five players who achieved a dominance rating stronger than -1.00.

That’s probably due to the shallowness of the young talent pool, which had the effect of underlining the exceptionality of the front-rank players.

Gardiner, second for the decade, is decidedly the most surprising name, largely because he never won an Open.

But in his six Open appearances between 1900 and 1905, Gardiner only once finished below sixth place, and in 1902 he tied for second, although six shots behind Laurie Auchterlonie.