Numbers Confirm: Tiger > The Field
I mentioned this past Saturday while covering for Sparty’s lazy bum in TMA that during my time in St. Louis, I was confined to getting my updates on the happenings in the world the old school way, via newspapers. Yes, they have internet in St. Louis; they just didn’t really have it for me.
One of the things that happened while reading the newspaper-other than the never-ending compulsion to wash my hands-was that I read stories from each section of the two papers I was consuming each day: USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. A byproduct of this adventure was that I noticed a big table…and you guys know that if anything’s gonna catch my eye, it’s gonna be a well-crafted chart or a data-filled table. This one happened to be the World Golf Rankings in USA Today. One thing immediately jumped out at me. It wasn’t that Tiger Woods was the #1 ranked golfer in the world, but the margin by which Tiger Woods is the #1 ranked golfer in the world.
Seriously, take a look at the following table and notice the column labeled “Pts. Avg.” My basic understanding of the rankings is that this is the average number of points the golfer earns each tournament and is based on a formula which includes the other variables listed in the table’s column headings along with some weighted values for specific, more important tournaments (like majors)*. And, as you can tell by the order, the “Pts. Avg.” is the final basis for the rankings. I’ve included the top 50 below for you to scan through (miz note: I apologize for the slight readability problem with the table; the graphic was too big. If you click on it, it should take you to a page where it can be enlarged and viewed clearly. Also, if you’d like to see the top 200 players, click the link here and you should be able to enlarge it as well for clear viewing).
Just look at the ”Avg. Pts.” for a minute….notice the gulf between #1 Tiger and #2 Phil Mickelson (-2.28 points) and then down to #3 Paul Casey (-4.22 points). Why are those differences so profound? Let’s, for example, look at #50 Justin Rose (2.35 points). If you add the difference between Woods’ and Mickelson’s points to Rose’s points, it would bump him up to 4.63 points and knock Sean O’Hair out of the #15 spot. Again, let’s add the canyon between Woods’ and Casey’s points to Rose’s and take him up to 6.57 points…also known as the #4 ranking! The distance between the #1 and #2 rankings is equivalent to the distance between being ranked #15 and #50. Even more telling, just considering the difference from #1 to #3 is enough to catapult Rose up 46 rankings to #4.
Here’s another way to look at it (again, you may need to click the graph to enlarge):
Look at the steep drop from #1 to #3 and then notice the much more casual decline from #3 to #200. Not only is Woods so much better than his closest competition-I’d consider #2 Mickelson through #10 Jim Furyk (who Woods has already lapped in “Avg. Pts”) his closest competition-none of the other guys really seperate themselves from each other. It’s a bunch of guys scrapping to simply sniff the top 10. Here’s the differences from one ranking to the next (you know the drill…click on the graphic to enlarge):
The bar graph is showing the distance between each guy and his closest competitor. You can see that for the most part, the top 50 kinda seperate themselves from each other for the most part whereas from about #51 through #200, the greatest “Avg. Pts.” difference between players never tops 0.10 while the average is as small as 0.01. Those guys are really fighting each other. But, to Woods, they and basically anyone else-especially considering Mickelson is currently not competing due to his wife’s breast cancer-are an insignificant challenge. If you care to see the data that shows the margin between each player (with a bonus column showing exactly how far each player is from Woods!!), check out this table.
I guess there’s no real point to this exercise other than to present just another piece of evidence that Tiger Woods is the best golfer in the field every week that he decides to play…as if we didn’t already know that.
*Here’s the link in case you’d like to read up on the Official World Golf Rankings.
Mizerle06 is a senior writer, editor, and occasional copy-editor here at Sparty & Friends. If you’d like to email him, do so via mizerle06@gmail.com.
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spreadsheets…graphs…smells like a miz post.
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Isn’t it usual to have large deviations the further away from the average you get? I would expect the graphs to usually look that way whether it’s now with Tiger or back in the 70s with Jack Nicklaus.
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the top of the rankings might have been closer in the 70s. i think there was a lot more depth of top golfers back then.
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file this under the “no shit sherlock” um…file.
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fail.
tiger is a freak for generations. jack had some guys who gave him fits, but there was really only 10 or so dudes who could challenge him. any one of the top 125 could beat tiger on any given day if, you know, he wasn’t tiger woods.
the OWGR is a crock of shit, btw…there’s no reason whatsoever european and asian events should count even remotely as heavy as they do. the strength of the fields in europe and asia are pathetic in terms of quality, yet, ryo ishikawa can win some japanese events and find himself in the top 50? get outta here.
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of course, it was a different formula back then.
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yea, there wasn’t a OWGR in 1977, i know that much.
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Where is Sunday Tiger Woods?
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he missed the cut.
/BAM!
//fire haney
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i italicize think and spencer still jumps over me. jeebus.
but you actually helped prove my point by saying there were 10 guys that gave jack fits, even when he was playing his best (enter Tom Watson). You cannot tell me that there are 10 guys on tour right now that do the same to Tiger when he is on his game.
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no, and that’s MY point. tiger is SOOOO much better than jack in their respective primes that it’s foolish to even compare the two.
think about this…phil, vijay, ernie els and retief goosen are all all-time greats. phil especially is one of the most talented ever to touch a club, and will no doubt go down as a top 10 all-time player. they all have 3 majors (goose has 2) because tiger is THAT good.
but…i should’ve said tiger WAS that good, because now, there’s a flotilla of dudes who are just as good, yes, even when tiger’s on his game. at tiger’s own tourney, he was firing on all cylinders and shot a 67 at a us open worthy course, yet got lapped by hunter mahan by FIVE strokes. there’s so much talent on the PGA these days it’s insane…
and yet, tiger is still the best player on the planet without question. my point is this…there ARE tons of guys who can go toe to toe with tiger, but at the end of the day, it won’t matter because tiger is so fucking good that he’ll do whatever it takes to one-up them.
/i realize i’ve contradicted myself a thousand times over in that comment
//i heart golf
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miz just wanted to write a post with a chart.
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Miz is an engineer
What I learned from this post is that Paul Casey is the number 3 golfer in the world?!?!?! Really. I’m shocked at this
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what is more shocking is that Sergio is number 5. how many majors, sergio? how many?
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He has the same number of majors as Paul Casey. Hell Casey has only won once on the PGA tour (10 times in Europe though)
Hell Casey has only 4 top tens in majors and 10 miss cuts
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he contends in a lot of them…and is in pretty much every tourney he enters because his ballstriking is so solid.
no shit…he has ONE pga tour win. ONE.
so why is he so high? because euro tour events are weighted way to heavily. probably why sergio is so high.
oh, and not on there? paddy harrington, he of multiple majors. why? because he sucks and misses the cut a ton.
/screw you paddy
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i was hoping for something much more vicious from you.
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it’s so hard to defend him anymore. im still his biggest fan, and his ballstriking is as good as ever, but he’s just such a fucking headcase on the greens, it’s insane. i just don’t understand it at all. at the us open, he missed like 5 GIR’s the whole week but couldn’t sink a thing.
he’s GOING to win a major though…nobody doubts that.
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I’d not be surprised if he never wins a major. By now, it has to be in his head to a large degree in each one. He’s got the skills to win, but how about his head?
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if greg fucking norman can win two majors, phil can win three, and tom weiskopf can win one, sergio will do just fine.
eventually, he’s going to win a british open, where he’s comfortable enough on the greens (because they’re slower) to over come his brainfarts. a green jacket is probably way out of the question tho.
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Just not at Carnoustie.
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i dunno…maybe this time he doesn’t get the shaft from the golf gods. maybe his putt to win doesn’t hit a little chunk by the hole or maybe his shot that hits the flag doesn’t fly 20 feet away.
he collapsed, but not nearly as bad as andres romero or van de velde.
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Those were on a whole different level of collapse. Norman-esque even.
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Good to see the master of hyperbole spencer comes over and speaks through his sphincter on Tiger and Sergio here as well-lol
He knows EVERYTHING about an era he wasn’t alive for. Wait, I think that’s the way it is on every blog. Wait until you guys are in your 40’s, you’ll see what I have to deal with!
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/get off my lawn’d
face it, jpq…the new era is better. just like the next generation of golfers that come after tiger will be better than this one.
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