Guys/golf experts - how has Tiger gotten to #1 without winning a major for many years? Is it because he's won a lot of "non-major" but still important golf tournaments in the last year or two?
I'm obviously a tennis guy so the easiest comparison would be this example:
is it like a player who wins a whole lot of Masters 1000 tournaments but not a Grand Slam, but since the Grand Slams have been shared by different players they have still won enough Masters 1000 tournaments to be #1?
Just fundamentally different sports really. Apples/oranges things.
Couple of number ones recently have not won a major at all, Donald being the dullest, and Westwood the fattest.
The fact is golf is a sport where luck plays a massive part IMHO, a ball kicking right can be unplayable, or stays steady and it can be middle of the fairway. Chip ins and long putts are great, but with contours of the green, you can never be certain even a perfectly hit shot will go in, and maybe less perfectly hit ones will. Get a good bounce, hit the flag hard. There's just so many variables in 270 odd shots, where the course isn't constant, like a tennis court.
Yeah you get the odd lucky frames and let-cords in tennis, but it's not to the same degree.
I like to laugh at Greg Norman, but you have to say he was an unlucky bastard, type in Bob Tway or Larry Mize into Youtube for evidence.
Mickelson won his first major with a pulled putt which he misread. Plenty of genius shots by him and the likes of seve, were pulled off when he'd clattered into trees, yes incredible for doing that, but sometimes you just have no shot.
So you get random Major winners who don't really deserve it, who haven't played that well in their career but have great luck, combined with great play on one Tournament, so people who have just won the normal Tournaments, and been consistent in the Majors can be number 1.
Adam Scott was one where he didn't win out of turn, and the disasters of before probably tempered him.
I always feel a bit sorry for golfers being called chokers when they just have some people play ridiculously well around them, like when Schwartzel won his Masters, really not a lot anyone can do about the run he had coming in. Choking is collapsing awfully like Sergio yesterday or McIlroy or Norman in the Masters.
Yet don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean that Woods and Nicklaus are just luckier than the rest, no they get themselves in the position again and again, over 20 odd years. Nicklaus had a ridiculous amount of seconds, and places, you get there enough you win enough. Obviously if you have a strong nerve, you win even more.
Tiger does the same, all the multi-major winners will have had many close calls.
Having said all that there was times when Tiger and Jack mid-career were just so good that the vagaries mattered little. Tiger was robbed of a grand-slam when he played in a gale in the Open.
. Lingmerth the threat ATM.
, as for being better than rory, do you really think that is the case?