Having selected our 100 greatest ever golfers, inevitably the next question is which one is the greatest of them all? Before we consider that, it is worth reflecting that no golfer, however great, is perfect. Lee Trevino said: ‘God never gives it all to one person – except maybe Jack Nicklaus.’ But perhaps even Nicklaus did not have it all. Others had better short games and, occasionally, he could have been more aggressive. What about Bobby Jones? As a young man he was hot-headed enough to quit during the third round of the 1921 Open at St. Andrews, although he played out the rest of that round and the next as a marker. Jones scaled the greatest of heights but then retired, whereas others had the gift of longevity.
But if we could pick our perfect golfer, what would he or she look like? Which player was the best driver, the best with the irons, had the best short game, or was deadliest on the greens? Let’s start with the swing. Harry Vardon must be the man to start with for an upright swing, and then Byron Nelson for such a repeating motion. Bobby Jones must be in there, his ‘drowsy grace’ belying the power that he rarely unleashed but with which he occasionally surprised Sam Snead, blowing it past Sam when a par five allowed. Snead, of course, for his flexibility and longevity; Christy O’Connor Snr for natural fluidity; the effortlessness of Ernie Els, the ‘Big Easy’; the sweet smoothness of wee Ian Woosnam; the efficiency of Ben Hogan’s pared-down swing. Joyce Wethered, with her ‘perfect equilibrium’, had the most supreme balance, while Tony Jacklin won the US Open concentrating solely on his tempo. Mickey Wright, whose swing was described as a combination of Jones’s grace and Hogan’s efficiency, hit the ball with such authority and arguably came closest to capturing it all.
Vardon, rarely seen in the rough, and Nelson were two of the straightest players ever; Hale Irwin, Colin Montgomerie and Annika Sörenstam some of their modern equivalents. Moe Norman was hardly orthodox, but Hogan told him to keep hitting the ‘accidents’ that went dead straight. When it comes to driving, however, few could beat Jack Nicklaus. The Bear himself said Hogan’s exhibition of driving at the 1960 US Open was the best he had seen, and at Carnoustie in the 1953 Open they said Hogan’s drives at the dangerous sixth (out of bounds on the left, bunkers centre and right) finished in the same divot every time. Rory McIlroy might be the ultimate driving machine today but what Nicklaus did with the equipment of his day was remarkable. ‘With a wooden driver it was difficult to be long but he had the power to be long and was also accurate,’ said Ken Brown. ‘People hit it as hard as him but they didn’t have his control.’
For a period in the early 1990s, Greg Norman was certainly the longest-straightest driver in the world and it helped him win the Open in 1993. At the time he was coached by Butch Harmon, who did a similar trick with Tiger Woods, who was a fine driver when he played with such control around the turn of the millennium. But later, when Tiger more often lashed at the ball, there were times when he could not keep it on the planet. In the women’s game, the first to really develop huge power was the magnificent Babe Zaharias, whose athleticism and sheer joie de vivre sent the ball distances never seen before.
Gene Sarazen’s albatross (double eagle) in the 1935 Masters qualifies him for recognition with fairway woods, and in this respect you could also mention Nelson and Gary Player. For a driver off the fairway, however, Henry Cotton amazed Henry Longhurst and friends. He could also knock over a shooting stick from 20 paces with a one-iron. Lee Trevino might have said not even God could hit a one-iron but Sandy Lyle certainly could. Snead must also get a mention, although once again Nicklaus probably takes the accolade. He singled out three one-iron shots in particular during his career, one of them the shot at the 17th hole at Pebble Beach which won him the 1972 US Open. Catherine Lacoste was a firecracker of a golfer who smacked a one-iron unlike any woman before her.
John Ball first showed what could be achieved with accurate approach play with iron clubs. Not for him merely finding a remote part of the green. Observers of Tommy Armour marvelled at his ball-striking with the irons, while Nelson, again, must be mentioned for his approach play. But you could do worse than look to three Europeans who won the Masters: Sir Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer and José María Olazábal. Few courses demand such a high degree of precision as Augusta National, and that trio were rarely hitting their approach shots with anything as short as a wedge. From the 100-yard range, however, no one did it better than Walter Hagen.
Getting up-and-down from greenside bunkers was virtually impossible until Sarazen invented the sand wedge, but it was Player who made it into an art form. Norman Von Nida was better out of sand than he was on the greens, and at times he aimed for the bunkers. At least then he might hole one or simply have a tap-in. Ernie Els has been the best of the modern players. When it comes to chipping, Phil Mickelson and Woods must be up there, but no one was better than Seve Ballesteros. From the moment he threaded a running chip between the bunkers at Birkdale in the 1976 Open, we knew a unique talent had arrived. He had the skill to read the terrain, the imagination to ‘see’ a shot, the technique to execute it and, above all, the self-belief to pull off the outrageous. Olazábal learned by osmosis from his friend and partner.
Putting, of course, is the game within a game. Willie Park Snr, the first Open champion, was a fine putter and used the same club as he did for driving huge distances. His son was an even better putter and said something that Ben Crenshaw took on board – that a man who could putt was a match for anyone. Crenshaw died putts into the hole beautifully, while Raymond Floyd stared them in. Bobby Locke seemed to be tipping his hat to the crowd when a 50-footer was only halfway to the hole. Billy Casper had great hands but his wristy action was the opposite of Bob Charles’s more pendulum-like motion. John Daly must get a shout for his lag-putting, particularly on the vast greens of St. Andrews, while Marlene Stewart Streit broke the spirit of many opponents by failing to miss, as had Walter Travis many years earlier, and Kathy Whitworth may be one of the greatest holer-outers ever. But when it comes to pressure putts, who can look beyond the triumvirate of Jones, Nicklaus and Woods? If one was better than the other two, well, answers on a postcard.
There are a few other factors to take into account, such as course management. Here, you would want Peter Thomson on board, as well as Nicklaus. Both had the priceless ability to think calmly under pressure, but others to look at would be Vardon, Jones, Hogan, Player and Woods (when not smashing his driver). But on the other hand, we want to be thrilled as well. Might there be a place for the ‘divine fury’ of James Braid or the ‘controlled abandon’ of Joe Carr? You would want the sheer whatever-will-happen-next unpredictability of Arnold Palmer, Ballesteros and Laura Davies – it would be risky and would not involve going backwards. The scrambling skills of Tom Watson and Mickelson could be added to the mix, with Watson adding the perseverance to get through any weather, as he has shown at many Opens, not least Sandwich in 2011.
When it comes to competitive longevity in the game, Watson is also on the list, along with John Ball, Snead, Julius Boros, Roberto de Vicenzo and Juli Inkster – plus Nicklaus, of course, for winning majors over almost a quarter of a century. Personality – a combination of Arnie and Seve, Jimmy Demaret and Nancy Lopez (hint to modern players: they all smiled), with both the modesty of Jones and the braggadocio of Hagen, is not too much to ask, is it? Oh, and this mythical creature would get on with it. Maybe not quite at the gallop of George Duncan but definitely without the dawdle introduced by Armour, Locke, Nicklaus and seemingly everyone nowadays.
One thing our perfect golfer should not be is too perfect. But then ‘golf is not a game of perfect’, as sports psychologist Bob Rotella tells us. Peter Dobereiner worried that if players worked so hard that they approached perfection, then ‘pro golf would become unwatchable and would die.’ He added: ‘Nobody loves a machine and nobody would want to take up a game that a machine can play better than a human.’
People have always worried about improving standards in golf. Even in 1899, when Horace Hutchinson was trying to grapple with the task of assessing the relative merits of Young Tom Morris, of yesteryear, with the then titan, Harry Vardon, he noted how different the game had become. ‘Scores are recorded now that were never dreamt of five-and-twenty years ago; courses are undoubtedly kept in much better condition nowadays, the horse mower was an unknown luxury to the ancients,’ Hutchinson wrote. ‘Again, clubs have improved and players have the advantage of many years experience in connection with the manufacture of balls.’
Perhaps any change, at any time, feels fundamental, but the recent shift so heavily in favour of power, thanks to highly engineered clubs and balls and better athleticism among the performers, certainly seems to be a pivotal time for the game. ‘The modern equipment has made it a power game,’ said Denis Pugh, a respected coach. ‘If you ask what three skills you need, it would be power, power and power. Then you need to be able to chip and putt, but if you can putt, the chipping is not so important. If you can hit the ball 350 yards off the tee, you don’t miss many greens with a wedge. So chipping becomes less of a skill you require and if you can putt, or rather if you don’t miss putts, you tend to see a low score going on the card.’
As well as better courses and equipment, coaching – there are kids all over the globe now with what David Leadbetter calls ‘tour player fundamentals’ – and fitness, the huge sums of money in the game has also had an effect. As well as making multimillionaires of the top players, it has also kept more journeymen going, the occasional big pay day meaning they can keep searching for the magic formula, whereas before they would have had to give up and get a proper job.
So there may be more players who can be competitive, but Ken Brown, the former Ryder Cup player turned commentator, argues the game is missing something. ‘To my mind it is a shame that golf has been so detoxed of everything,’ he said. ‘Today the fairways are always pristine and the greens like billiard tables, the bunkers are perfect, but actually that is not what golf is all about – it was about getting from that tee to that hole. Now, if it was scruffy all the way then it was the same for everybody. It’s not about fairness. It’s the same golf but completely different. You had to be a lot more adaptable before. Now the courses are very predictable, the requirements are very predictable. There are fewer skills to be good at.’
If there are fewer skills to be good at, you can spend more time perfecting the ones you need. Inevitably, standards rise, but if players are not required to be as adaptable, is it a less interesting game to watch? ‘Tournament golf,’ Pat Ward-Thomas wrote 30 years ago, ‘could well become an exhibition of technical efficiency by a host of somewhat faceless young men and the age of enduring heroes will have vanished. There would be a fresh one every week.’ To some extent, if you are talking about tour golf, then this prediction has come true. It is harder for the great players to separate themselves from the rest. But predictions that there will never again be any dominant players, while perhaps understandable, I believe will prove groundless. Didn’t we just have Tiger Woods? Oh, yes, but we’ll not see the like of him again. Oh, no?
We have been here before. Hutchinson wrote:
Golfers may come and golfers may go, but it is very much open to doubt whether any golfer will be quite the idol of the day as Young Tom was during his brilliant career, and certainly no golfer since, probably not even Harry Vardon, has shown yet the decided superiority over all rivals that he was called upon to meet as did the pride of St. Andrews.
Well, Vardon was only just getting going when Hutchinson wrote that. Then came Jones, then Hogan, and Nicklaus, and Woods. Maybe Rory McIlroy will be next. Two runaway major victories so far suggest he could be, but nothing is guaranteed. Whatever happens, it is going to be fun to find out.
For while there are a few championships each year that players want to win more than the week-to-week fare, when the test is at its sternest and where players are inspired by the grandest of occasions to perform better than they have ever have before, as Darren Clarke did at Sandwich in 2011, then there will always be golfers who reveal themselves as the greatest of them all.
But who is the greatest ever golfer? And is it even a sensible thing to try and determine? Jack Nicklaus wrote in My Story:
What Bob Jones did, just as Harry Vardon before him and Ben Hogan after him, was to become the best golfer of his time. That’s all any man can do, and it is what I have been trying to do all through my career. If when my playing days are finally over I am judged to have succeeded, that will do just fine for an epitaph.
Nicklaus was certainly the best golfer of his time, and arguably for a longer time than anyone else was the best golfer of their time.
But he is right in saying that you can only compare how players related to the players they faced. Comparing directly, in absolute terms, men and women, amateurs and professionals, over a century and a half, with changing conditions of courses and equipment and ever-increasing depth of competition, is unhelpful and irrelevant. In any sport where measurements are taken, standards are improving – for instance, times for running and swimming and cycling are getting lower, and distances for throwing or jumping are getting higher.
No-one disputes that technically golfers are getting better. But golf is a game of ‘situation’. It is about how to handle this shot, with this club, on this course, against this opponent. That has not changed and never will. It is the reason character is tested as much as technique and the reason why the great champions of the past cannot just be dismissed as inferior to more modern players. It is also one of the reasons why this book does not just contain the top 100 from today’s world ranking.
Ranking players in golf has a long tradition, and for much of the 20th century the money list of the PGA Tour sufficed. In the 1980s, a world ranking was developed, but sadly it cannot be backdated to cover the whole period we are considering. Yet no systematic ranking, however sophisticated, could take into account all the variables we are looking at. In the History of the PGA Tour, a points table rated players from 1916 to 1988. Sam Snead, still the greatest winner on the circuit, came out top, Nicklaus was second, Arnold Palmer third and Ben Hogan fourth. But take a look at the table for 1953. Top of the list was Doug Ford; in 14th place was Hogan, who hardly played that year but still won four times, three of them majors. In golfing terms, Hogan owns 1953 the same way Bobby Jones owns 1930.
In any case, any systematic approach is only as good as the original assumptions on which it is based – so let’s not pretend this is anything other than a completely subjective debate in which the fun is in putting forward an opinion to be disagreed with.
Perhaps we could imagine a championship to end all championships. Dan Jenkins once wrote up such a mythical showdown in Golf Digest in the same brilliant style as his major championship reports. He had Sam Snead always taking a triple bogey at the last and, if memory serves, Ben Hogan was his ultimate champion. Attempting to rewrite Jenkins would be sacrilege, but the device might allow us to examine some of the pairings in the final round of a championship in which these particular 100 great golfers were playing. In a show of youthful exuberance perhaps Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy would be in the thick of it in the early stages. Greg Norman and Ernie Els might contest the first-round lead. Hopefully, the course would allow the pairing of Henry Cotton and Catherine Lacoste to compare their skills with a one-iron. Joe Carr and Freddie Tait would be all over the place but there would be plenty of spectators to help them find their more wayward efforts.
But, as the championship wore on, there would surely be certain names jostling at the top of the leaderboard: Walter Hagen, Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, Gary Player, Gene Sarazen, Tom Watson, Sir Nick Faldo, Annika Sörenstam, Yani Tseng and, doubtless causing merry hell, Babe Zaharias. But as the final round begins, who might be in the final few pairings? Here are the ten players who might make up the last five groups to tee off:
HARRY VARDONTwo early idols of the game in a welcome return to competition. They make a contrasting pair. Morris a dasher, Vardon relentlessly accurate, which only adds more fascination to a contest that has been dreamt about for more than a century.
MICKEY WRIGHTThe two greatest ever women players. Jones said he had never been as outclassed as he was when playing with Wethered – he might have been modest but he was not prone to exaggeration. Wright dominated her era like a cross between Hogan and Nicklaus. Can they be separated? The heart says Wethered, the head Wright.
ARNOLD PALMERThis might just be the most popular two-ball of them all. No need to hype this charismatic duo. The fairways would be packed on either side and, given their attacking and scrambling styles, there would be plenty of chances to get up-close-and-personal. They met at Wentworth in 1983 in the first round of the World Match Play. Palmer was giving away 28 years to a man in his prime but the Spaniard still had to hole a long, running chip at the last for an eagle to halve the match before winning at the third extra hole. Time for a rematch.
BEN HOGANThe identity of the top four should not surprise. Just trailing the final two are Woods and Hogan. Tiger still has time to force a reassessment but at present he just sneaks into third on the basis of his 14 major victories compared to Hogan’s nine. They might make an unlikely pairing but what they have in common is an incredible work ethic. At least, Woods certainly did little else but practise early in his career before injuries forced him to cut back and other things in life became a distraction. Woods might have been the more naturally talented, since it took Hogan until he was the age Tiger is now before finding his prime, but Woods spent two years remodelling his game under Butch Harmon before equalling Hogan’s feat from 1953 of winning three majors in a row in 2000. Of course, he added the Masters in 2001 to become the first and only man to hold all four professional majors at the same time. It was his Jones moment, albeit not a calendar-year Grand Slam, but whether he has the longevity to overtake Nicklaus’s 18 majors will depend on whether he can remain free from injury.
JACK NICKLAUSIn truth, still the only two contenders for the greatest ever golfer. Either will do perfectly. At different times, both men were named Golfer of the Century well before the end of the 20th century. The weight of opinion today tends towards Nicklaus. In 2000 Golf Digest put him top of their list of the 50 greatest players of all time. Hogan was second, Snead third and Jones fourth. Golf magazine in 2009 had Nicklaus first, Woods second, Jones third and Hogan fourth. Nicklaus is the game’s greatest professional, dominant for two decades but essentially a leading figure in golf his whole life. He won 18 professional majors and two US Amateurs, a record no one has come close to matching. Jones is the game’s greatest amateur, a man who scaled its heights and then retired at the age of 28. He did not compete as long as Nicklaus, but he was utterly triumphant when he did. Even if you take out his amateur successes, in 15 appearances in the US Open and the Open Championship, he was the winner or runner-up 11 times.
One quality Jones possessed perhaps even more than Nicklaus, who was better at it than all his direct competitors, was the ability to rise to the challenge of the biggest occasion seemingly on demand. Nicklaus wrote, in a series of articles about the qualities required by a perfect champion, in the Daily Telegraph in 2006:
Perhaps the truest test of a player is whether you can rise to the greatest of occasions. When you are on the course you have to be able to concentrate at the right times and think clearly at the right times. But it starts even before you get to an event. You have to be able to take your game and bring it up for the occasion. Tiger has shown he can do this by winning all four majors in a row but you have to go back to Bobby Jones. He was the ultimate big occasion player. He won the original grand slam – the Opens and Amateurs of the US and Britain – in 1930 but he didn’t play very much. Even in 1930, his great year, he only played in six events and won five of them. That’s pretty amazing.
While I am not implying that Nicklaus thinks Jones is the greatest ever player, the quality that he identifies is one that I think is important, is most important, in assessing the greatest of the greats. It may be a romantic notion, but the legend of Jones will do for me.
There are plenty of golf writers now filing for the Celestial Times who would agree. Henry Longhurst said: ‘Jones was probably the greatest and certainly the best-loved golfer of them all.’ Charles Price, who saw all the greats of the 20th century, bar Vardon and Woods, wrote:
Bob Jones was the greatest championship golfer in the history of the game, amateur or pro, and I mean championship golfer, not a tournament player. Some men who played golf after Jones hit the ball further, some maybe straighter. Certainly, many had scored lower. A lot of them won way more tournaments and one of them, Jack Nicklaus, more championships. But nobody ever played golf like Bobby Jones.
Sidney L. Matthew is a present-day biographer of Jones and wrote:
Jones had the respect of his peers and all others not because he was the best sportsman. Rather, Jones was the most able man anyone has ever seen. He was the truest-hearted, most just, and noblest of all the golfers who ever lived. He represents the summation of all the qualities that command our willing subordination. Which is why Robert Tyre Jones is and will forever remain … the Emperor.
But other opinions are available, and a few are provided below to further the discussion. Many more might have been added but that would make for another book. Whether you are talking about the 100 Greatest Ever Golfers or trying to narrow it down to the greatest of the great, it is a debate that is both timeless and endless, which makes for all the more fun during those long hours at the 19th hole.
‘Hogan was the greatest shot-maker who ever lived. He won tournaments without being able to putt real good like these guys today. He played on uneven courses, uneven greens and strong competition with Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Jimmy Demaret and all those guys. He concentrated on winning majors, especially the US Open. I say he won five – I count the wartime one, as did he – they issued him a medal just like the other four. He won more majors over a shorter period of time than anybody. I still say Nicklaus was the greatest winner but Hogan was the greatest shot-maker.’
Dan Jenkins, golf writer
‘It has to be Jack Nicklaus. I would caveat that, Lee Trevino was not very far behind of those that I have seen play. I’m talking about a career as well. Tiger Woods played the best golf that has ever been played for a period but as things stand Jack Nicklaus is the greatest player over a career. It’s everything about him, the record he created and how he conducted himself, ruthless competitor, tremendous player, no silly rickets, win, lose or draw.’
Ken Brown, Ryder Cup player
‘Still Jack, because of the 18 majors. But the way Tiger has got his 14, he’s hit shots most of us couldn’t dream of, let alone hit. But Jack was my inspiration, he’s the reason I am here.’
Sir Nick Faldo
‘Tiger Woods. Took over from Jack Nicklaus as the player who dominated the game in a period when the game had moved on into an athletic sport. When Nicklaus dominated it, it was not such an athletic sport. Nicklaus had the great strength of mind, the calmness, he had the great mental capacity. What Tiger brought were all the strengths of Jack plus the athleticism. The absolute common desire between the both was to dominate the game but one did it with brute strength, Nicklaus could dominate the field with brute power, and Tiger took it up a gear by doing it with athletic power.’
Denis Pugh, coach
‘Tiger Woods, hands down. Mentally, physically, playability-wise, not just the 14 majors but you add in the 15 World Golf Championships which are played against major fields then you have 29 events, that is extraordinary in this era. Extraordinary.’
Colin Montgomerie