I love John Daly, but what a whopping take he had on the Tiger Woods vs Jack Nicklaus debate.

Again, even such a great player as Daly demonstrates the woeful lack of knowledge of golf history that abounds today.

Perhaps it’s because I have OCD, but when I took up golf and fell in love with it, I read every magazine and watched every golf tournament I could get my eyes on, and I read obsessively about the greats who were taking their last walks off the 18th green of life.

Ben Hogan died in ’97, that same year I became obsessed with golf, and I read all of the tributes about him, bought the biography by Curt Sampson, dug through all of the old Golf Digest and Golf Magazine editions I could find… you get the idea.

So, here’s John Daly with his dead wrong take:

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Again, people saying things that are just wrong, with such confidence it makes you wince.

I will again refer you to the Bleacher Report article I’ve referenced before, actually titled “The Myth of Deeper PGA Tour Fields During Tiger Woods’ Era”

In it, Mike Lynch finds that:

Arguing that fields are significantly deeper today than during the Nicklaus era has no basis in statistical reality.  If fields today are so much stronger, a greater number of golfers should be winning in a season.  However the statistics say that is not the case…

The time periods being compared are 1962-1972 and 1997-2007.  In 1962, Jack Nicklaus won his first major championship, a U.S. Open in which he defeated Arnold Palmer in a playoff at Oakmont.  Tiger Woods won his first major at the Masters in 1997, obliterating the field in a 12 stroke victory…

Percentage-wise, the eras are extremely close. Dividing the winners number by the total tournaments gives us 69% for the Nicklaus era and 71% for the Tiger era. To further clarify, if 100 tournaments were played in the Nicklaus era, you would likely see 69 different winners. In the Tiger era you would likely see 71 different winners over 100 tournaments…

As for the number of total major champions over these time spans: The Nicklaus era saw seven different Masters champions, eight U.S. Open Champions, nine British Open champions and nine PGA Champions. The Tiger era saw seven Masters champions, nine U.S. Open champions, nine British Open champions and seven PGA Championship winners. One more total than the Nicklaus era.**

** Update: I don’t know who did the counting up above, but the Nicklaus era actually had 33 different major winners to 32 in Tiger’s, which means that Nicklaus’ had one more than Tiger’s era. I mean, do the math… which I hadn’t until now.

John Daly: “Every guy, when Tiger came out, could win a tournament… When Jack played, he was only playing against 12 to 15 to 20 guys.”

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Except that an average 69 players in 100 events would have won events in Jack’s era versus an average of 71 players in 100 in Tiger’s era.

So much for “only 12 to 15 to 20,” John…

And Jack’s era had 33 major winners to Tiger’s 32.

It wouldn’t be hard to see that it’s a near wash between the two eras when talking about competitiveness.

Reading the above info from Mike Lynch, John Daly isn’t even wrong – he’s in outer space with that take.

If you want more, I have already written about this, but let’s look at what I wrote then (edited slightly for clarity):

For the “deeper fields” guys, these numbers show that Jack was better than Tiger – during his career, he beat other players who had won 5, 6 and 7 & 8 majors and he won more majors than them while he did it.

During Tiger’s era, you have him competing vs Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson* and Vijay Singh who won 4 majors each (*since the posting, Mickelson has increased his majors count to 6).   Padraig Harrington has 3.

So, Tiger’s won less majors than Jack to date, and he’s won his majors against fields that didn’t have 5, 6* and 7 & 8 major winners in them.

The best guys back then were better than the best guys from this era, and Jack beat them all for 18 majors and 70+ wins.

Add to this that many of Tiger’s wins were in no-cut reduced fields (larger fields reduce the odds of winning, no matter how good you are), and that Tiger worked out and practiced sunup to sundown on his game whilst Jack went fishing, that Jack had 19 runner-up major finishes to Tiger’s 7, again, Jack’s coming again in an era where greater major champions roamed the courses than in Tiger’s… it really isn’t close.

It’s not a popularity contest –  you can love both, or one or the other, but the cold hard numbers show that Jack won more majors competing against fields that had greater major champions, and that Jack did it without breaking a sweat whilst TW broke himself chasing Jack’s majors total.

John Daly is wrong, and demonstrably so.

Not only that, every single player he talks about who could win majors now (Rory, Bryson, Scottie) – none of them won majors before Tiger had won his 14th major in ’08 – in fact, they hadn’t even turned pro yet, except for Rory in ’07, so they were nowhere during his prime.

Plus, Daly completely skips over players who did win at least 4 majors and who competed against Tiger in his prime (Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson 6 and Vijay Singh).

The dreaded internet “Know-Nothings” curse strikes again, it seems.  Go read the comments section full of people who know nothing about that which they are talking, and with no embarrassment.

If anything, with the no-cut reduced fields where Tiger cleaned up, you can say and say correctly that it was Tiger who competed against smaller fields and less great players.