Tiger Woods comparison with other post World War II golfers

These graphs show where Tiger Woods stands in relation to the best post-WWII golfers. I've limited it to this time frame because the information is easily available through pgatour.com. All information comes from pgatour.com player bios, and the USPGA and International listings for tournament wins within these bios.

Graph 1  Wins in the Majors

After his win in the 2007 USPGA Championship, Tiger Woods is two major wins ahead of where Jack Nicklaus was in his career.

Tiger and Jack were the only golfers who won majors in the first year or two of their professional careers. Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player had the most obvious longevity. They won majors over a considerable time span, 24 years and 19 years respectively. Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson had similar steep lines to Tiger Woods, but their major-winning time spans were limited to 8 and 10 years respectively.

Graph 2 USPGA Tour wins

Over the last decade, Tiger has maintained a winning rate as steep as:
* Snead's best when he won 24 tournaments in five years from 1949-1953
* Palmer's best in his four golden years of 1960-1963
* Nicklaus's best over four years (early 1970s)
* Watson's best over four years (1977-1980) when he won 20 tournaments. 

Tiger has already won three USPGA Tour events in his 13th year as a pro (2008) to continue the trend line that is exceeding the other golfers in the chart.

Graph 3 World-wide PGA Tour wins

This graph shows official individual tournament wins on any PGA Tour (except Senior tours), to be fair to international legends like Gary Player, who didn't play all his golf on the USPGA Tour. I've also included Greg Norman as the dominant long-term golfer in the world rankings before Tiger's emergence. 

Tiger's graph is much steeper than Nicklaus, Norman and Palmer.

It's interesting to see Snead's longevity as a tournament winner in both Graph 2 and Graph 3. Obviously towards the end of any golfer's career the graph gets flatter, but Snead won tournaments over a 32-year period.

Tiger has very few "international" wins (11) compared to Norman and Player, with most (about 85%) of Tiger's wins being on the USPGA Tour.

Last updated 17th March 2008, after the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
By Colin Wilson