Top Ten Golfers of All Time

TheOcho.ca golf writer Austin Evans and Editor-In-Chief Riley Evans hammer our a list of the ten greatest players in the history of golf.

As one of the oldest sports still played in the modern world, golf culture is uniquely steeped in the history of its past eras.

The professional game extends back over 150 years to the founding of the Open Championship in the United Kingdom. The first Open Championship was played at Prestwick Golf Club in 1860. Prestwick is still open today, as are many of the courses that played host to the dawning moments of golf’s earliest days in both the United States and Great Britain. The Country Club at Brookline, Pebble Beach, and Winged Foot have hosted U.S. Opens for nearly a century. Muirfield, Royal Liverpool, and the legendary St. Andrews (the spiritual home of golf) have held Open Championships since the beginning years of the contest.

These historical sites are what keeps the history of golf so present. Rory and Jordan play the courses as Tiger, Phil, Norman, Faldo, Seve, Watson, Travino, Nicklaus, Player, Palmer, Nelson, Snead, Hogan, Hagan, Sarazen, Jones, Ouimet, Varden and Taylor. Whenever the PGA Tour revisits the tracks where these legends had their greatest exploits, their names come back to the tips of our teeth.

It is because of this that golf is uniquely suited to compile a fair and accurate list that ranks the greatest players of all time. Recency bias is much less of a factor in a sport where history is always at the top of mind.

Austin and I debated for over two hours to make this list. Despite agreeing on most of the names that deserved a spot, it is always the last spots that present the most challenge, as there are so many names who feel deserving. We eventually settled on the list enumerated below, along with five honourable mentions (aka. players I wanted on the list instead of Tom Watson.)

Honourable Mentions

Gene Sarazen: One of the dominant players of 20s and 30s. Walter Hagan’s chief professional rival, and a contemporary of Bobby Jones growing up.

Harry Vardon: An early legend of British golf. Vardon won a record six Open Championships, along with a US Open at the turn of the century.

Byron Nelson: The third member of Snead and Hogan’s “Great Triumvirate” of the 30s and 40s . He won 18 events in 1945, a record that still stands.

Severiano “Seve” Ballesteros: Likely the greatest European Tour player of all time. Known for his miraculous short game and Ryder Cup performances.

Phil Mickelson: Phil is a top 10 golf talent of all time. One of the great victims of the Tiger era, he doesn’t quite have enough wins to make the list.

10: Young Tom Morris

Bare with me here.

Young Tom Morris is the greatest junior golfer of all time. He won two Open Championships before the age of 19, with his first win at 17 standing as the current record for the youngest Major champion ever. He won a third straight Open at 19, causing the tournament to be cancelled in 1871 when Young Tom claimed the prize belt as his permanent possession, leaving them with no prize to award a prospective winner. He won the event again when it resumed in 1872, becoming the first and youngest man to hoist the Claret Jug.

Young Tom Morris was the dominant figure of 19th century golf, as well as a well respected innovator of the game. Unless a 16-year-old wins a Major championship, his place at number ten on this list may, ironically, be the safest of all.

9: Tom Watson

Of the two-plus hours that Austin and I debated this list, at least half an hour was spent by me trying to get either Phil or Seve into this spot. Austin eventually won me over with a few salient points.

Tom Watson is the greatest American links player of all time. Despite playing on the PGA Tour full time, he somehow managed to dominate the ground based European style of golf required to win Opens. And win Opens he did.

His five victories at golf’s oldest contest, coupled with a Masters win and a US Open give him eight Majors; more than either Phil or Seve.

Finally, Tom Watson boasted a tremendous record in head to head competition with Jack Nicklaus, the dominant player of his era. Their 36 hole face-off at the 1977 Open has gone down as one of the legendary duels in the history of the game. For this reason, and the others listed above, he belongs on this list.

8: Sam Snead

Sam Snead’s case as an all time great makes itself. He is a seven time Major champion and still holds the record for most career PGA Tour wins.

The more important case to make is why he’s not higher.

Snead enjoyed a long, successful run, playing pro tournaments into his 50s. That longevity allowed him to accumulate his 82 wins over an extended course of time, slowly stacking up accolades rather than dominating any given period. A strong case can be made that “Slammin’ Sammy” was never the best player in the world. He played second fiddle to Ben Hogan in the Great Triumvirate before seeding the stage to Palmer, Nicklaus and Player.

And let’s be fair, some of the tournaments he won were pretty questionable.

All said, Same Snead is one of the most accomplished players in golf history, and he certainly belongs on this list.

7: Arnold Palmer

He’s closer to the bottom of this list than the top, but no one has done more to grow the game of golf and raise it’s profile than Arnold Palmer. He led golf into the television era, was a founding partner in the creation of The Golf Channel, created a delicious beverage enjoyed at golf courses all over the world, and is the greatest ambassador the game has ever seen.

On the course, he pioneered a swashbuckling, aggressive style of play that enthralled fans of all ages. His calm, charming demeanour with the fans translated on the golf course to the tune of 62 PGA Tours wins and seven Majors, completing three quarters of the Grand Slam, a concept that Arnie himself popularized. Who knows how we might think of him if he’d managed to eke out one of his three runner-up finishes at the PGA championship.

He was one third of golf’s “Big Three” in the 1960s, and he left a mark on the game befitting of a man who everyone called “The King.”

6: Gary Player

Many of the players on this list carved out their spots by being revolutionaries in one spot or another, along with being incredible talents. Gary Player fits this bill as much as anyone. Along with his nine Major championships, including the career Grand Slam, “The Black Knight” was a revolutionary in multiple ways.

Player was the first player to capitalize on the expanding availability of air travel in order to play all over the world. He has double-digit wins on four different tours on three different continents, and he was still an all-time great competitor despite the extra travel miles. He also changed the way golfers think about fitness. He was the sports preeminent workout warrior, tailoring his fitness routines to create his optimal golf body. To this day, at 81 years old, he still does over 1000 sit ups a day and always shoots under his age. That is the mark of a man committed to maximizing every opportunity he receives, and it got Gary Player onto this list.

5: Walter Hagen

Another man with an impeccable, all-time great resume. Much like Sam Snead’s 82 wins, Sir Walter’s 11 Major championships (good for third all time) might make a case that he deserves a higher ranking, especially considering that his prime played out in a time where only three of the modern majors were being played.

Let me explain.

Walter Hagen was a legend, but despite his accomplishments, he played in the shadow of one of golf’s true icons in Bobby Jones. It is telling that five of The Haig’s 11 Majors were won at the PGA Championship, which an amateur like Jones was ineligible to play in. His record will stand the test of time, but Haig ultimately loses points for playing second fiddle to a man who didn’t even play golf for a living.

4: Bobby Jones

Robert Tyre Jones Jr. is the greatest amateur golfer ever by a margin so huge that I couldn’t even think of who number two might be. Furthermore, with the amount of money to be made in the modern professional ranks, he will likely remain the greatest amateur ever for as long as golf remains in the public consciousness.

Consider this. Jones played competitive golf part time between 1923 and 1930. He worked full time as a lawyer to make a living. During that time, he completely dominated the amateur golf scene, winning five US Amateurs along with a British Amateur in 1930. That would be impressive enough by itself, but he also beat up on legendary professionals like Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen, winning seven professional Majors in seven years when he was only eligible to play in two of the three. He also famously completed the “Impregnable Quadrilateral of Golf” in 1930 by winning the pro and amateur Opens of both the US and UK in the same year.

Speaking of Majors, Bobby Jones designed a little track called Augusta National, and he founded a little tournament we know today as The Masters. Sounds like an all-time great to me.

3: Ben Hogan

Snead won 82 tournaments. Byron Nelson won 18 times in a single year (by not fighting in World War Two). Yet even when compared to these legendary lists of accomplishments, any golf historian worth their words will tell you that Ben Hogan was the dominant figure of his era.

Almost dying in a car crash in 1949 will do that. The doctors said Hogan would never walk again, and he returned to competition the next year and won his second of four US Opens. This kicked off a three year stretch where Hogan, playing a greatly reduced schedule, won 10 of the 17 events he entered, including six Majors. He was the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year in 1953.

“The Hawk” checks all the boxes. He dominated his contemporaries to the tune of 64 PGA Tour wins and nine Major championships. He revolutionized the way that professionals practiced. He essentially invented course management, planning out his rounds to the point where he played the 1950 US Open at Merion without a 7-iron because “there are no 7-iron shots at Merion.” He is acknowledged by most as the greatest ball striker of all time, and there are those who would call him the greatest of all time, period.

2: Jack Nicklaus

Eighteen Major championships. Besides the fact that he is the pseudo-namesake of the editor-in-chief of a modestly successful internet sports publication, that record is the crowning achievement on what is almost universally considered the greatest resume in the history of golf. While it once looked destined to fall, it now feels like a mark that Jack Nicklaus may hold forever.

“The Golden Bear” was dominant over such a long period of time that he essentially blended about two and a half eras of golf together by being the top guy. He broke onto the scene in 1960, finishing runner-up to Arnold Palmer in the US Open as an amateur. He turned pro in 1961 before winning the US Open the next year as his first professional victory. He went on to win 69 more tournaments and 16 more Majors over the next 18 years, first against Arnie and Gary Player in the 60s before he took on Tom Watson, Lee Trevino and Raymond Floyd in the 70s. Then, after a four year stretch with only two wins, Nicklaus turned back the clock one last time. He went six-under on the final nine holes of the 1986 Masters, winning at the age of forty-six against the likes of Nick Faldo, Seve Ballesteros, and perennial Sunday gag-artist Greg Norman.

Golf’s greatest resume sits high on this list, but as has been a theme on this list, even the greatest resume bows down to the greatest player.

1: Tiger Woods

From 1999 to 2009, Eldrick Tont “Tiger” Woods was the single most dominant athletic performer I have ever seen. It is one thing to win tournaments, but Tiger didn’t just beat you.

He destroyed you.

“The Big Cat” won 16 of his 79 PGA Tour wins by five strokes or more (Jack won eight). He won 11 by at least seven (Jack won four) and four by double digits (Jack won zero). While other players came off as vulnerable, Tiger walked the course with an aura of invincibility. He was a cold blooded killer, and if his “A” game was on, you were playing for second place.

For the record, if his “B” game was on, it was usually good enough to beat you too.

I could write entire articles about each of his greatest exploits, but for brevity’s sake, I’ll just list them.

• Won his first Major by 12 shots at the 1997 Masters.
• Won a WGC event every year for the first 11 years of their existence.
• Won the US Open by 15 shots in 2000. He was 12-under, with second place coming in at 3-over.
• Won the next three Majors in a row to become the first man to hold the four professional Major titles simultaneously.
• Won the 2008 US Open in 91 holes with a torn ACL and two stress fractures in his leg.
• Made 142 straight cuts from 1998 to 2003.
• Holds the record for most wins of every significant PGA Tour award.

Tiger did all these things (and more) while playing against some of the deepest fields in golf history, amidst rapid equipment changes that brought more players into contention, and during a wave of architectural changes to golf courses that was influenced in part by a desire to curtail his utter decimation of his contemporaries (see Tiger-Proofing).

Nicklaus, Hogan and Bobby Jones were all dominant players, and they are all legends in their own right. But only one man was an even money favourite against a hundred of the best players in the world. Only one man caused tournament leaders to shoot 80 on Sunday by creeping up the leaderboard on Saturday. No one in history had his combination of crushing length, creative shot making and clutch short game.

It was once common thought that one would need to surpass Jack’s record of 18 Majors to take his place on golf’s highest throne, but Tiger ended the battle early when he beat the best players in the world on only one functioning leg. That is dominance which cannot be denied. That is Tiger, and he is simply the best.

Riley Evans is the Editor-in-Chief of TheOcho.ca, as well as a long-form contributor to many of our sections. You can catch him co-hosting The Ocho podcast every Thursday alongside Aaron Lieberman. Follow Riley on Twitter at @rnevans93.