With his Open Championship win and his 11th major victory this past weekend, can we finally say Tiger is the best ever to play the game? In my eyes, no… not yet. He is clearly the best of our time, and I firmly believe one day we will call him the best ever, but I just can't make myself give him the title of "Best Ever" until he has the stats to prove it. Matching his stats to Jack's at this point in their careers, is he better? According to this chart, at 29, Tiger was 16 Tour wins and 3 Majors better than Jack at 29. That's pretty impressive and shows that Tiger is on a pretty good path to better Jack probably before he hits 40, if he manages to keep up his current pace.
But the problem is that we just don't know what the future will hold for Tiger or for the game of golf. Anything can happen in the next 10 years that could put a serious hurt on Tiger's quest. There might be some 14 year old out there right now whose quest is to be the next Tiger and he might have the talent to do it. Just imagine, if Tiger gets to 14 wins in the next 3 years and then all of a sudden the next Tiger, or maybe two more Tigers come to the tour and start dominating the game like Tiger does now. Add some maturity to the games of current players like Sean O'Hair and Luke Donald and now all of a sudden Tiger has 4 or 5 real opponents at every single major he plays.
Am I saying the game is going to pass Tiger by? Not bloody likely. I'm just saying that I think Tiger's first 10 majors were a lot easier for him than his next 10 will be. We're used to him winning at least one per year, and he might just continue that streak. But it's also possible that just like Jack's legend to a large extent created Tiger, Tiger's legend might (and probably will) help create the next Tiger, or the next 10 Tigers. And unlike Jack, Tiger might not have the luxury of waiting until his career is in it's twilight to see the results of his greatness.
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