Monday, August 13, 2007

Golf Without Tiger

As most people know, Tiger Woods captured the 2007 PGA Championship on Sunday (8/12/07). With the win, that gave him 13 major titles and 58 overall! Wow, what an amazing stat. But, what if Tiger never entered the picture, how would golf be different? Well, in terms of wins (looking at the majors), we have a lot more people as major champions.

Here are Tiger's major wins by year (with the 2nd place finisher listed in parentheses):

1997 - Masters (Tom Kite)
1999 - PGA (Sergio Garcia)
2000 - US Open (Miguel Angel Jimenez), British Open (Thomas Bjorn), PGA (Bob May)
2001 - Masters (David Duval)
2002 - Masters (Retief Goosen), US Open (Phil Mickelson)
2005 - Masters (Chris DiMarco), British Open (Colin Montgomerie)
2006 - British Open (Chris DiMarco) , PGA (Shaun Micheel)
2007 - PGA (Woody Austin)

So, a quick glance shows:

- Phil would have a 4th major
- DiMarco would have TWO majors
- Sergio would be a major winner
- Colin Montgomerie would be a major winner
- And quite a few others would be first time major winners.