The "I've Been Ranked Ahead of Tiger" Club

Ernie Els
Greg Norman
Davis Love III
Vijay Singh
Lee Westwood
Martin Kaymer

That's the list. Since Tiger Woods first ascended to the World #1 ranking on June 15th, 1997, only these six men have been ranked ahead of him in the Official World Golf Rankings. As of tomorrow, Graeme McDowell will join the club, and if Luke Donald wins the 36-hole finals match then he'll join as well. In that scenario, Tiger would have fallen to World #5, the lowest he's been during that entire period. He's only been #3 very occasionally before the current stretch. Notably absent, of course, is the guy with four majors and twenty-eight PGA Tour victories since then, the most majors in that span and second-most wins. Despite being, I'd say, clearly the second-best player of the Tiger Woods Era, Phil Mickelson has never been ranked ahead of Tiger during the entire era. They're within about a tenth of a point in the rankings right now.

It's an open question in golf right now whether this club is about to get not-very-exclusive. If Tiger spends a significant amount of time ranked 5th or lower, there's going to be a lot of people ahead of him, and it's going to be pretty volatile who those people are. The way he's kept this list down to six men over thirteen-and-a-half years is by never being lower than 3rd, and only below 2nd for a few scant weeks. To my mind, when this list starts getting bigger at a fairly frequent pace, it will be the end of the Tiger Woods era, properly speaking. That era was defined by a level of dominance unparalleled in this or any other sport, being better than everyone for 623 out of 698 weeks, and better than everyone in the world except for four specific people for all 698 of those weeks. I actually have fairly little doubt that Tiger will win more tournaments, and more majors; in fact, I think it's quite likely indeed that he'll be back to World #1 at some point. But regaining that extreme, unprecedented level of absolute dominance would take a lot of doing.