One of the announcers on the early coverage of the last round of the PGA Championship suggested that if Jordan Spieth were to win, for his third major championship of the year, he would have had the best year ever. Ahem. This is ridiculous. Here's what Spieth has done so far this year. He's won four tournaments, two of them majors, the others both relatively minor tournaments (the Valspar Championship and the John Deere Classic). He's finished second three times, third once, and in the top 10 thirteen times overall out of 20 tournaments. He's missed two cuts, one of them at the Players Championship, and has finished outside the top 25 four times in all. Now, that's a really, really great season.
But in 2000, Tiger Woods won, including three consecutive majors, nine total tournaments. He won his three majors by a combined 23 shots, compared to the 5 by which Spieth won his first two (and he doesn't look to add more than another couple today, if he does win). Overall Tiger won those nine tournaments by a combined margin of 46 shots, including three wins by at least 8 shots; both of Spieth's non-major wins were in playoffs, so he's got a combined margin of victory of just 5. Also, Tiger missed zero cuts; in fact, he didn't once finish outside the top 25! Only three times did he miss the top 10, compared to Spieth's seven (and counting). He led the Tour in GIR%, holes per eagle, birdies per round, scoring average (adjusted or otherwise), total driving, ball-striking, all-around ranking, par-3 scoring average, par-4 scoring average, par-5 scoring average, birdie percentage on par 4s and on par 5s, bounce-back, birdie conversion percentage, par breaker percentage, scoring average in rounds 1, 2, and 3, front and back nine scoring average, total eagles, lowest round, and, of course, the official money list. He was also World #1, by an enormous margin. Like, practically a 3-1 margin. Also he finished second in driving distance, putts per GIR, and final round scoring average, and was third in scrambling. His all-around ranking (the sum of his ranks in eight key statistics) was 40% lower than the second-place finisher, David Duval.
Spieth, meanwhile, leads the Tour in the following statistics, of those that existed in 2000: birdie average, scoring average (actual and adjusted), putts per GIR, one-putt percentage, putts per round, putts per round in round 2, lowest round, par breaker percentage, round 2 scoring average, back 9 scoring average, scoring average and birdie percentage on par 4s, lowest average, and, of course, the money list. That's a lot! But it's not as much as Tiger; in fact, Tiger led every single one of those stats except for the putting stats (and he was second in putts per GIR, the best putting stat that existed back in 2000). Meanwhile, Spieth is 55th in GIR%, 42nd in total driving (including 76th in distance and 85th in accuracy), 25th in par-3 scoring, 20th in par-5 scoring. Oh, and he's third in all-around ranking, with a figure about 30% above Will Wilcox's leading figure. (What?!)
The point is that, obviously, Jordan Spieth is a great player, and is having a great year, but he isn't coming close to dominating the Tour, either in terms of performance or in terms of statistics, the way Tiger did. If we're talking best years ever, and we're excluding Bobby Jones's 1930 for some reason and don't consider Hogan's 1953, or any of the years when he or Byron Nelson or whoever won double digits of tournaments, then there just isn't any question. Tiger's 2000 was the best year anyone has ever had, and I daresay it will continue to be for a long, long time.
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