The 100 Greatest Ever Golfers E-Book

Andy Farrell

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 357

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

What makes a great golfer? Is it innate talent, unstinting dedication, hard graft or inner strength? Can it be measured by championships won or prize money earned? Is the perfect technique more important than an engaging personality? Since the birth in 1860 of the Open Championship, every era of golf has produced its iconic great players, and here Andy Farrell selects his candidates for the top 100. From the early Scottish professionals who pioneered the game, such as Old Tom Morris and his son, Young Tommy, through such 20th century golden greats as Bobby Jones, Babe Zaharias, Arnold Palmer and Seve Ballesteros, to the modern era of Tiger Woods and Annika Sorenstam, and the young pretenders of Yani Tseng and Rory McIlroy. Grouped by era, 'The 100 Greatest Ever Golfers' is a unique collection of the finest players the game has seen. Farrell explores each golfer's achievements as well as setting them in the context of their peers. Sure to inspire endless debate for its selection, this fascinating treasure trove of stories is essential reading for any golfer. "Don't be put off by the list aspect - this is a cracking book. Not just 100 mini-biographies, but full of good stories and some fantastic quotes. Farrell also makes some excellent and intriguing left-field picks. Full of little nuggets such as the fact that Hale Irwin won more money heading the 1997 Champions Tour money list than Tiger Woods did topping that year's PGA Tour." Dave Tindall, www.skysports.com

Leseprobe

“A fascinating book that serves not only as a celebration of the finest exponents of the game since the first Open Championship in 1860 but also provides a bite-sized history of championship golf.”

THE SPORTS BOOKSHELF

“A book to argue with as well as to learn from. I recommend it wholeheartedly.”

BRIAN VINER, THE INDEPENDENT

“Enjoyable and informative ... Dip in and you will find characters to delight and surprise. There is a mixture of the astonishing, the unusual, the wacky and the uplifting.”

PETER DIXON, THE TIMES

“Everyone’s story is different and inspiring in their own way which is what makes this wonderful compilation of biographies such a treat. I could never tire of hearing the stories of our great champions so whether you are an aspiring golfer or an oldtimer like me who enjoys the history of the game, I have no hesitation in recommending Andy Farrell’s fascinating book.”

ARNOLD PALMER

“Hugely informative and entertaining.”

THE IRISH INDEPENDENT

“Enjoyable musings on the legendary figures of the past and present.”

DEREK LAWRENSON, THE DAILY MAIL

“Don’t be put off by the list aspect – this is a cracking book. Not just 100 mini-biographies, but full of good stories and some fantastic quotes. Farrell also makes some excellent and intriguing left-field picks. Full of nuggets such as the fact that Hale Irwin won more money heading the 1997 Champions Tour money list than Tiger Woods did topping that year’s PGA tour.”

DAVE TINDALL, SKYSPORTS.COM

“More than just a list, Andy Farrell’s book asks what qualities are required to become one of the sport’s greatest ... It’s an easy and enjoyable read, but also insightful. The short essays about the golfers are an engaging read, full of stories and quotes that capture the essence of the players.”

CURIOUS ABOUT GOLF

“An enjoyable read.”

LIBRARYJOURNAL.COM

“A good, quick reference – perfect for bedside reading.”

THE STATE

First published 2011 by Elliott and Thompson Limited 27 John Street, London WC1N 2BXwww.eandtbooks.com

epub ISBN: 978-1-907642-36-4 MOBI ISBN: 978-1-907642-82-1

Foreword © Padraig Harrington 2011 Text © Andy Farrell 2011

This edition revised and updated 2013

The Author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Picture credits:

The following photographs are © Charles Briscoe-Knight: Severiano Ballesteros; John Daly; Laura Davies; David Duval; Ernie Els; Sir Nick Faldo; Raymond Floyd; Sergio Garcia; Retief Goosen; Padraig Harrington; Juli Inkster; Hale Irwin; Tony Jacklin; Bernhard Langer; Sandy Lyle; Rory McIlroy; Phil Mickelson; Colin Montgomerie; Jack Nicklaus; Greg Norman; Lorena Ochoa; José María Olazábal; Se Ri Pak; Nick Price; Vijay Singh; Annika Sörenstam; Karrie Webb; Lee Westwood; Tiger Woods.

The following photographs are © Old Golf Images Archive: Willie Anderson; Tommy Armour; John Ball; Jim Barnes; Patty Berg; Tommy Bolt; Julius Boros; James Braid; Joe Carr; Billy Casper; Glenna Collett Vare; Sir Henry Cotton; Jimmy Demaret; George Duncan; Walter Hagen; Harold Hilton; Ben Hogan; Bobby Jones; Cecil Leitch; Tony Lema; Lawson Little; Bobby Locke; Arnaud Massy; Cary Middlecoff; Old Tom Morris; Young Tom Morris; Kel Nagle; Byron Nelson; Francis Ouimet; Arnold Palmer; Willie Park Snr; Gary Player; Betsy Rawls; Ted Ray; Allan Robertson; Gene Sarazen; Charlie Sifford; Sam Snead; Payne Stewart; Louise Suggs; Freddie Tait; JH Taylor; Peter Thomson; Jerome Travers; Walter Travis; Lee Trevino; Jessie Valentine; Flory Van Donck; Harry Vardon; Roberto de Vicenzo; Norman Von Nida; Tom Watson; Joyce Wethered; Mickey Wright; Babe Zaharias. Please note that while OGI retains the copyright / licence to the vast majority of its comprehensive archive, it makes every effort to trace the original copyright holder on any, and all other images it may retain. However in some rare instances this has not always been possible and we apologise in advance for any omissions that may have inadvertently occurred. In such cases, should the original copyright holder/photographer/photographic agency contact us we will, as always, endeavour to correct any such omission.

The following photographs are © Phil Sheldon Picture Library: Isao Aoki; JoAnne Carner; Bob Charles; Ben Crenshaw; Catherine Lacoste; Nancy Lopez; Johnny Miller; Christy O’Connor Snr; Curtis Strange; Yani Tseng; Kathy Whitworth; Ian Woosnam.

Sir Michael Bonallack © Getty Images Darren Clarke © Phil Inglis Moe Norman and Marlene Stewart Streit © Royal Canadian Golf Association (Golf Canada).

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Designed by James Collins

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders for extracts used within this book. Where this has not been possible the publisher will be happy to credit them in future editions.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

FROM THE PIONEERS TO THE GREAT TRIUMVIRATE, 1860–1900

Allan Robertson

Willie Park Snr

Old Tom Morris

Young Tom Morris

John Ball

Harold Hilton

Freddie Tait

JH Taylor

Harry Vardon

James Braid

Arnaud Massy

Ted Ray

AMERICAN BIRTH AND THE AGE OF THE EMPEROR, 1900–1930

Willie Anderson

Walter Travis

Jerome Travers

Francis Ouimet

Jim Barnes

George Duncan

Walter Hagen

Gene Sarazen

Bobby Jones

Cecil Leitch

Joyce Wethered

Glenna Collett Vare

NELSON, HOGAN, SNEAD AND THE BABE, 1930–1950

Tommy Armour

Sir Henry Cotton

Lawson Little

Byron Nelson

Ben Hogan

Sam Snead

Jimmy Demaret

Cary Middlecoff

Jessie Valentine

Patty Berg

Babe Zaharias

Louise Suggs

Betsy Rawls

INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION, 1950–1960

Bobby Locke

Flory Van Donck

Norman Von Nida

Peter Thomson

Kel Nagle

Christy O’Connor Snr

Joe Carr

Sir Michael Bonallack

Marlene Stewart Streit

Moe Norman

THE BIG THREE, 1960–1970

Tommy Bolt

Mickey Wright

Arnold Palmer

Jack Nicklaus

Gary Player

Julius Boros

Tony Lema

Billy Casper

Sir Bob Charles

Roberto de Vicenzo

Catherine Lacoste

JoAnne Carner

Kathy Whitworth

Charlie Sifford

THE NICKLAUS CHALLENGERS, 1970–1980

Lee Trevino

Tony Jacklin

Raymond Floyd

Johnny Miller

Hale Irwin

Tom Watson

Nancy Lopez

Isao Aoki

SEVE AND THE RISE OF EUROPE, 1980–1995

Severiano Ballesteros

Bernhard Langer

Sandy Lyle

Sir Nick Faldo

Ian Woosnam

Curtis Strange

Ben Crenshaw

Payne Stewart

Greg Norman

Nick Price

John Daly

José María Olazábal

Colin Montgomerie

THE TIGER ERA, 1995–2011

Ernie Els

Vijay Singh

Juli Inkster

Laura Davies

Se Ri Pak

Karrie Webb

Annika Sörenstam

Tiger Woods

Phil Mickelson

David Duval

Retief Goosen

Sergio Garcia

Padraig Harrington

Lorena Ochoa

Yani Tseng

Lee Westwood

Darren Clarke

Rory McIlroy

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Index

FOREWORD

What does it take to be one of the greatest golfers of all time? How do you separate the great from the good? Which is better – the erratic player with the ability to play unbelievably well, or the solid pro without a fifth gear or the ability to up his game? While results will be the predominant factor in determining who are the greatest golfers ever, it is the intricate parts that go together to create an aura around the player, that elevate them into the ‘greats’ based on flair, ball striking or contribution to the game – those who have brought fans to the sport. It is hard to go along to the practice range and pick out who are the great players based on their ball striking alone, however. Being able to hit the ball well is only part of the equation; being able to compete is even more important. You have to understand the player’s drive, their will and desire. You need to understand what separates the men from the boys and sometimes determine which players have achieved so much with less talent.

I have always believed in my old coach, Bob Torrance’s mantra: ‘A good player can play great when the feeling is upon him but a great player can play good when he wants to.’ As you will read from the selection of the 100 greatest ever golfers, some players are selected based on the fact that they had the ability to play great every so often rather than have it on demand. To get there, the great players have to put in many hours, days, weeks and months on the practice range. Many of them put in a huge amount of work even before they came to the tour, but this is not necessarily the case for all – there are no set rules and there are different ways of becoming a great player. You would be very naive to believe that Tiger’s talents were given to him; he earned every bit of his game on the range and on the golf course and ultimately it had more to do with his drive and his want than any physical gift. Yet someone like Colin Montgomerie practised relatively little but trusted what he had, allowing him to be fresh come Sunday afternoon and go on to win many tournaments.

There is no better feeling than the satisfaction that comes with knowing a job has been well done. Personally, the highs of winning three major championships will stay with me my whole life, but Bob’s quote above has meant that I have spent more time searching for the magical secret which keeps it fun and drives me on. It is all too easy to put other brilliant players on a pedestal – while the likes of Ernie Els, Retief Goosen and Tiger were winning majors, it was hard to see myself matching them. However, I know Michael Campbell very well. Having played with him many times, I knew his game and his ability, and after he won the US Open in 2005 it was easier to visualise myself winning a major. The European golfers now winning majors, or who might win majors, have seen me play golf. They have seen me hit good shots and they have seen me hit bad shots. They understand my game, the way I’ve played, how hard I’ve worked. As a result, they are less likely to think they are so far away.

I think there are two main reasons why European golf is strong at the moment. The first is that we had such great role models and grew up watching Seve, Faldo, Langer, Lyle and Woosie, as well as other non-Americans like Greg Norman and Nick Price, dominate the world of golf. As a kid I thought it was normal for the international players to win majors. It may have been the first time for many decades that the best players in the world were not just from America, but as a child I didn’t realise that.

Secondly, on the European Tour there is nowhere to hide. It gives you a lot of opportunities to get into contention – and you only really learn about your game and yourself when a tournament is on the line – but you are also required to perform week-in, week-out. If you are one of the marquee players at a tournament, there is a giant poster of you by the entrance and people are expecting you to deliver. If you don’t perform, everyone – all the sponsors, the press, the people running the tournament – want to know, ‘What went wrong?’ In the States it can be a lot easier – you miss the cut and you are gone, with no one to trouble you.

Trying to come up with the 100 greatest ever golfers is an intriguing exercise. You, like me, may not agree with all the inclusions in the book but it is fun to debate and everyone’s opinion is interesting. The more I started thinking about it, the more I kept changing my mind. I know one player has already caused a lot of debate but I would go along with Rory McIlroy’s inclusion. While we all might agree that he will probably end up among the greats, is he one now? I would say ‘yes’ and for this reason: he may have only won one major (and that might not qualify him) and he’s only won a couple of other tour events (which also might not qualify him), but he’s won a major by eight strokes, and there are only a handful of players who have ever done that. For his sheer brilliance and amazing scoring at Congressional in the 2011 US Open, I would certainly include him.

If nothing else, Rory already makes for a great story and I believe all the fascinating accounts of the great players in this book make for a terrific read. Who is the greatest of them all? Personally I would go for the cliché, Jack Nicklaus. He was a strong golfer and even better mentally. I admire and aspire to the second trait so, for me, it’s Jack – no question.

Padraig Harrington 2011

INTRODUCTION

I n the mid-19th century it was a truth universally acknowledged, at least in golf, which at the time meant St. Andrews, other spots on the east coast of Scotland and the odd outpost like Prestwick, that Allan Robertson was the greatest of golfers. He was a highly regarded maker of clubs and balls, he was a caddie, and when he played, he rarely lost. At foursomes in combination with his apprentice, Tom Morris, the two men were said to be unbeatable.

‘It was an article of faith with many old golfers that Allan Robertson was the best player that had ever handled a club,’ wrote Horace Hutchinson, golfing historian and a fine player himself in the late 19th century. Donald Steel and Peter Ryde in the Shell International Encyclopedia of Golf stated: ‘He was by common consent the supreme golfer of his age.’

A book like this one would have been a lot shorter if published in the age of Robertson. At least the selection process would have been a lot less difficult. So much has happened in golf in the century and a half since, that the problem now is the opposite. Not whom to include, but whom to leave out?

To identify the 100 greatest ever golfers was a tempting but dangerous proposal. The project was like the best of courses, one that is never less than a pleasure to play but one which never fails to ensnare the player in its labyrinthine subtleties. Everyone can agree on the legends – Vardon, Jones, Hogan, Nicklaus, Palmer, Seve and Woods. And plenty of other greats – Young Tom Morris, JH Taylor and James Braid, Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen, Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, Peter Thomson, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson, Nick Faldo, Joyce Wethered and Mickey Wright. Perhaps half, or even two-thirds, pick themselves. Of course, the interesting bit is settling on the last few names. Why pick them as opposed to the dozens left out?

Two issues soon became apparent. The first was not being able to agree with myself from one day to the next. It should be made clear from the outset that there were no fixed criteria for inclusion in this book. No manufactured points table, nor recalculated money lists taking into account inflation and the like. Golfing greatness can only ever exist in the eye of the beholder. My opinions have been formed over two decades as a golf writer. But the more I read while researching this book, and the more I talked to other people, so further contemplation always seemed essential in order to refine the ‘List’.

The other consideration was that events kept occurring during the writing of the book – weekly, in terms of the tours, although these had only a minor effect on my thinking; and, more occasionally, the major championships of 2011, which always had a significant bearing on the List, even if the winner did not eventually make the cut, so to speak.

There is a reason for this. Over the last 150 or so years, championship golf has proved itself remarkably proficient in identifying the greatest players of the game. Although there have always been matches and exhibitions, tournaments and tours, there have always been titles that have been the most sought after. Over time, however, the players who prevail most often in the championships where everyone who’s anyone gets to tee-up, and the ones who most often win the oldest and most treasured trophies, are the greatest players.

Robertson, of course, never won what we know today as a major championship. They did not exist in his lifetime. There was no need of them. His death, however, may well have helped introduce the concept of championship golf. As the Shell Encyclopedia records: ‘He died the year before the first Open Championship so that his name is not entered on the roll of honour, but it is said that the championship arose out of a desire to find out who ruled the roost once the matter had been thrown into doubt by Robertson’s death.’

For the previous few years, the idea of a championship had been proposed by the Earl of Eglinton and Colonel James Ogilvie Fairlie, two bigwigs at Prestwick. They had already shown they were forward thinkers by persuading Old Tom Morris to leave St. Andrews and develop a new links on the west coast. Perhaps Robertson’s death in 1859 concentrated various minds, and so on October 17, 1860, at Prestwick, eight players made three loops of the 12-hole course and Willie Park was the champion. All the players were caddies, and hence professionals, so it was not very open at all. However, amateurs were eligible for the Open from the following year.

After a quarter of a century, in which time no amateur had managed to win the Open, the Amateur Championship, which excluded professionals, was created in 1885. It was not long however before two British amateurs, John Ball and Harold Hilton, beat the professionals to win the Open. In 1895, the United States Golf Association conducted the first US Open and the first US Amateur Championship. There now existed a quartet of titles representing the pinnacles of the game, and Bobby Jones wanted to win them all – in the same year.

It was 1930 and Jones achieved exactly what he set out to do, winning the British Amateur, for the first and only time, at St. Andrews, then the Open at Hoylake, the US Open at Interlachen and finally the US Amateur at Merion. He was 28 and had no more golfing Everests to climb. He retired.

Thirty years later Arnold Palmer was trying to come up with a professional golfer’s modern equivalent of Jones’s Grand Slam – the term ‘Impregnable Quadrilateral’, though a magnificent phrase, never quite caught on. He had won the Masters, which Jones had founded at his own golf course of Augusta National in 1934, and the US Open, and was flying to Britain alongside his friend and golf writer Bob Drum. They thought that, if Palmer could win the Open and then return home and claim the USPGA Championship, first organised by the PGA of America in 1916, then he too could claim a Grand Slam. Ben Hogan had won the Masters and the US Open in 1953 and went on to win the Open at Carnoustie, his only attempt at the claret jug. Because of a car accident a few years earlier, he no longer played in the physically more demanding USPGA with its matchplay format of 36 holes a day.

Palmer came up just short at the 1960 Open at St. Andrews but though his quest for a Grand Slam was stymied, his subsequent return to the ‘British’, and double triumph in the following two years, undoubtedly helped make the Open the ultimate championship it is today. However, America’s domination of the sport for most of the 20th century is the reason why three of the four majors are in the States. Fast forward to 2000 when Tiger Woods won the US Open, the Open and the USPGA before going on to claim the 2001 Masters. With all four trophies sitting on his coffee table, Woods was not concerned with the pedants’ arguments about whether his Tiger Slam measured up to a calendar-year Grand Slam. In truth, winning all four of the modern majors over a lifetime, let alone within 12 months, is hard enough – and has only been achieved so far by Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Woods.

So championship golf provides us with a framework for revealing greatness, but a player’s achievements are only half of the ledger. Greatness is not just about what someone does, it is also about how we, the observers, feel about it and how it inspires us. There can be no set formula for greatness, no list of qualifications – we just know it when we see it. So if winning the big championships, the ones that mean the most to the players – men or women, amateur or professional, ancient or modern – is the primary criterion for judging greatness, it cannot be the only one. If it were, the list of multiple major winners would suffice as an index of greatness.

Instead, we must take other factors into account. Popularity is an important one because it corresponds directly to how we feel about a player. In golf, spectators vote with their feet, pounding the fairways alongside their favourites – so Freddie Tait and Joe Carr must be considered alongside other adventurous golfers such as Young Tom Morris, Arnold Palmer and Seve Ballesteros. Have there been two more loved women golfers than Nancy Lopez and Lorena Ochoa?

Then there are those who have been pioneers for the game around the globe, such as Flory Van Donck in Europe, Norman Von Nida in Australia, Argentina’s Roberto de Vicenzo, Japan’s Isao Aoki and Se Ri Pak from South Korea. Marlene Stewart Streit dominated the amateur game in Canada but also won the most prestigious titles in America and Britain. Moe Norman hardly won anything outside Canada and gave up on the American circuit for social rather than golfing reasons. His is a fascinating story. Norman’s appearances on the practice range at the Canadian Open late in his life had the modern professionals queuing up to catch a glimpse of the legend’s swing.

Some players touch greatness in spite of their own worst faults, like Tommy ‘Thunder’ Bolt, or did so amid a tumultuous life, like John Daly. Colin Montgomerie, Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood have yet to win a major but Monty won a record seven European order of merits in a row, Garcia won the Players Championship, the so-called ‘fifth major’, and Westwood has been world number one. All are Ryder Cup heroes and had to be considered alongside the major winners.

But what does it take to be a great player? If there are no absolute criteria, are there at least common traits that we can recognise? What separates the great player from the merely very good? A lifelong commitment to the game is a basic foundation for any good player. But a great player takes full advantage of his or her opportunities, perhaps to the extent that a good player cannot imagine.

Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers makes clear that a happy accident of circumstance can give someone exposure to a skill for far longer than most other people. So look out for the number of great players who grew up on a golf course, next to a golf course or worked as a caddie as a youngster. Think of Francis Ouimet gazing out of his bedroom window at the glory that is the Country Club of Brookline, and sneaking on at dawn before anyone else was about. Seve Ballesteros also had to play the odd hole at Pedreña when no one was looking, and otherwise spent his time on the beach hitting his old three-iron. Top-notch facilities are not required. Byron Nelson claimed the unkempt, sun-baked, wind-swept courses of Texas in the Great Depression were perfect for developing talent and especially the ability to adapt to any circumstance.

However, just having time – and, as Gladwell tells us, 10,000 hours or ten years is now the accepted standard for developing an expertise in a skill (‘I spent that just warming up with each club,’ joked Sir Nick Faldo) – is not enough. As Matthew Syed demonstrates in Bounce: How Champions are Made, purposeful practice is required to keep developing an expertise. Ben Hogan illustrated this beautifully. As a journeyman, Hogan’s scattergun approach to practising did not help him. When he worked religiously on a few fundamentals, he became the best player of his generation.

Faldo’s development was aided by imagination and visualisation. He pretended to play as other players, Nicklaus, Palmer, Player, Miller, even Hogan or Snead, whom he had never seen in person. It was a form of visualisation which allowed Faldo to gain confidence from the good shots and assign any bad shots to whomever he was impersonating. His other trick was to treat his home club of Welwyn Garden City as a template for more challenging holes by imagining a water hazard or out-of-bounds line. But the most fun was simply hitting, say, a seven-iron all day. ‘By the end of the day the club was just an extension of your arm,’ Faldo explained. ‘Jeepers, talk about being able to feel the cover of the ball. You were so confident.’ So what a good player might think of as hard work, a great player thinks of as fun.

Obviously, commitment, dedication and perseverance are all required. Golfers, even the greatest, spend more time losing than winning. For many, it is through losing that they learn how to win. Padraig Harrington could be considered a slow learner. He has been a runner-up numerous times (29 at the time of writing) but when his chance came, he was ready, winning three majors in two years. ‘Winning is a good habit but you don’t learn much,’ he said. ‘You learn a lot when you lose. Sitting in your hotel room at 10 o’clock at night when you have thrown away a tournament is not a nice experience, going over what you did wrong in your head.’ It was Harrington who told Rory McIlroy that the young man was a better player the Monday after the 2011 Masters, than the Monday before. A horrifying collapse in the final round might have defined McIlroy’s young career, except he rewrote the script at the US Open.

Amnesia can be a useful quality for the great player to have. Jack Nicklaus simply never remembered when he lost – and he had more seconds and thirds in majors than anyone. But he never forgot how to win. When he was charging to victory at the 1986 Masters, Tom Weiskopf, who won the Open but was a runner-up four times at Augusta, was asked on television what Nicklaus was thinking. ‘If I knew that,’ Weiskopf replied, ‘I would have won this tournament.’

Was Nicklaus thinking anything? He did not have to think about ‘taking one shot at a time’ because it came naturally to him. His utter absorption in the task at hand was the very definition of mindfulness. He said that in major championships he could keep playing his game longer than others could play theirs. Bobby Jones meant something similar when he said: ‘Competitive golf, especially strokeplay, demands that the player be continually on the lookout against himself.’ It is easier said than done. As the coach Denis Pugh puts it: ‘The players that are merely very good, try to play great golf, some imaginary, perfect game. But the players that are great just keep trying to play very good golf. That’s the difference.’

But Faldo also pointed out the ability of champions to raise their game when the moment requires it:

The great ones can make things happen. You have another gear. It used to be fifth, it’s now probably a sixth. When you need to turn it on, it inspires you to play better. Bjorn Borg was my first sporting hero, Ayrton Senna, people like that. Anybody who can make their tools sing for them is pretty inspiring.

Standards of play may be rising all the time with improvements in course conditions, equipment, coaching and swing analysis. But better technical skills are not enough if you cannot make use of them. ‘Target practice is all well and good, and you might have a badge to say that you are a good marksman but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be a good guerrilla fighter,’ said Peter Thomson. ‘You have to have the ability to compete, to survive, not to let the fear of success overwhelm you.’

Thomson also said: ‘The super players have one vital quality: calmness.’ He and Nicklaus were the prime examples. Calmness and the ability never to give up are the ingredients that help a great player separate themselves from other players with similar technical skills. ‘The mental fortitude you have to have to win, the nerves, the skill, it has always been the same,’ said Ken Brown, the former Ryder Cup player.

‘Look at Gary Player,’ said David Leadbetter, the coach. ‘What did he have over everyone else? Here and here,’ pointing at his heart and his head. ‘It’s that inner belief that is the intangible that separates the great from the really good.’

That inner belief drives an unshakeable will to win. For Tiger Woods, it is that simple. ‘The biggest thing is to have the mindset and the belief you can win every tournament going in,’ he said. ‘A lot of guys don’t have that; Nicklaus had it. He felt he was going to beat everybody.’ Nicklaus himself said: ‘You have to be strong enough and tough enough and selfish enough to say, “I’ve got to do this for myself. I’ve got to get this done for me.”’

Betsy Rawls, one of the early LPGA stars, felt that great players have a:

… tremendous drive to win and a need to prove themselves to the world. There is a great confidence in one area and a great need in the other to prove you are a worthwhile person. You have the feeling inside that you’re very worthwhile, but you need everyone else to know it. Winners take that avenue to prove to the world they are worthwhile, and they can do it through golf. I had a lot of drive and any great player must have an obsession with winning and a need to win.

Another of the great American women players was Patty Berg, who made a list about the qualities she felt were required to be a winner, as recorded by Liz Kahn in The LPGA: The History of the Ladies Professional Golf Association. It is worth reproducing not as some self-help mantra but as an example of how differently great players think, how the positive attitude cannot be reinforced enough, and how the repetition is fundamental to the message:

1. Believe you have a will to win, not a wish to win.

2. Inspiration.

3. Don’t think you really win until you live up to that high thing within you, that makes you do your best, no matter what.

4. Never give up.

5. Desire, dedication and determination.

6. Fighting heart.

7. Strive for perfection.

8. Faith, confidence, courage, spirit and enthusiasm.

9. Self-control and patience.

10. Use your mind, concentration, visualisation.

11. Take defeat and bounce back to victory.

12. Take God with you.

These traits that separate the great players from the merely very good are not just exceptional but timeless. They have nothing to do with the quality of courses or the technical excellence of the game itself. Because of this, the greatest players must be drawn from across the history of championship golf. There are many to choose from yet there is only room for 100 golfers in this book. The list of those left out could be as long again. America has most representatives in the book, and probably most cause for complaint about those who have been omitted. Among those who might have been in were: Johnny McDermott, Macdonald Smith, Leo Diegel, Chick Evans, Craig Wood, Horton Smith, Denny Shute, Henry Picard, Paul Runyan, Ralph Guldahl, Lloyd Mangrum, Jackie Burke, Gene Littler, Doug Ford, Dave Stockton, Larry Nelson, Tom Weiskopf, Tom Kite, Lanny Wadkins, Lee Janzen, Mark O’Meara, Hal Sutton, Fred Couples, Davis Love, Steve Stricker and Jim Furyk. And of the women: Sandra Haynie, Judy Rankin, Pat Bradley, Patty Sheehan, Betsy King, Amy Alcott, Beth Daniel, Meg Mallon, plus Australia’s Jan Stephenson, Sweden’s Liselotte Neumann and Ayako Okamoto, from Japan.

From Britain: Jamie Anderson, Bob Ferguson, both three-time Open champions from the early days; Bob Martin, Willie Park Jnr, Andrew Kirkaldy, Willie Dunn, Sandy Herd, Abe Mitchell, Peter Alliss, Max Faulkner, Dai Rees, Neil Coles, Peter Oosterhuis and Paul Lawrie. And two home winners of the Women’s British Open, Karen Stupples and Catriona Matthew, also merited consideration. From elsewhere: David Graham, Graham Marsh, Bruce Crampton, Chi-Chi Rodriguez, Eduardo Romero, Angel Cabrera, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Thomas Bjorn, Trevor Immelman, Geoff Ogilvy. Asia undoubtedly will have far more representatives in any future edition but Jumbo Ozaki, winner or over 100 titles in Japan but only the New Zealand PGA outside it, did not make it, nor did, although much closer, Korea’s YE Yang, who beat Woods at the 2009 USPGA, and KJ Choi, the 2011 Players champion. Perhaps Ryo Ishikawa, the Bashful Prince from Japan, will feature some day. Talking of really young stars, Italy’s Matteo Manassero, the youngest player to win the Amateur Championship (16 years old) and to win a tournament on the European Tour (17 years old), is surely a certainty for future greatness. So, too, may be Guan Tianlang, the 14-year-old from China who played all four rounds at the 2013 Masters.

Perhaps the biggest problem in assessing players for this book was in comparing players still active in their careers with those players of long ago. Generally, it was hard to include most of the current younger crop whose careers are still evolving, even such fine Englishmen as Paul Casey, Ian Poulter, Justin Rose and Luke Donald, although the last, after becoming the number one player in the world in 2011, was a contender. So were a number of recent major champions (all, of course, may well have more to come): Martin Kaymer, Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel, Adam Scott and Graeme McDowell. As the first European to win the US Open for 40 years, followed up by a starring role in the Ryder Cup of 2010, it was hard to leave McDowell out. It may be that Northern Ireland is under-represented given that Fred Daly, the 1947 Open champion, might also have made it.

But Darren Clarke and Rory McIlroy played their way into the book. By winning the Open at Royal St. George’s with a magnificent display of links golf in testing conditions, Clarke capped a fine career that includes Ryder Cup glory and success at the World Golf Championship level. McIlroy is 20 years younger, and at just 22 years old at the time of publication of the first edition, his inclusion may have been considered premature. Certainly, nothing created more debate when canvassing the views of others on McIlroy. There were those for and those against, but both sides stated their cases emphatically.

Clearly, a fuller appreciation of McIlroy’s career will have to wait, but producing one of the greatest, most dominant major victories ever at the US Open, straight after blowing the Masters so miserably, qualifies McIlroy in my book. Look at the records McIlroy set at Congressional: the lowest total for a US Open by four strokes (previous holders included Nicklaus and Woods), the lowest totals for 36 and 54 holes, the first player to get to 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 under par, and equal largest halfway lead. He was also the youngest US Open champion since Jones in 1923 and the youngest European winner of a major since Young Tom Morris in 1868. That’s pretty good company to be keeping. To prove it was no fluke, McIlroy also won the 2012 USPGA Championship by eight strokes and ended the year as the world No 1.

When something has not been done for almost a century or more, then that something must be pretty special. This was the achievement of another 22-year-old in 2011. Yani Tseng first became the youngest player to win four majors since Young Tom, then she became the youngest ever, male or female, to win five. She made the book, too.

Records such as these are not mere statistical niceties but provide a context in the form of what has gone before, and so gave an important suggestion as to how to lay out the order of the entries in this book. An alphabetical listing, or one using some arbitrary ranking system, would place players out of the context of their times. Great players are defined partly by who has gone before but mostly by the great players they played against. Take the battles of the Great Triumvirate, or the fact that once Jones started winning majors, Hagen and Sarazen only got a look in when Jones was not playing. Nelson and Hogan were the same age but Nelson’s career was virtually over by the time Hogan got going. It was into the era of Arnie that Nicklaus began his incredible run, leaving others to judge themselves against the Golden Bear for the next couple of decades, just the way Els, Singh, Mickelson and Garcia are defined by having played in the era of Tiger Woods. In this way, the stories of golf’s greatest players, from Allan Robertson to Rory McIlroy, reveal the excitement and drama underlying the momentous story of championship golf.

A NOTE ON THE NEW EDITION, 2013

Let’s take a mulligan. A mulligan is defined by that fount of all knowledge, the Shell International Encyclopedia of Golf, rather wonderfully as: ‘Slang for a friendly arrangement whereby a player has the option of a second drive from the first tee. It is largely an American habit. Not, of course, practised in serious competition.’ Certainly not in the sort of competitions that have defined the greatest ever golfers over the years.

Publishing is a different matter entirely. The temptation to have a second bite at the cherry is always strong. The biggest challenge when conceiving the 100 Greatest Ever Golfers was to select the hundred in the first place. No easy matter, as previously described, but out of that process came the idea for arranging the entries in a roughly chronological order. A few generous readers commented that they appreciated this: as well as dipping in and out, there was the chance to read about players in the context of the era in which they played and the other great players they played against.

Almost two years on, and I haven’t changed either the ordering or the composition of the hundred, despite a few more players making a case for potential selection. But there were also some readers who were a little disappointed by the lack of a full ranking of the players, from one to hundred. It turns out, people like lists.

Good for them; not so good for me. It would have been a big enough challenge without already having railed against the futility of ranking systems (see the conclusion, which takes a more discursive approach to offering an opinion on the greatest player of all time). A tricky spot, then, but as I was forcibly reminded on a recent round on the Old Course at St Andrews in a gale gusting to over 40mph, part of the fun of golf is trying to extricate yourself from all the impossible positions you managed to put yourself in.

My first thought was to find as many of the most eminent people in golf I could lay my hands on and get them to help with a survey. You know, share the blame around. But would that really help? There might be some conformity towards the top end but lower down a unified view would be impossible (and they probably would not agree with all the players I had included in the first place). In any case, the Rules of Golf state that whatever one or more markers might come up with, a player is solely responsible for the correctness of the score recorded on each hole of his scorecard (6-6d). No passing the buck.

Other ranking systems are already available. The excellent Golf Majors series from Alun Evans, which details scores from every men’s professional major championship, contains an all-time points list based on 50 points for a win down to one point for a top-20 finish. Jack Nicklaus is way out in front of Tiger Woods, with Walter Hagen, Gary Player, Tom Watson and Ben Hogan the next in line.

A lot of time and computer power can be used up in attempting to prove the bleeding obvious, as demonstrated by an article in the June 2012 edition of Mathematics TODAY. Statisticians from the University of Salford ‘used the Plackett-Luce model to estimate time-varying player strengths for golfers’. The data analysed came from men’s majors between 1996 and 2011 and showed Tiger Woods at the top of the list. Phil Mickelson was second, followed by Ernie Els and then Jim Furyk. Vijay Singh and Retief Goosen were fifth and sixth, with Lee Westwood the leading European in seventh, followed by Mike Weir, Sergio Garcia and Stewart Cink. The results allowed the authors to conclude that at their respective peaks, a match between Woods and his nearest rival, Mickelson, would be won by Tiger with a probability of 0.598, or almost 60 per cent of the time. At his peak, that is probably an underestimation of Tiger’s superiority.

The article concluded: ‘Future work in this area will be to answer the ultimate question for any golf fan: “Who is the greatest golfer ever?” To do so, one would need data from a much longer time frame (golf’s major competitions began in 1860 with the Open Championship), and even more heroic computing, but getting answers to questions such as “Who would win a match between Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus?” would make the effort worth it.’ Readers of Mathematics TODAY are still avidly awaiting the answer.

Of course, the challenge with ranking the 100 players in this book is that they could never play in the same competition, not just because they span over 150 years of the game but because one of the guiding principles was to include both men and women, amateurs and professionals. An easy way to compare them was needed and, inevitably, this would make for a highly subjective ranking.