But he is now 37 years old and the following question is a fascinating one:
Will Tiger be able to equal or surpass Jack Nicklaus´ 18 Majors ?
Personally I love Tiger´s golf game ever since I was lucky enough to walk inside the ropes with him in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the year 2000, when he and David Duval won the Team World Championship for the USA.
And he has enjoyed a wonderful career winning some 100 professional tournaments world wide.
However I feel there are two powerful reasons that, I´m afraid, will keep Tiger from ever reaching Jack´s mark of 18 Majors.
The first one is the incredibly good and superior competitive level that exists today at the top of world golf. Nicklaus never had to face such strong competition.
As a matter of fact, neither did Tiger ten years ago.
To prove my point I used the information that is available on the PGA Tour and European Tour statistics sections.
First I looked at the annual scoring average of the PGA Tour and grouped the information into three six year periods. 2012 to 2007, 2006 to 2001 and 2000 to 1995.
Then, for each period, I calculated the average annual scoring for every year´s leader of this statistic. The result was almost the exact same for each period: 68.7 strokes per round.
Now then, for each of these three six year periods I calculated the number of players that had achieved an average of less than 71.0 strokes per round.
And the results are the following:
Period 1995 to 2000: An average of 70 players per year, shot less than a 71.0 scoring average.
Period 2001 to 2006: An average of 80 players per year, shot less than a 71.0 scoring average.
Period 2007 to 2012: An average of 110 players per year, shot less than a 71.0 scoring average.
I did the same with available statistics from the European Tour and I reached similar results.
Since Tiger started winning Majors in 1997, the fields he has had to face have just been getting stronger and stronger.
If in the 1995-2000 time frame there were some 70 PGA Tour players capable of winning a Major, today, this number has grown to some 110 players, or more.
The same can be said of the European Tour players. If in the 2001-2006 period, there were an additional (many of the top European players are included in the PGA Tour statistic) 20 golfers who could potentially win a Major, today that number has increased to at least 30
Advantage Jack Nicklaus. When Jack won his Majors (1962-1968), there were only a hand full of players who had a chance to win. And, also, as we have seen, the quantity and quality of players capable of winning Majors today has increased significantly when compared to the 1997-2008 period, when Tiger won his 14 Majors.
So the going is getting a lot tougher for Tiger.
The second reason that leads me to believe that Tiger has a low chance of equaling or surpassing Nicklaus´ mark has to do with his Mental fortitude.
Despite Tiger´s excellent capacity for "synchronizing" Mind and Body to hit great golf shots, my belief is that Tiger has made (and continues to do so) four important Mental errors that Nicklaus never incurred in.
1. Tiger has changed his swing at least three times since becoming a Pro. This is a very risky and complicated thing to do because, as we have discussed many times, it requires a huge effort involving the Conscious Mind, the one that is bad at playing golf under pressure. And because it requires thousands of repetitions ("reps" in Tiger´s lingo) for the new swing to become fully automatized, this process takes away critical time from practice of the short game.
This is a no-no from the Mental Golf point of view because anger and frustration only contribute to "throw" the golfer out of the Present Moment and out of the Unconscious (Automatic or Intuitive) mode, the great mode for playing outstanding golf under pressure.
3. Tiger, in my opinion, tends to plan his shots too aggressively. This leads to mistakes, and additional avoidable strokes, that inevitably end up in anger and frustration, with the negative consequences explained above.
4. Tiger is obsessed with winning Majors and reaching and beating Nicklaus´ mark. Jack didn´t have this problem because it wasn´t such a big deal in his days and he surpassed Hagen fairly early on in his career.
This obsession can be dangerous and damaging to a top level golfer because it produces a psychological problem that is clearly described in Emile Coué´s Theory of Conscious Autosuggestion.
The law of Reverse Effect, or Reversed Effort, states that the more effort we put into achieving an objective, the probability of achieving it decreases in, at least, the same proportion.
It´s what happened to Greg Norman with the Masters and Sam Snead with the US Open. They both publicly announced their obsession with winning these tournaments and both collapsed at least twice when they were in contention.
Coué explains that when we consciously want something too badly, the conscious mind sends a "desperation" message to the unconscious mind, and the unconscious interprets that the objective is tremendously difficult to achieve. And as it´s the unconscious mind that controlls all our body movements, including the golf swing, this "desperate effort in excess" leads to a "psycho-motor" breakdown that inevitably turns into poor golf shots and collapse situations ("choking").
Second conclusion:
Jack Nicklaus was better than Tiger at managing anger and frustration, and he was exceptionally good at conservative shot planning ("golf course management"). Jack didn´t have to worry about swing changes during the bulk of his career (he only changed his swing towards the end due to back problems) and he never had to face the "Reversed Effort" issue.
Double advantage, Nicklaus, therefore, when we add up both conclusions.
Some advice for Tiger, in order to give himself a better chance at catching Jack ?
Tiger has proved to be an exceptionally talented, successful and hard working golfer, but, in my view, he could benefit enormously from two things:
1. No more swing changes. Only fine tuning from now on.
2. If he doesn´t have a Mental Coach yet, hire one fast. A good Mental Coach can help Tiger resolve the anger and frustration issues, the Reversed Effort situation at the Majors and his excessive shot making agressiveness.
But, this story is not over yet. We´ll watch Tiger closely at the coming Majors.
