G LF’S
GREATEST
EIGHTEEN
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TODAY’S TOP GOLF WRITERS
DEBATE AND RANK THE SPORT’S
GREATEST CHAMPIONS
G LF’S
GREATEST
EIGHTEEN
EDITED BY DAVID MACKINTOSH
WITH “NEW MONEY” STATISTICS BY JOEY KANEY
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Contents
FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Robert Trent Jones, Jr.
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xi
PART ONE: FRONT NINE
1. Scotland’s Favorite Son: Tom Watson 3
John Garrity
2. Quiet Texan Music: Byron Nelson 13
Dave Hackenberg
3. Jus’ a Simple Country Boy: Sam Snead 25
James Dodson
4. The Frequent Flyer Knight: Gary Player 37
Ben Wright
5. Pool Hall Bill: Billy Casper 49
Al Barkow
6. Magic by Practice: Nick Faldo 59
John Hopkins
7. Baron of the Golden Age: Walter Hagen 69
Dr. Stephen R. Lowe
vii
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viii
Contents
8. Perfect Balance: Raymond Floyd 81
Ron Green, Sr.
9. Emperor of the Game: Robert Tyre Jones, Jr. 91
Sidney L. Matthew
PART TWO: BACK NINE

10. Of Castanets and Kings: Severiano Ballesteros 107
John Huggan
11. The Kid Who Gave Up Baseball: Hale Irwin 117
Dan Reardon
12. King of Kings: Arnold Palmer 129
Mike Purkey
13. The Great White Legend: Greg Norman 141
Phil Tresidder
14. Indomitable Enigma: Ben Hogan 149
Jaime Diaz
15. “THE MAN”—for Every Reason, Any Season! Jack Nicklaus 163
Kaye Kessler
16. Talking His Best Game: Lee Trevino 175
Marino Parascenzo
17. The Squire of Harrison: Gene Sarazen 187
Furman Bisher
18. Above and Beyond: Tiger Woods 197
Tom Auclair
PART THREE: NINETEENTH HOLE
19. The Money Game 213
David Mackintosh
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .225
AFTERWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .233
Foreword
There is endless animated debate in famous clubhouses—at Augusta dur-
ing the Masters, St. Andrews during Royal and Ancient Golf Club meet-
ings, indeed at all major championship venues: if a foursome of Bobby
Jones, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods were to play today, who
would be the champion of champions? The proposition would be even
more intriguing were they to compete on the same terms of modern, won-

derfully conditioned courses, using the latest aerodynamic golf balls and
rocket-shafted titanium clubs.
A fantasy, of course, but David Mackintosh has come close to answer-
ing this intriguing question with actuarial acumen.
Indeed, the intrepid compiler of this book has gone much further than
just one match, pitting the best of the twentieth century, all against all, in
the most fascinating analysis ever. Applying a logic that the most constant
factor in professional golf over the years has been competition for prize
money, David has given every great player in his Golf’s Greatest Eighteen a
fascinating opportunity—playing on today’s world tour for the same
rewards to see who comes out on top.
This remarkable feat of accurately balancing many thousands of events
over ninety years reveals some remarkable and previously unconsidered
aspects of the game’s all-time heroes. So who really was the greatest of all
time? In the spirit of the challenge, the author simply provides the facts,
ix
Copyright 2003 by Dave Mackintosh. Click Here for Terms of Use.
many thousands of them, neatly arranged to put these glorious champions
in perspective, each reader then the final judge.
Additionally, chapter after chapter, vivid word portraits capture these
great figures at the pinnacle of their time on center stage—their spirits as
well as their crucial swings. James Dodson on Sam Snead in southern hill-
billy vernacular is splendidly authentic; Stanford man John Garrity on Stan-
ford champion Tom Watson, both with midwestern values, is arrow-straight.
Kay Kessler has the ultimate inside track on Jack Nicklaus, following his
every footstep from schoolboy Ohio days to the present. Jaime Diaz on the
determined, disciplined, and shot-making perfectionist Ben Hogan is splen-
did stuff as indeed is each and every contribution.
I have had the great privilege to play with some of the men portrayed
here or at least stood in awe in the presence of Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan,

and others. And I know all these writers and admire their passion for our
game’s great history—passion obvious in each turn of phrase, each word of
praise. No false flattery here. The authors of the eighteen essays here know
their men and their times. Past greatness simply flows from their pens,
chapter after chapter, leaving the warm afterglow of having met excellence,
in its own time.
I hope you will savor the treats presented within the covers of this out-
standing compilation as much as I did.
Enjoy!
Robert Trent Jones, Jr.
Palo Alto, California, March 2003
x
Foreword
Introduction
The concept that gave rise to this book is really quite simple—the search
for an unbiased standard by which to compare the greatest players of the
modern age of golf.
The methodology was equally straightforward, even if achieving the
summary-numbers required several thousand hours of research and com-
puting time! What we’ve done within these pages is put golf’s greatest
eighteen players on the same course, playing for the same prize money.
Hypothetical money, obviously, but an entirely realistic treatment of the
theme.
Rather than a meaningless application of monetary inflation over the
period since 1914, we’ve built an entirely revolutionary “New Money”
model that incorporates factors such as present-day values of past tourna-
ments combined with a mathematically precise evaluation of events no
longer in existence but, in their time, tournaments of significance.
In effect what we’ve done is build our new-money model to ensure every
event, even if no longer on the Tour schedule, has been assigned a hierar-

chical value, particularly taking account of field quality and the perceived
importance of the event by the players themselves. For instance, from its
inception in 1899 up to World War II, the Western Open was considered
a major championship by all players. In addition, high-level events of yes-
xi
Copyright 2003 by Dave Mackintosh. Click Here for Terms of Use.
teryear no longer in existence, such as the Miami Open, the North and
South, the Metropolitan, and the Southern Spring Open, have been
restored to former glory.
Clearly the major championships stand apart, although it is fair to say
that the current “Big Four” became true heavyweights only after World War
II. Prior to that time, although winners of the U.S. Open and PGA gained
maximum public attention, the prize money allocated for these titles was
frequently less than for other zone titles or even exhibition matches. Indeed,
delving into the past reveals that on more than one occasion a major title-
holder decided to forgo the following-year tournament in favor of better
cash available elsewhere.
Established in 1934, the Masters Tournament became a major only after
a considerable incubation period, with the Western Open retreating to
regional status. The PGA Championship moved to a higher plane when
it adopted the stroke-play mode in 1958, and the venerable British Open,
although the 1860 granddaddy of them all, was in desperate need of inter-
national resuscitation until 1960. Simply, the glorious evolution of the
game of golf is comprehensively acknowledged in the New Ranking
calculations.
The “New Money” numbers in this book, while taking note of some of
the eccentricities of the early days, wholeheartedly recognizes the current
“Big Four” major championship structure and the major championship
ranking tables are entirely based on results from the Masters, the U. S.
Open, the British Open, and the PGA. Thus, sadly, Walter Hagen receives

no major credit for his five Western Open victories—but then again, nei-
ther does Bill Casper, who won the event on four separate occasions.
Hagen was past his best by the time the Masters began and although
Gene Sarazen won the championship in 1935 with that glorious double-
eagle, his best years were also well behind him.
This quirk noted, applying our “New Money” formula to the current
major championship structure presents an entirely fresh perspective on the
all-time rankings, adding significance to what increasingly has become a
confusion between simple win-totals and real value. No longer, however,
can anyone claim to have passed Sam Snead’s lifetime earnings in one
event—or Sarazen’s during a lucrative afternoon!
Initially, readers may question why this book does not include senior-
circuit earnings in the overall-money section. There may be a case for doing
xii
Introduction
so elsewhere, but to be included within this structure we’d also have had
to find a way to incorporate the early years’ exhibition-match earnings of
Hagen, Sarazen, and others who were dependent on such income for sur-
vival—long before the advent of competitive golf for the over-fifties. It
should also be noted that to balance past and present (in the early days
sometimes even tenth-place paid zero cash) New-Money calculations are
based on first through twenty-fifth places and ties, with wins-only in the
international section.
It would be wonderful to be able to bring back Ben Hogan, Gene
Sarazen, and Walter Hagen, playing with modern equipment on today’s
beautifully manicured courses against Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer in
their prime or today’s Tiger Woods. Even the authors of this anthology can-
not conjure up that miracle. This book, however, is the most realistic level-
playing field constructed to pit all against all.
Because the one constant, whether yesterday, today, tomorrow, or next

century is this—professional golfers will always play for money.
It’s what they do!
Choosing the Greatest Eighteen Ever
Why eighteen? More than a couple of centuries ago some Scotsmen in Fife
thought it was the number best suited to golf, so why change a winning
formula?
Which eighteen? Perhaps the hardest choices are whom to leave out.
There is a small and very select group that automatically selects itself—Ben
Hogan and Jack Nicklaus probably the most obvious. Maybe even the sec-
ondary list, let’s say the Greatest Ten, would not be too difficult to assem-
ble, although numbers nine and eleven would probably be as hard to choose
as numbers eighteen or twenty-one.
So we set one standard. Those eligible for inclusion must have captured
more than one modern-day major championship, that is, more than one
title—not just two U.S. Opens or PGAs. So what’s Greg Norman doing
there, you ask? In defense, could anyone imagine leaving the Great White
Shark off the list of modern greats? Fortunately book editors, unlike golf
referees, are able to bend the rules from time to time. Which brings us to
another exception.
xiii
Introduction
Robert Tyre Jones, Jr.? An amateur in a money-rankings book? Hypo-
thetical money, of course! Could we honestly have ranked twentieth-century
major championships and excluded Bobby Jones? Although he never
banked one professional cent from his victories, RTJ is a noble exception.
The Other Greatest? Arguably the contributing authors to this anthol-
ogy, but among the wonderfully talented golfers excluded yet not ignored
are Roberto De Vicenzo, Henry Cotton, Arthur D’Arcy Locke, Peter Thom-
son, Flory Van Donck, Jimmy Demaret, Tom Kite, Johnny Miller, James
Braid, Doug Saunders, Bernhard Langer, Harold Hilton, Bob Charles,

Julius Boros, Tony Jacklin, Tom Weiskopf, Tommy Armour, and many,
many more. Frankly, we’d love to do another book on these guys as well.
Individual New-Money Career Records
At the end of each chapter you will find individual New-Money career
records for the player discussed. These records have been collected painstak-
ingly, event by event, year by year, from a multitude of public-domain and
contributed sources to provide the most comprehensive career records ever
assembled on the players who make up Golf’s Greatest Eighteen. Each year
of each player’s tournament life is here, an analysis that has incorporated
approximately eighteen thousand event appearances. Taking account of
each and every player’s Top 25 finishes over his career has meant sifting
around 450,000 items of data.
In addition, although charting international wins was a tiny exercise by
comparison, simply finding ways to capture and analyze the data, then
transform it into meaningful 2002 U.S. dollars, was a fascinating and occa-
sionally bizarre exchange-rate paper chase.
What we discovered during these last nine months is that composite
ready-reference books on player winnings, or indeed comprehensive major
championship money records, simply did not exist—until now.
New-Money Rankings of Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
Before we turn to the individual giants of the game, let’s take a look at
where things stand through the end of the 2002 season.
xiv
Introduction
First, let’s review the total career wins used in our analysis, bearing in
mind that we have incorporated certain wins that were in subsequent years
categorized as unofficial:
WHO’S WON WHAT
Total Wins Major Wins Non-Major Wins
Gary Player 124 9 115

Jack Nicklaus 86 18 68
Sam Snead 84 7 77
Greg Norman 74 2 72
Arnold Palmer 71 7 64
Seve Ballesteros 69 5 64
Ben Hogan 57 9 48
Billy Casper 57 3 54
Byron Nelson 51 5 46
Walter Hagen 45 11 34
Tom Watson 44 8 36
Tiger Woods 41 8 33
Gene Sarazen 40 7 33
Nick Faldo 38 6 32
Lee Trevino 35 6 29
Hale Irwin 28 3 25
Ray Floyd 25 4 21
Bobby Jones 7 7 N/A
Now let’s review total New Money for each of the individual major
championships:
INDIVIDUAL MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIPS
Masters U.S. Open British Open PGA
Jack Nicklaus $11,017,207 $7,618,651 $9,906,731 $9,301,551
Sam Snead 7,689,127 4,450,252 1,418,229 7,498,276
Gary Player 6,621,272 3,799,923 5,660,590 4,292,200
Tom Watson 5,942,160 4,018,072 6,858,000 2,619,630
Walter Hagen 361,200 6,043,434 5,918,750 6,662,941
Arnold Palmer 7,068,600 5,349,147 3,812,297 2,560,433
Ben Hogan 6,918,287 7,155,568 1,106,140 2,921,875
Gene Sarazen 2,231,740 5,986,745 3,069,801 6,554,694
Nick Faldo 3,576,133 1,737,425 6,234,853 1,657,632

Ray Floyd 4,791,467 2,603,528 1,660,474 4,009,648
Byron Nelson 5,819,660 2,020,009 252,832 4,715,459
Lee Trevino 733,872 3,458,304 4,356,193 3,601,216
Greg Norman 3,498,240 1,844,551 4,179,063 2,427,810
Seve Ballesteros 4,452,867 1,052,015 4,665,539 625,900
Billy Casper 3,496,780 3,403,900 603,636 3,085,684
Tiger Woods 3,477,824 2,569,830 1,771,930 2,711,500
Bobby Jones 258,907 6,728,682 3,318,419 0
Hale Irwin 1,847,000 4,335,260 1,115,423 1,146,888
xv
Introduction
That gives us the following New Money totals:
TOTAL—MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIPS
Total Majors
Jack Nicklaus $37,844,140
Sam Snead 21,055,884
Gary Player 20,373,985
Tom Watson 19,437,862
Walter Hagen 18,986,325
Arnold Palmer 18,790,477
Ben Hogan 18,101,870
Gene Sarazen 17,842,980
Nick Faldo 13,206,043
Ray Floyd 13,065,117
Byron Nelson 12,807,960
Lee Trevino 12,149,585
Greg Norman 11,949,664
Seve Ballesteros 10,796,321
Billy Casper 10,590,000
Tiger Woods 10,531,084

Bobby Jones 10,306,008
Hale Irwin 8,444,571
Now we’ll add all nonmajors to the package to reach the final, overall
New Money totals:
NEW MONEY FINAL RANKINGS
UP TO END-SEASON 2002
Total New Money Majors New Money Non-Majors New Money
Jack Nicklaus $128,054,968 $37,844,140 $90,210,828
Sam Snead 123,362,693 21,055,884 102,306,809
Arnold Palmer 98,389,720 18,790,477 79,599,243
Billy Casper 88,814,588 10,590,000 78,224,588
Ben Hogan 85,993,150 18,101,870 67,891,280
Tom Watson 79,892,441 19,437,862 60,454,579
Gary Player 75,484,122 20,373,985 55,110,137
Byron Nelson 73,622,091 12,807,960 60,814,131
Gene Sarazen 66,254,136 17,842,980 48,411,156
Lee Trevino 65,843,558 12,149,585 53,693,973
Greg Norman 63,039,268 11,949,664 51,089,604
Walter Hagen 62,349,220 18,986,325 43,362,895
Ray Floyd 59,126,977 13,065,117 46,061,860
Hale Irwin 54,822,395 8,444,571 46,377,824
Nick Faldo 50,406,547 13,206,043 37,200,504
Seve Ballesteros 50,082,127 10,796,321 39,285,806
Tiger Woods 45,207,924 10,531,084 34,676,840
Bobby Jones 10,306,008 10,306,008 N/A
xvi
Introduction
xvii
Introduction
Of course, as the following eighteen stories confirm, there are many

measures used to evaluate greatness, and who knows what money number
or final rating Tiger Woods will achieve when he reaches Jack Nicklaus’s
age? However that may work out in the future, here’s a new and different
way of summing up the fabulous achievements of golf’s greatest heroes for
the twentieth century and beyond—as well as a means for each and every
reader to reach a personal decision on who really was or is the Greatest
Player of All Time.
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PART ONE
Front Nine
Copyright 2003 by Dave Mackintosh. Click Here for Terms of Use.
1
3
Scotland’s Favorite Son
Tom Watson
John Garrity
Acouple hundred spectators surrounded him on that flat little seven-
teenth tee at the Pebble Beach Golf Links. Others milled about and chat-
tered on the road behind him, creating a buzz like that at a cocktail party.
Behind a big green hedge, a portable generator throbbed. Tom Watson,
undistracted, took a couple of brisk waggles, slashed at his ball, and
watched intently as it soared out toward the Pacific Ocean, hung in the air
with the seagulls . . . and then plunged into a greenside bunker.
It was not the summer of 1982. It was not the final round of the U.S.
Open, and Watson was not about to deflate Jack Nicklaus by chipping in
for a birdie from the thick rough by the seventeenth green. No, this was
some years later, a Saturday afternoon in February, and Watson, past his
prime, was trying to survive the fifty-four-hole cut at the AT&T Pebble
Beach National Pro-Am.
To do so, he now needed to get up and down from the sand—some-

thing he had done with monotonous regularity in the late seventies and
early eighties, when he was the best player in the world.
“And then Tom did something I’d never seen him do,” recalls former
USGA president Sandy Tatum, Watson’s longtime friend, mentor, and ama-
teur playing partner. “He chunked it in the bunker, took a double bogey.
Missed the cut.”
Copyright 2003 by Dave Mackintosh. Click Here for Terms of Use.
An hour later Watson joined Tatum for lunch at the nearby Cypress
Point Club. “I think any other man, having been what Tom Watson had
been, wouldn’t have been much fun,” Tatum says. “Not Tom. He was a joy.
We had a delightful lunch.” As they left the club, Watson looked at his
watch. “It’s 4:30,” he said. “We’ve got time to play nine holes.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Tatum said.
“I’m not kidding. We can play nine.”
Tatum looked around. “You don’t have any clubs.”
“We can borrow some.”
“How about shoes?”
“Can’t you get me a pair of shoes? And a sweater?”
A quick search of the clubhouse turned up some shoes, a sweater, and
Cypress Point member Hank Ketchum, a golf nut and creator of the “Den-
nis the Menace” cartoon strip. Within minutes the three men were out in
the gloaming, hitting golf shots past deer grazing on turf grass. “We played
with Hank’s clubs, and I can’t remember having more fun,” says Tatum.
“There was a dimension to Tom that I found almost unique, a deep, abid-
ing love for the game. He still played for the sheer joy of playing.”
There was, of course, another side to Tom Watson. He could be
overearnest, obsessed with decorum, judgmental, even preachy. (Envious
tour rivals used to call him “Carnac” because he had all the answers.) When
he denounced comedian Bill Murray for his slapstick antics at the 1993
Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Watson looked stuffy. When he wrote a letter to

Masters chairman Hord Hardin asking that wisecracking commentator
Gary McCord be taken off that tournament’s telecast, Watson appeared
meddlesome. When he declined to autograph a program for Scotland’s Sam
Torrance at a 1993 Ryder Cup dinner, Watson—long admired for his
impeccable manners—came off as rude.
But none of those missteps occurred when Watson had a golf club in his
hand. The game brought out the best in him—the inspired competitor, the
affable midwesterner, the supportive friend. Golf was his enduring link to
innocence and wonder, and he fought to maintain that link, knowing its
value. “When you mature, when you lose the dreams you had as a kid,
you’re no longer capable of playing a sport to its best,” he once said.
“Money has a lot to do with that. Abundance dilutes the desire.”
It was a typical Watson remark—intelligent, on point, and tinged with
self-reproach.
4
Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
His was always the examined life. Watson was born on September 4,
1949, the second of three brothers, and driven home to a prosperous, leafy
neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri. His father, Ray Watson, was an
insurance broker, a prominent amateur golfer, and a man for whom games
represented moral instruction. “All the people who played golf with my dad
were serious golfers,” Tom says. “Serious meaning they loved the game, and
every time they hit a golf shot they were there for one purpose only, and
that was to hit it the best that they could.”
By his midteens Tom played regularly with these grown-ups at the exclu-
sive Kansas City Country Club. In the summers he entered the city and
state amateur championships, drawing smiles with his short pants and
droopy white socks—until suddenly he was wearing long pants and taking
home the trophies. He had a boyish, gap-toothed grin, but he was an old
soul, eagerly absorbing the tall tales and instruction of men three times his

age. At Stanford University, where he played well but not brilliantly for the
golf team, he would be remembered as an independent thinker who flirted
with the antiestablishment views of the day, only to return in the end to
the bourgeois sensibilities of his parents. “I was somewhat of a fish out of
water at Stanford,” he admits.
It was not until he graduated in 1971 that Watson decided to try pro-
fessional golf, and the game he took out on tour was ragged. He didn’t trust
his swing—how could he, playing as often as he did from trees and ankle-
high grass?—but his scrambling skills were extraordinary, and he chipped
and putted as if he’d had a nerve bypass. The tour’s Andy Bean said, “When
you drive into the left rough, hack your second out into a greenside bunker,
come out within six feet of the hole, and sink the slippery putt—when you
do that, you’ve made a Watson par.”
Watson was not, however, a winner. Tournaments slipped away from
him on Sundays, and halfway into his third tour season players and
reporters were beginning to whisper the C-word. Yes, Watson admitted—
to himself, if not to others—he choked (although, as he would point out
a few years later, “A lot of guys who have never choked have never been in
the position to do so”). His most painful failure came in the 1974 U.S.
Open at Winged Foot Golf Club. Leading by a stroke after three rounds,
Watson wandered home with a final-round 79 and finished tied for fifth,
five strokes behind his playing partner, Hale Irwin. In the locker room
afterward, golf legend Byron Nelson approached a disconsolate Watson and
5
Scotland’s Favorite Son • Tom Watson