Best Player never to win a Major debate

[Deleted member 18588]

And who's career peak did Montys coincide with? I think you'll find there were plenty absolute top players in the game when Monty was at his peak, including Tiger. I'd counter Westwood's ET wins came when many started to head to the US whereas Monty still had the cream of Europe playing on the European Tour.

I ain't no Monty fan, I'd go as far to say I preferred Westwood but Monty was twice the player Westwood was.

Month's peak was probably prior to Tiger's dominance commencing in the late 90's.

By that time Monty had already won six of his eight Order of Merit titles and was in his mid 30's.

Faldo was clearly the top European player in the early to mid 90's closely accompanied by Seve, Olly, Langer, Woosie and Lyle.

All of these to one extent or another spent much of their time in America and playing worldwide.

 

[Pin-seeker]

I don’t really get this sentiment tbh. If one offs like the above didn’t happen, then why bother opening up the field. Just keep it top 50 like a wgc.

Nobody deserves a win. I could agree that if you blindly looked at the tour records of the four mentioned most would presume Westy and Monty had the majors. But at the end of the day they couldn’t cross the line, whilst others did.

Totally agree.
Unless someone has been cheated out of winning a major,then i Don’t see how you could say they deserve one.

 

[Deleted member 15344]

And who's career peak did Montys coincide with? I think you'll find there were plenty absolute top players in the game when Monty was at his peak, including Tiger. I'd counter Westwood's ET wins came when many started to head to the US whereas Monty still had the cream of Europe playing on the European Tour.

I ain't no Monty fan, I'd go as far to say I preferred Westwood but Monty was twice the player Westwood was.

Twice the player ? For someone twice the player then I would expect for Monty to have won a damn sight more than Westwood.

Westwood had two periods - nice and early in his career when he won in the states first time plus multiple times on the European tour - late 90’s early 00’s but then had a lull and late 00’s hit heights again winning both sides of the Atlantic and reaching the world number one spot.

Monty was just imperious on the European Tour during the 90’s but I don’t know who the cream of Europe were still playing in Europe but just like Westwood they both fell short when it came to the majors. It’s got to be very hard beyond any personal choice. Westwood is still now winning top comps when he just recently won the Abu Dhabi comp. I think it’s very hard to seperate the two

 

[TheDiablo]

I think Monty is probably the player with the highest 'peak' that has never won a major

I think Westwood is probably the player with the longest 'peak' that has never won a major

How you then differentiate between those to answer the 'best' question is personal preference.

 

[sunshine]

I don't think World Ranking matters for players being best to have won a major or not. Look how many majors Mickelson has and he has never been world No1.

Monty stats in majors and dominance of Europe for 7 consecutive years, plus another year on top separately outweigh Donald's consistency over a 2 year span imo.

Fair points, but the exam question is best player not to have won a major. How do you objectively assess who is the best player at any point in time? OWGR I would suggest.

At the end of his career, Donald will be able to say he was the best golfer on the planet for 56 weeks, but despite that never won a major (wish he had done but he is running out of time to correct that). Similar story for Westwood. If you look how many people got to world no.1 it's a pretty small group, you don't get there by accident.

Mickelson can never look back and say he was the best player on the planet at any point. Same goes for Sergio Garcia. But you don't need to be world no.1 to win a major, look at Curtis, Glover, etc. Luckily for Mickelson, he eventually won quite a few majors so isn't in this debate!

 

[Deleted Member 1156]

Westwood is a top bloke, he used to be on the old BBC606 golf forum. We thought it was someone pretending to be him so we challenged him to prove it which he did on 2 occasions. First was before an event he told us the 4 colours of shirt he had for the week and he wore them in the order we told him. Second was we told him to do a press up on the 18th green. He had a putt and he got down flat on his stomach to look at the line then did a press up to get back on his feet. Absolute legend!

 

[sunshine]

Westwood is a top bloke, he used to be on the old BBC606 golf forum. We thought it was someone pretending to be him so we challenged him to prove it which he did on 2 occasions. First was before an event he told us the 4 colours of shirt he had for the week and he wore them in the order we told him. Second was we told him to do a press up on the 18th green. He had a putt and he got down flat on his stomach to look at the line then did a press up to get back on his feet. Absolute legend!

Remember this. McIlroy also posted as minimac

 

[Orikoru]

Right now it's Fowler, or Rahm but he has more time on his side of course. I was going to back Rahm for the Masters this year actually.

Going old school yeah it was probably Montgomerie.

 

[Deleted Member 1156]

Monty has won Majors.......since he turned 50.........

 

[Orikoru]

The majority of suggestions have been European. Are there any Americans from the 70's, 80's, 90's that could fit into this bracket? I was not interested in golf back then so don't know my history outside of the obvious names.

Steve Stricker?

 

[Lord Tyrion]

Steve Stricker?

That sounded a good suggestion, I certainly went with it, until I looked up his Major record

https://www.europeantour.com/players/steve-stricker-1035/career-record

Not really that great, only came top 5 on 3 occasions, top 2 once. Lots of very poor showings. Considering his first major was in 93 that is not very threatening. The Americans talk about him in high terms, clearly he is a fine player, but I don't think he can knock Monty or Westwood off their unwanted perches.

 

[Orikoru]

That sounded a good suggestion, I certainly went with it, until I looked up his Major record

https://www.europeantour.com/players/steve-stricker-1035/career-record

Not really that great, only came top 5 on 3 occasions, top 2 once. Lots of very poor showings. Considering his first major was in 93 that is not very threatening. The Americans talk about him in high terms, clearly he is a fine player, but I don't think he can knock Monty or Westwood off their unwanted perches.

Why is a major record relevant in best player never to win a major? You either won one or you didn't. Is coming 2nd better than coming 4th or 5th in this context? I don't think it matters.

 

[Lord Tyrion]

Why is a major record relevant in best player never to win a major? You either won one or you didn't. Is coming 2nd better than coming 4th or 5th in this context? I don't think it matters.

I would argue it shows that you competed at that highest point. The best win Majors, they are the benchmark. If you want to be considered up with the best then you at least need to compete in them, not miss the cut regularly, finish 40th over and over etc. (I'm not relating these figures to Stricker incidentally.) If you repeatedly came top 5, top 3 even more so, then it shows how close you came to winning. If you didn't come close then you can't really claim to be up with the best.

 

[Grant85]

I can never see another player "dominating" Ryder Cup singles like Monty.

FYI - Patrick Reed is already 3-0-0 in Ryder Cup singles.
Dustin Johnson is 3-1-0

Monty's record is 5 wins in 8 matches I believe (2 halves).
Tough to say Reed won't get close to that.

Monty might have not won in 1999 as I believe he was down at the point the cup was decided, with a few holes still to play, and Payne Stewart made a generous concession on the 18th.

 

[ScienceBoy]

I think there are a whole bucket load of golfers who emerged in recent years who are yet to win a major and will be better than Monty and Westwood.

The problem is they are all coming in the same generation and have far more competiton than the top players in the 90s and early 2000s did.

 

[Deleted Member 1156]

The problem is they are all coming in the same generation and have far more competiton than the top players in the 90s and early 2000s did.

I don't see how you can compare players from different generations. Old Tom Morris, Ben Hogan, Nicklaus etc were all the best of their generations but with the changes in equipment, diet, fitness etc pretty much any decent tour player now would have beaten those guys.

 

[Deleted Member 1156]

You don't see how you can compare players from different generations, yet you go on to compare players from different generations...
That's genius ?

Have you seen much of Hogan and Nicklaus?

Where did I do that?

 

[Grant85]

I think there are a whole bucket load of golfers who emerged in recent years who are yet to win a major and will be better than Monty and Westwood.

The problem is they are all coming in the same generation and have far more competiton than the top players in the 90s and early 2000s did.

I think that's true.

It's now a given that a top European golfer in the top 50 will play both tours. So they are being very picky about the events they play, and barring maybe some events in October to December... they are not playing in many weak fields.

Plus I reckon the equipment has made it harder for the really good players to separate themselves from the field. My guess is that players like Patrick Reed, Justin Rose, Molinari would not be as competitive as they are with less forgiving equipment. But with a big driver head they can learn to swing faster and hit the ball far enough to stay competitive and not lose as much to some of the more premium drivers. And are good iron players and great competitors - so they can put a score together, even if they miss a few fairways.

I reckon if you go back to lesser equipment, guys like Rory, Tiger, Brooks, DJ, Garcia, Stenson, Scott, Westwood would have an advantage over a number of players that they currently lose to throughout the season.

 

[Kellfire]

Where did I do that?

Immediately after you said you don’t see how people can do it.

 

[Deleted Member 1156]

Immediately after you said you don’t see how people can do it.

All I said was that because of modern equipment/fitness it isn't possible to compare, if people want to read more into that then it's up to them.