He’s one year away from senior golf—and there’s one event he needs to win
Tiger Woods has just turned 49, so next year he’ll be eligibile for the Champions Tour. Will he play? Who knows. In his sphinxlike way, he’s given little indication to date, beyond a couple of off-the-cuff remarks.
There are good arguments both ways. On the yes side: 1) He loves nothing more than to compete and win. 2) He’d be riding in a cart, so the aching legs and back would be less of an issue. 3) Even half-crippled he’d be in a senior class by himself. 4) What else has he got to do, watch Charlie shoot 73s, design golf courses, wash the windows of his yacht?
On the no side: 1) The Champions Tour is a sideshow that few people pay attention to. 2) Tiger has beaten up his body enough. 3) Why keep practicing, stretching, iron-pumping, and ice-bathing several hours a day to show he can still beat Rocco Mediate and Chris DiMarco? He has nothing left to prove, right?
Wrong. There’s still one thing. Tiger needs to prove, to the satisfaction of a clear majority, that he is indeed the GOAT, the greatest of all time. And he hasn’t done that. Right now, if you were to ask a dozen golf fans—or a dozen golf writers or golf historians—my guess is that they’d be split roughly 50–50 on whether the title belongs to Tiger or Jack Nicklaus.
Again, strong cases can be made on each side. For Tiger, there’s the sheer breadth and magnitude of his talent. At his peak, he had Nicklaus’s golf smarts, Ben Hogan’s guts and determination, Gary Player’s physical fitness, and Seve Ballesteros’s soft hands. He won the Masters by 12 strokes, the U.S. Open by 15, beat fields that have been proved to be stronger and deeper than those Jack faced. And although he’s made over 200 fewer professional starts than Jack, he has nine more victories, including the Tiger Slam.
For Jack: It’s all about the major championships and the argument is powerful: 18 wins, 19 seconds, and nine thirds, a record that will never be touched. There is also the longevity of his dominance—a quarter-century at the top, fending off two generations of challengers, most of them Hall of Famers.
At this point, there’s nothing Jack Nicklaus can do to bolster his case. But Tiger still has an opportunity. It’s not on the senior circuit, per se, but in the U.S. Senior Open. By winning that single title he’d become the first player in history, man or woman, with victories in four different USGA Championships—the Junior Amateur, Amateur, Open, and Senior Open.
It would also give him a total of 83 victories on the PGA and Champions Tours—exactly equal to Nicklaus’s total of 73 + 10. And my guess is that if Tiger does choose to play the oldsters’ tour in 2026, by July when the Senior Open is held, he’ll have notched at least one other victory if not more, putting him ahead of Jack.
But there also would be a special significance to winning the 2026 Senior Open because of its venue—Scioto Country Club in Upper Arlington, Ohio—the very turf where a young Jack Nicklaus learned to play the game. Mind you, the USGA does not allow carts, but the good news for Tiger is that Scioto is a relatively flat walk.
Tiger needs to prove, to the satisfaction of a clear majority, that he is indeed the GOAT, the greatest of all time.
Assuming no further physical maladies (and that’s admittedly a huge leap), Tiger could go on picking off Champions Tour wins for a decade or so, but I’m not sure they would mean much more to him psychologically than victories for his Jupiter Links Golf Club team in the TGL bubble dome (and it would surely mean less financially). I suspect he’d love to beat Bernhard Langer’s 47 senior wins, but, frankly, given Tiger’s battered body, that one’s out of reach, especially as it would likely mean a heavier playing schedule than he’d want.
The realistic plan—the one I’d have if I were Tiger—would be to focus on the majors with two additional goals in mind. First, add a second and third Senior Open. That would lend his career an elegant symmetry: three U.S. Junior Amateurs, three U.S. Amateurs, three U.S. Opens, and three U.S. Senior Opens. If he could accomplish that, many of those in the Nicklaus camp would switch allegiance. But since Tiger always needs a next goal (remember, this is the kid who had a magazine clipping with Jack’s career achievements pinned on his bedroom wall), I’d suggest he concentrate on all four of the senior majors and try to win a dozen of them. With four chances a year—and weak fields compared to those he faced on the regular tour—he might be able to do that in less than a decade.
Why a dozen? It would give him a total of 27 major victories on the PGA Tour and Champions Tour—and that would be a significant number for the simple reason that Jack’s total is 26. If Tiger could pull that off by age 60, I don’t think there’d be much doubt about who’s the GOAT. He now has a year to decide how badly he wants it.
I can see him playing the four regular majors, the US Senior Open, the Senior Open Championship, Riviera, and the PNC Championship. I’m not sure the Tradition, Senior PGA, or Senior Players will do it for him.
Cheetah’s so-called records should have an asterisk due to his use of steroids. He has noticeably less muscle mass than he did in his “prime”. And he did not have to face the quality of competition that Jack did. Player (9 majors) Palmer (7majors) Trevino (6 majors) and Watson (7 majors) against Jack’s 18. Only Faldo (6 majors) and Phil (5 majors) come close to Player, Palmer, Trevino and Watson. And Jack’s 19 second place finishes against this level of competition removes any doubt. Plus the equipment (both clubs and balls) was vastly inferior to what the players of the 2000’s had to work with- and again, no steroids back then. You think Trevino couldn’t have benefited from steroids for his bad back? (Hit by lightning in 1975, Trevino’s back was never the same and while he won multiple Senior majors, the 1984 PGA was his only major after the lightning strike