Tiger Woods
Tom Watson
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Tiger Woods leads 3 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Tiger Woods at #2 and Tom Watson at #9.
Head-to-head FAQ
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The case for Tiger Woods
No player has ever dominated as completely as Tiger Woods at his peak. He has won 15 professional majors, second only to Nicklaus, and 82 PGA Tour events, tying Sam Snead's all-time record. Woods held all four major titles simultaneously across 2000 and 2001, the feat known as the Tiger Slam, and won the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach by a record 15 strokes. He spent a record 683 weeks at World No. 1 and made 142 consecutive cuts, a streak unlikely ever to be broken. His 1997 Masters win by 12 shots at age 21 transformed the sport's demographics, athleticism and prize money at a stroke. After career-threatening back surgeries, his 2019 Masters victory at 43 completed the greatest comeback in golf, a fifth green jacket eleven years after his fourteenth major.
The case for Tom Watson
Tom Watson inherited the mantle of best player in the world in the late 1970s, dueling Jack Nicklaus in some of the sport's most famous encounters. He won 8 majors, including five Open Championships and two Masters, and his 1977 Duel in the Sun against Nicklaus at Turnberry, where Watson shot 65-65 to win by a single stroke, is regarded as the finest head-to-head in golf history. A brilliant links player and a fearless putter in his prime, he won 39 PGA Tour titles. Remarkably, at age 59 in 2009 he came within an eight-foot putt of winning a sixth Open at Turnberry, losing a playoff to Stewart Cink, the closest any player has come to capturing a major championship in his sixties, a near-miss that stunned the sport.