From John McDermott’s fragile psyche to the sustained excellence of Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods — or Woods and Nicklaus; no spoiler here on who’s No. 1 — this countdown of the top golfers is less a list than an index of insightful, lively profiles rife with anecdotes centered on their most joyous and miserable moments.
“The Golf 100: A spirited ranking of the greatest players of all time” is the 16th title by author Michael Arkush, most of them from the sports realm including New York Times bestsellers “The Last Season” with Phil Jackson and “The Big Fight” with Sugar Ray Leonard. This one is all Arkush and displays his storytelling — some sweet, some savory, a few bitter — in bite-size pieces.
He includes greats from the early 20th century. He includes greats from other countries. He includes women. Why? Because their stories are compelling, even if ranking them became messy.
So, yes, there are 100 in all, spread over 366 pages.
Lists of the greatest golfers aren’t a novel conceit. GolfDay published one a year ago. Golf Digest has its own. Folks have concocted lists on Reddit. Bleacher Report took a swing. There is even the website thealltimegreatestgolfers.com.
Times sportswriter Houston Mitchell got more than 12,000 readers to respond in 2009 to a poll ranking golfers. The top five are among Arkush’s top 10, although not remotely in the same order.
Most rankings are based on point systems, assigning weighted numbers to categories such as total tournaments won, top-10 finishes, player of the year awards, career longevity and performance in the four majors — the U.S. Open, Masters, British Open and PGA Championship.
Arkush prioritized the majors, writing in the forward that they “feature the strongest fields and, more often than not, are staged on the most demanding courses. When history is on the line.”
Still, Arkush allowed himself license after covering professional golf for 30 years (he was an entertainment reporter for The Times from 1988 to 1995). Once the numbers were tabulated, he shuffled the deck by employing subjective criteria such as a golfer’s impact or contributions to the sport.
“I was similar to a juror who, despite a stern warning from the judge not to let evidence deemed inadmissible be a factor in the verdict, couldn’t help its affecting his thinking in one way or another,” Arkush wrote.
An example is his inclusion of Francis Ouimet, a name unfamiliar to all but the most serious golf history buffs. He won the 1913 U.S. Open at the tender age of 20 over Harry Vardon, a British golf titan credited with inventing the modern grip and swing. Bobby Jones, the epitome of class, came along next, and the pendulum soon swung to the U.S. side of the Atlantic.
Like so many writers, Arkush was loath to let numbers get in the way of a good yarn, beginning with ranking McDermott at No. 100. The cheeky son of a mailman became the first American to win the U.S. Open in 1911 — at age 19 — one year after he finished second to Scottish immigrant Alex Smith, telling him as they exited the course, “I’ll get you next year, you big tramp.”
McDermott’s penchant for popping off soon got him in trouble, and that was followed by a steep fall. He embarrassed the more genteel of his countrymen by bragging about his Open victories in the presence of Vardon. Then he was saved by a lifeboat after being a victim of a shipwreck. Then he lost a fortune in the stock market. Then he was committed to a sanitarium in 1916 and was never the same.
Arkush concludes the profile describing a chance meeting between an elderly McDermott and a gracious Arnold Palmer that provides a poignant connection between the infancy of professional golf in America and its elevation in stature to the “Arnie’s Army” level by 1970.
Only 99 to go.
The list includes 15 women, trailblazers and champions such as Mickey Wright, whose 82 Tour victories included 13 majors and whose swing was lauded as the best of anyone regardless of gender by no less than Ben Hogan.
Pioneers of the sport, firmly planted in the wellspring of 19th-century Scotland, are given their due. While the Union and Confederate armies were preparing for war across the pond, Willie Park Jr. and Old Tom Morris exuded geniality and competence on the green, dominating the British Open from its inception in 1860 through more than a decade.
Old Morris passed on his mashie niblick — an early term for a seven iron — to his equally talented son, Young Tom Morris, who won the British Open four times from 1868 to 1872. They are the only father-son combo among the 100.
Americans began to hold their own by the 1920s, and professional golf has increased in popularity as a spectator sport to this day. It’s also an endeavor that nearly anyone can try and many become passionate about.
One hundred is a somewhat arbitrary number to cap excellence, impact and irresistible storytelling. It’s plenty for Arkush to mine, though, and relate the history of golf through the very best golfers.
As for the thorny task of comparing golfers across generations and even centuries, Arkush leans on the wisdom of Jones, whose words can be extrapolated fairly to include women as well as men:
“I think we must agree that all a man can do is beat the people who are around at the same time he is. He cannot win from those who came before any more than he can from those who may come afterward.”
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