Capelle On Golf

THE PLAYERS (TP) will never be the fifth major. Still, it’s several notches above the typical tour event, which got me to thinking about what useful purpose it could serve to its champion other than another tour victory and a boatload of cash.

And then it dawned on me. Majors won is an overly simplistic means of ranking players, but many swear by it. One big problem is that it results in a huge number of ties, especially among those players with three or less major titles. So why not use TP as a tiebreaker? TP could settle the issue of who is better when two players have won the same number of majors, but only one has won TP.

Let’s start at the top. Our first tie in the Modern Era (1958 on) is between Lee Trevino and Nick Faldo with six majors each. Trevino gets the top billing on the strength of his win at the 1980 TP. Trevino beat Jack Nicklaus four times in the majors and won three different majors to Faldo’s two, so the TP tiebreaker method confirms what we suspected – that Trevino was better.

Eight players have won three majors in the Modern Era. Nick Price is one of two with a TP title, which gives him an edge. His resume also includes eight top fours in the majors. Tiger Woods Era superstars Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, and Vijay Singh are triple major winners. But Mickelson gets the nod thanks to his win at TP last year. For the record, Mickelson and Els both have 15 top fours in the majors to Singh’s six, so TP once again has done a good job in breaking a tie.

Other triple major winners include Billy Casper, Larry Nelson, Hale Irwin, and Payne Stewart. Of these players, a case can be made that Casper, whose prime ended about when TP began, was actually the best of the lot.

TP has offered 18 double major winners the chance to elevate their stature relative to their peers. But only three, Greg Norman, Sandy Lyle, and Lee Janzen, have managed to add TP to their list of accomplishments. Other double major winners sans TP include luminaries such as Ben Crenshaw, Johnny Miller, Curtis Strange, Hubert Green, Bernhard Langer, and Retief Goosen.

Sixty-three players have won one major in the Modern Era. For this group, winning TP represents a big point of departure from their single major winning peers. Davis Love III, Steve Elkington, Hal Sutton, and Fred Couples are the crème of this crop, each having won two editions of TP. Single major winners who’ve won TP winners include David Duval, Tom Kite, John Mahaffey, Lanny Wadkins, Al Geiberger, Jerry Pate and the still active Justin Leonard.

Our final group includes currently active players who have won TP, but not a major. I we are to believe the good folks at PGA Tour headquarters, they already have. But we know better. Still, if Stephen Ames, Fred Funk or Adam Scott wins a major, they will leapfrog over the 57 single major winners who have yet to win TP.

TP players will never be a major. Still, it could still wield considerable influence on a player’s ranking in the history books as the game’s great tiebreaker.