Tiger Woods Reached the Apex of Golf Greatness — And That Was Just One of His Peaks
The data shows how Tiger shattered golf’s ceiling again and again across three decades.
According to the marvelous DataGolf.com, the pinnacle of modern golfing excellence was achieved on Sunday, September 11, 2000, when Tiger Woods shot a final-round 65 to win the Bell Canadian Open by a shot over Grant Waite. The day before, Woods had hit what is generally regarded as the greatest shot in golf history…
…en route to an 8-under-par 64. When Woods then closed out the victory on Sunday, it marked his sixth win in the span of eight tournaments, including three majors as part of the fabled Tiger Slam 25 years ago.
At that exact moment, Data Golf estimates that Woods was worth an average of 3.88 Strokes Gained per round over the average PGA Tour field. No other player since at least 1995 has ever come close to that mark; the next-best is Scottie Scheffler — himself a remarkable player — sitting far behind Tiger.1
It was the highest-rated moment in the greatest season of modern golf — again, according to the numbers.
Along with its Strokes Gained ratings, Data Golf also tracks what it calls “DG Points”, a method of quantifying a player’s accomplishments in a single season (across all tours), with adjustments for tournament prestige and field quality. During the 2000 season, Woods scored a grand total of 209.1 DG Points, the only time since 1983 that any player broke the 200-point barrier in this system:
What’s amazing about Woods’ career, though, was how many different “peaks” he had, relative to the standards of other great players. In the table above, he not only owns the No. 1 season in the modern era, but also 6 of the Top 7 (with Scheffler’s 2024 being the only non-Tiger entry) and 11 of the 35 seasons — or 31 percent — with 100 DG Points2 by any golfer since 1983.
Before Woods won his first major at the 1997 Masters — with what is still probably the second-most dominant performance versus the field in any major since 1958 — and rattled off four wins with 94.3 total DG Points, the highest point totals in a season belonged to Nick Price in 1994 (123.4), Greg Norman in 1986 (115.4) and 1993 (104.5), and Fred Couples in 1992 (96.3). In other words, only three seasons had even cracked triple-digits in DG Points from 1983-1996; Woods’ breakout was immediately the fifth-best season on the list.
A slump by Tiger’s standards (70.0 points) followed in 1998, with two wins but zero majors, and he finished the year ranked No. 3 in the Data Golf rankings behind Davis Love III and David Duval (who led all golfers with 89.7 DG Points). A series of swing changes set the stage, however, for Tiger to post nine wins,3 a PGA Championship and a record 173.2 DG Points, demolishing Price’s old record at the time by 49.8 points. Then came the unbelievable 2000 season, sparking a run from 2000-02 in which he averaged 7.3 wins, 2 majors and 169.0 DG Points per season.
Again, though, Woods fell down to earth in 2003 and ‘04, being held without a major and averaging “just” 91.0 DG Points per season.
The secret of his earlier success had been, in addition to being the best iron player and one of the best putters on the planet, the fact that Tiger hit accurate drives despite his distance off the tee, creating a virtuous cycle that fed into low scores. By 2004, however, his driving accuracy had cratered amidst another set of swing adjustments, and he was passed at various points by Vijay Singh and Ernie Els in the DG Points that summer. (Though he did reclaim the No. 1 spot by year’s end.)
Just like before, however, the relative struggles — relative to himself, that is — were merely a prelude to another peak, one which saw Woods average 7.2 wins, 1.2 majors and 156.1 DG Points per season from 2005-2009, despite suffering a torn ACL and stress fracture in his left knee while winning the 2008 U.S. Open.
Of course, the arc of Woods’ career changed forever in November 2009, when a car crash led to the sordid details of Woods’ personal life — most specifically, a massive cheating scandal — being exposed. Tiger would spend multiple years struggling to return to the Tour regularly and regain his form, though he would have one more peak left in him from 2012-13, when he didn’t win any majors but averaged 96.8 DG Points per season and rose once again to No. 1 in the Data Golf worldwide rankings.
It’s hard to call what will likely be the final burst of greatness in Woods’ career — during the late 2010s — a full-fledged “peak”, though he did win one last major at the 2019 Masters in remarkable fashion. But as it was, Tiger’s career arc had roughly four distinct surges that saw him rise to dominate and then retool, only to come back again as the best in the sport.
Those multiple peaks would shut out a generation (or more) of rival golfers from having their own moments of legend. Without Woods, for instance, Singh would be remembered as possibly the best player of the 15-year period from 1993-2008. (He was second only to Woods with 1176.3 DG Points over that span.) Els and Mickelson would have won more majors, even if both had great careers in their own rights outside of Woods’ shadow.
(For better or worse, Mickelson could hold his own with Woods in a debate over the most influential players in golf history.)
And we would be legitimately talking about Scheffler’s place as the greatest modern golfer, even if his chances of catching Jack Nicklaus on majors are remote. But as things stand, Woods’ résumé dwarfs his and every other player of the past four or so decades, if not longer.
Every generation gets a player or two who seem to push the sport forward into its next era, whether it was Sam Snead, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson in the mid-20th century, Arnold Palmer in the 1950s and ‘60s giving way to Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson, or Norman (The Shark!) grappling with Couples, Price, Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer and — of course — Nick Faldo right before Tiger’s arrival. After Tiger’s prime, we’ve gotten still others who fit that description, from Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth to Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele and Scheffler.
But Woods’ dominance hit differently. He redefined excellence on such a grand scale that it’s not even worth comparing anyone else to him, at least not among any remotely recent players. Despite his ups and downs, his injuries and scandals, Tiger still peaked across three different decades, with multiple reinventions and enough brilliance to swallow up the primes of his would-be rivals whole. Twenty-five years after that apex of apexes in 2000, we’re still living in the golf world that Tiger built.
Special thanks to the folks at Data Golf for graciously sharing data for this story.
The gap between Tiger and Scottie at the top is the same as the gap between Scottie at No. 2 and No. 25 Colin Montgomerie!
Rounding to the nearest whole number.
Including eight in the final 11 tournaments he entered that season.
I’ve worked one PGA tournament in my 40+ year career and anyone who has seen me golf knows why—it would sorta like assigning a Michelin reviewer role to Joey Chesnut. The one tournament: the 2000 Canadian Open. The highlight for me was a long conversation with Hal Sutton, who was pretty much ignored, had him to myself to talk about anything at all including the mob scene around Tiger. Zinger was a factor in that tourney and for him occasion of a career highlight—I’ll have to look it up but it was something like a one-iron out of a trap and a groundhog had sat on the ball etc. He said it was the best shot he ever hit off the beach. Anyway thx for this story—it gives me reason to write a goofy story for my SubStack. You can calculate the odds and maybe even posit the significance of a scribe just happening to work a tournament on the occasion of the acme of performance.