Tiger Woods is the most dominant athlete of the last 20 years, according to ESPN

l0304 28/05/2024 • comments off

This week, for it’s 20th anniversary edition, ESPN The Magazine is ranking the 20 most dominant athletes of the past 20 years.

Perhaps a surprise to some casual sports fans, but certainly not a shock to those who witnessed his dominance in the early 2000s, the magazine named Tiger Woods to most dominant athlete of the past two decades.

And this isn’t some barstool discussion, folks, we have statistics! ESPN’s Peter Keating developed a statistical methodology to determine the list of 20 dominant athletes. You can learn about the methodology here, or Bryson DeChambeau would be happy to explain it to you.

In discussing why TW earned the top spot, ESPN’s Ty Wenger writes.

“How can a golfer who’s won only eight tournaments in the past nine years be the most dominant athlete of the past 20? Because boy howdy, the 11 years before that. Consider the decade prior to Tiger Woods’ dominant run, when golf’s players of the year averaged 3.1 wins. From 1999 through 2009, Woods averaged 5.8 wins per season and won the award nine times.

“He was routinely magnitudes greater than the game’s next best: He won 13 of 35 majors from late 1999 to mid-2008, while no other golfer won more than three; three times he won five or more consecutive tournaments — the last man who won five in a row was Ben Hogan in 1953; of the 45 times he held the outright lead heading into the final round, Woods won 43 of those — a 95.6 percent closing clip.”

Woods edges out Lebron James and Peyton Manning for the top spot. You can check out the full ranking here.

What do you think, GolfWRX members?

l0304