Scottie and Tiger Stand Alone

There are 1 million ways to quantify a season, but I think Data Golf does a pretty great job of summarizing the best ones from the past 40+ years (since 1983).

You can read more about their DG points formula right here, but the crux is that wins and good finishes are weighted throughout a year to arrive at DG points totals for individual players. This is somewhat similar to OWGR points, except that Data Golf includes LIV golfers, which makes it more accurate for the purposes of this exercise.

Here’s a more detailed formula.

That formula is as follows: 1/.049 - 1 = 19.5.

That’s way too much math for a newsletter about golf, but I do find the calculation interesting and also nice that for most events it changes based on strength of field (as determined by where a top five player would finish in the field).

Anyway, show your work, and there it is. But the following list also passes the eye test. It’s not a list of who had the best strokes gained numbers but rather who was able to cash in those SG for actual wins, which is still, you know, the point of golf.

Tiger in 2000. Tiger in 2006. More Tiger everywhere. And some Vijay and Rory and that one Nick Price season. But pay attention to Scottie, who is loosening Tiger’s grip on this list.

Let’s take a look.

Here are a few takeaways.

• I find it curious that so many of the great seasons of the last 40+ years have actually happened in the last 25 years. Top 20 seasons from 1983-1999: 3. Top 20 seasons from 2000-2025: 17.

• This obviously highlights Tiger, but I think it should also serve to highlight Scottie, Rory and Vijay, all of whom have 2+ seasons on the list.

• No Phil. JT, Luke Donald, Xander and Jon Rahm all have seasons before Phil is listed. Spieth has two. Tiger has nine. Phil’s superpower is obviously his longevity — he just did it at a nearly-No. 1-in-the-world level for longer than almost anyone has done anything in golf. But it’s still shocking to not see him until No. 32 on this list.

• You can’t fake this list. You can’t just throw strokes gained at it. Only one player in the top 25 has fewer than three wins, and it was Xander (No. 25) last year when he won two majors. 😂 

• It’s jarring to me that Tiger and Scottie make up 12 of the top 20. Scottie is not Tiger — nobody who knows ball is claiming that — but the level at which he is winning and consistency at which he is going so is stunning when you start to realize that we are just a couple of years from Tiger and Scottie making up 75 percent of this list.

• How high can Scottie go in 2025? I have him slated for four more tournaments: BMW, Tour Championship, Napa and the Hero. Let’s say he wins one and finishes top 10 in the other three (seems like a safe-ish bet?). I think he can grab 15-20 more DG points, which would put him right around 10th.

• Spieth’s 2015 season is probably out of reach.

• I know some of the Scottie stuff gets old, but context is important and history is important. We get numb to 1. Anything that’s of the moment and 2. Anything that includes Tiger as a comp. But what he’s been doing for the last three years is truly one of the most remarkable feats in modern golf and one I hope we don’t miss out on enjoying.