The end of the Tiger domination

Check out the list of Top 10 golfers according to the men’s world golf rankings.
  1. Martin Kaymer
  2. Lee Westwood
  3. Luke Donald
  4. Graeme McDowell
  5. Tiger Woods
  6. Phil Mickelson
  7. Paul Casey
  8. Rory McIlroy
  9. Steve Stricker
  10. Matt Kuchar
It is not surprising that there have been many golf articles written this week which included the phrase “changing of the guard”. There is certainly a much larger European domination to the Top 10  which hasn’t been seen since 1992.
Martin Kaymer is the first German to hold the number one ranking since Bernard Langer and it is the first time four Europeans have held the top positions since 1992, when Ian Woosnam, Nick Faldo, José Maria Olazábal and Seve Ballesteros dominated world golf.
More interesting are the stories surrounding the death of the golf game of Tiger Woods, in particular this analysis by Wall Street Journal golf writer, John Paul Newport. this article is a fascinating read as he cites theories from famous American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould to highlight “Why Tiger Woods will never dominate again“.

Whenever Mr. Woods starts winning again, assuming he does, there are reasons to think that he will be less dominating. The first is Mr. Gould’s assessment that over time, in a more or less stable universe like baseball or golf, the overall quality of performance advances inexorably, making outlier performances like a .400 batting average less likely.

As knowledge spreads and weaknesses and inefficiencies are rooted out, those fields, and especially the top players, are performing closer and closer to as well as anyone can—to what Mr. Gould called the “right wall” of the bell curve. As a result, he wrote, “the truly superb cannot soar so far above the ordinary.” 

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