Tom Watson is currently 75 years old. He is the youngest living member of golf’s greatest generation. He began his career at the tail end of the era of the game’s most in depth and talented generation that was led by the modern day great triumvirate of Arnold Palmer, South African Gary Player, and Jack Nicklaus alongside Julius Boros and Billy Casper. Boros and Casper have three majors to their name while Player owns nine major championships, fan favorite Arnold Palmer has seven, and Nicklaus owns 18 major titles. As Watson was nearing the end of his competitive career with eight major wins, a whole new breed of foreign born golfers were beginning to make their mark led by the likes of Englishman Nick Faldo who gathered up six majors, Spain’s Seve Ballesteros who added five grand slam titles, and a handful of non-Americans such as Sandy Lyle of Scotland, Germany’s Bernhard Langer, and Australian Greg Norman who had a pair of majors each. It seems as if the eras that are less dynamic than the others feature fewer golfers with fewer major titles.
Looking back over the last 45 years of competitive men’s professional golf, it appears as if those one hit wonder seasons are few and far between. There are more golf tournaments and our world is a smaller place due to the nuances of modern day travel and yet winning a bunch of tournaments whether they are regular weekly events or accumulating one of golf’s four majors is not exactly a slam-dunk.
In 1980 Tom Watson was reaching career highs as he won seven times during a career that spanned three decades. Of all the major greats, Watson would win five British Opens and he took home his third Open Championship that year. 1980 also marked the fourth consecutive year that Watson was the PGA Tour’s leading money and he attributed his run of success to the fact that he loved playing golf. He had 16 top 10 finishes as the decade dawned and he was quoted as saying that “I love this game. I feel that dedication is the only way to improve.”
Tom Watson opened his 1980 campaign on a winning note. He took home the Andy Williams at Torrey Pines in San Diego and captured the Glen Campell the following month Los Angeles at storied Riviera Country Club. This was during a time when celebrities such as Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Sammy Davis Jr. attached their names to tournaments instead of corporate giants. Watson continued to win every month or so, taking home the hardware at the Tournament of Champions in Las Vegas, finding the winner’s circle in Las Vegas over Lee Trevino at the New Orleans Open, capturing the Byron Nelson, a mentor of sorts to Watson for the fourth time in his career, winning the British Open that summer by a gaudy four strokes, and capping off the finest season of his career with a two stroke win over Raymond Floyd in the World Series of Golf. Keep in mind that this was still during the days of automotive travel with most tournaments conducted within the 48 original states. Nonetheless Watson did spend a lot of his time seeing the world as evidenced by his 39 PGA Tour victories coupled with four wins in Japan, one in Australia, and one in Asia..
Vijay Singh was, like Watson, a Hall of Fame golfer who had one magical season way back in 2004 when he collected a season best nine victories. Singh was the major contemporary of Tiger Woods and was a generation removed from Tom Watson. There was more money available to the top players on the PGA Tour and Vijay got in the money grab on tour during the earliest days of the Fed Ex Cup playoffs. He was from the Asian island nation of Fiji and began to make his mark on golf’s world-wide stage as a member of the European Tour. During the beginning of his career, Vijay was implicated in a personal conspiracy to alter his scorecard following completion of a round of golf and ended up serving some amount of time away from the major tours. He has always hotly denied the allegations and has avoided any sort of a career ban.
Singh was a notorious practice player who won three major titles when his chief competition was Tiger, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els of South Africa, and Irishman Padraig Harrington. Spending his earliest days on the Safari Tour in Africa, Singh had a break-through moment when he won the Buick Classic in 1993. He was the PGA Tour’s rookie of the year in ’93, some 11 years after the scorecard controversy. Five years later Vijay won the PGA Championship at Sahalee in the Seattle area and he added a second major to his impressive golfing resume with a Masters triumph in 2000, knocking off David Duval in the process.
The 2004 season was an unbeatable one for Vijay as he won nine times in 2004 including a second PGA Championship at Whistling Straits in a playoff. He opened his season with a victory at Pebble Beach. In September of that year Vijay won the Deutsche Bank Classic, a Fed Ex Cup playoff event. His win that week in the Boston area meant that he had elevated his game to world number one, knocking Tiger Woods out of first place in the official world golf rankings. Tiger had held that position for the previous 285 weeks. Vijay had 18 top 10s I 2004 and pocketed just under $11 million in earnings. Vijay held his spot at the top of the world rankings until the following year when Tiger reclaimed his position.
Next week we’ll review the four magical seasons when Tiger Woods won eight times in 1998, nine times in 2000, eight times in 2006, and seven times in 2007.
