{"id":495,"date":"2011-06-14T03:53:10","date_gmt":"2011-06-14T09:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/67.227.157.91\/~kenpom\/wp_blog\/how-many-majors-will-rory-mcilroy-win\/"},"modified":"2011-06-14T03:53:10","modified_gmt":"2011-06-14T09:53:10","slug":"how-many-majors-will-rory-mcilroy-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/how-many-majors-will-rory-mcilroy-win\/","title":{"rendered":"How many majors will Rory McIlroy win?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When a young player comes close to winning, it\u2019s inevitable that a comment will be made, most likely by someone who has won a lot of money playing golf, that the young golfer in question is primed to win a bunch of tournaments in his career. Whether young golfers are really guaranteed future success can be examined through the lens of GPR. <\/p>\n

First, let\u2019s look at the best seasons by a 21-year old since 1960. (Thanks to Neil Paine at sports-reference.com<\/a> for supplying me with earnings information for previous seasons, yesterday’s chart has been updated to include golfers from the ‘60’s. You should visit sports-reference.com<\/a> for your historical sports data needs, including college hoops.)<\/p>\n

1973 Ben Crenshaw         429\n1981 Bobby Clampett       202\n1990 Robert Gamez         149\n1997 Tiger Woods          473\n2001 Sergio Garcia        350\n2010 Rory McIlroy         213\n2010 Rickie Fowler        136\n<\/pre>\n
Seven golfers have posted a GPR of at least 100 in the last 50 years. The four non-Woods golfers with a reasonably long track record have won a total of two majors, both by Ben Crenshaw. Crenshaw\u2019s number here includes money he would have made had he not had amateur status in four of the ten tournaments he played. <\/p>\n
Crenshaw\u2019s career was an unqualified success, though he was never a dominant player. Including the two majors, he won 19 PGA events across 23 years. Sergio may yet still win a major (or two) and he\u2019s had a bit more success than Crenshaw to this point. There\u2019s plenty of time for him to find his game again, but whether they were fair or not, I’m not sure he\u2019s met the expectations he had earned to this point.<\/p>\n
The future also looked bright for both Clampett and Gamez at 21, but things didn\u2019t go according to plan. The GPR plots for both reveal quick flame-outs.<\/p>\n
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Actually, Gamez deserves some kind of award for consistently doing the minimum to keep his card. He played a regular tour schedule every season from 1990 to 2008 despite posting a GPR over 100 just twice. Clampett quit the tour to join CBS after his 1995 season with but one tour victory to his credit.<\/p>\n
To increase our sample, let\u2019s look at the best seasons at age 22.<\/p>\n
1962 Jack Nicklaus        319\n1965 Raymond Floyd        146\n1972 Lanny Wadkins        189\n1974 Ben Crenshaw         117\n1976 Jerry Pate           228\n1980 Gary Hallberg        163\n1982 Bobby Clampett       188\n1998 Tiger Woods          353\n2001 Charles Howell III   138\n2001 David Gossett        108\n2002 Sergio Garcia        229\n2003 Adam Scott           154\n2005 Sean O'Hair          132\n2010 Jason Day            162\n<\/pre>\n
There are a few new names on this list. Floyd would win four majors in a career that included a runner-up in the Masters at 49. Wadkins had a long a successful career, winning 30 times on tour including the 1977 PGA, his only major. Pate was a force on tour from \u201976 through \u201982. He won his first major as a pro, the \u201976 U.S. Open. He would finish in the top ten in 11 of his first 27 professional major starts. After that, shoulder problems hastened a move to the broadcast booth. <\/p>\n
Hallberg\u2019s first year on tour included six top tens in 15 events. However, he barely made half of the cuts in the 568 events he played during his career. There are eight combined major wins among the non-Woods\/Nicklaus players on the age 22 list. Of course, it\u2019s probably important that Woods and Nicklaus are on this list. If one is going to win a boatload of majors, they need to be pretty damn good at 22. McIlroy will be on this list, too. His 2011 hasn\u2019t been as domainant as Woods\u2019 1998 or Nicklaus\u2019s 1962, but there\u2019s half a season of golf left.<\/p>\n
(Pardon the mild tangent here, but I love this piece<\/a> from a year ago by Geoff Calkins on David Gossett. No doubt, talent and hard work are necessary to be successful, but there are lots of guys with talent that are working hard to be successful. Luck plays a role as well. And by luck, I don\u2019t mean a player just happens to hit good shots. No doubt, Kenny Perry was a great golfer at age 47 and 48.  However, there was some good fortune in that Perry happened to find a swing at age 47 that made him one of the best players in the world. Vijay Singh, the hardest worker on the planet and not long ago one the best players in the world, has played significantly worse than Perry at the same age. It\u2019s not all about hard work and talent.)<\/p>\n
Back to regularly-scheduled programming: For what it\u2019s worth, the age-23 list features some golf luminaries. For brevity, only names not appearing on the above lists are included here.<\/p>\n
1968 Tony Jacklin         142\n1973 Tom Watson           116\n1975 Bruce Lietzke        106\n1981 John Cook            121\n1983 Fred Couples         158\n1987 Davis Love III       134\n1988 Scott Verplank       133\n1990 Billy Mayfair        174\n1993 Phil Mickelson       178\n1995 David Duval          195\n1995 Justin Leonard       139\n2001 Matt Kuchar          113\n2004 Adam Scott           373\n2008 Anthony Kim          291\n<\/pre>\n
Every player on this list before 2000 had a long and successful career, and it looks reasonable that the quartet after 2000 is going to do fine (although there may be some doubts about Kim). Still, just two of these players have won multiple majors. Which begs the question: What\u2019s a reasonable over\/under on the number of majors McIlroy wins in his career? 2? 3? 4? Four seems to be stretching it, although given McIlroy’s age, there’s still hope he’ll win a lot more than that. Of course, it may be equally as likely that he’s Bobby Clampett.<\/p>\n
Being the best young player of your generation is a good indication that you\u2019ll have a successful career, but it\u2019s far from a guarantee of future greatness. Being the best player in the world while also being much younger than your contemporaries is a much better predictor of long-term dominance. McIlroy has three top-fives in majors so far, and that doesn\u2019t include his 54-hole lead at this year\u2019s Masters. His success in majors through the Masters at age 22 is similar to Woods and Nicklaus, and while one wouldn\u2019t bet on it, there\u2019s a chance he\u2019ll be the best player in the world by age 23. If he does that, then we\u2019ll need to revisit my estimate.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When a young player comes close to winning, it\u2019s inevitable that a comment will be made, most likely by someone who has won a lot of money playing golf, that the young golfer in question is primed to win a bunch of tournaments in his career. Whether young golfers are really guaranteed future success can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}