The skill that Jack Nicklaus once admitted Tiger Woods was better than him at as a young golfer

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There might be a lot of debate about who was the best in their prime out of Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus but when it came to them as young golfers, Nicklaus is clear in his own opinion.

Woods and Nicklaus have a combined 33 majors between them and are widely considered the two best ever.

But quite who was the best at certain stages of their careers is something that is more open to opinion and interpretation than anything else.

However, according to Nicklaus himself, there was one element of the game that Woods was way ahead of him in when they were young men in the sport.

Jack Nicklaus on what Tiger Woods was better than him at

It takes a lot of class for a player like Jack Nicklaus to recognise someone else as being better than them.

Of course, Nicklaus didn’t have many weaknesses in his game really and over his career, he more than proved it.

But when it comes to Woods and Nicklaus as younger players, the ‘Golden Bear’ has previously admitted how Woods was way ahead of him in one element of the game.

“Tiger doesn’t have any weaknesses. I did,” Nicklaus said in an interview with Golf Digest back in 2000.

“My short game was a weakness, but that was because I felt I didn’t need it. I won without it. I think if I had needed it, I would have worked at it.

“I didn’t work at it, though, because I could reach all the par 5s I wanted to reach in two; I could hit the ball out of the rough whether I hit the tee ball straight or not. If I did miss the green, I usually didn’t miss by much, so I would chip on and I used to make almost everything from inside 10 feet, anyway. So, why did I need a short game?

“The difference today is that there are more guys reaching the par 5s in two against Tiger than there were against me. So he needs more weapons than I did. He needs a bigger bag of tricks, and he sure has ’em.”

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What Jack Nicklaus thought he was better at than Tiger Woods

While Nicklaus spoke highly of Woods here, it doesn’t mean that he’s always given kudos to Tiger over himself.

We’ll never ever know who would win out in a battle between them in their prime.

But summing up both their games more recently, Nicklaus has said he fancied himself as the better driver.

“Well, I don’t know. I think I was a better driver of the golf ball than Tiger,” Nicklaus responded when asked who was better at golf’s fundamentals,” Nicklaus said in a more recent interview.

“I think we were both good iron players and I think he had a better short-game but we were both good putters. It’s really kind of funny because I didn’t think about this until right now but I sit next to Tiger every year at The Masters dinner and we’re sitting there and he says ‘how many senior tour events did you win?’. And that question only came out for one reason…because he wanted to know what his goal is.”

With Nicklaus and Woods both so good, it really would be fascinating to see if we did manage to see them head to head.

Alas, we never did and never will, so we’ll have to draw our own conclusions.