Jack Nicklaus hated what happened to Tiger Woods’ rivals on the PGA Tour, ‘it’s hard for me to watch’

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Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods are widely regarded as the two greatest golfers in the history of the game.

Nicklaus has more major championship wins with 18 compared to Woods‘ 15, while the 49-year-old has more PGA Tour victories to his name, with 82 to the Golden Bear’s 73.

Both players were incredibly dominant throughout their respective eras.

Nicklaus actually admitted that Woods was a better driver of the golf ball than he was, but in their primes, nobody could get close to either of them in almost every aspect of the game.

Woods impressed Nicklaus with his ability to win so many tournaments and getting the Golden Bear’s seal of approval is quite something.

In fact, the 18-time major champion was blown away by Woods’ ability to do one thing in particular that not many others were able to do.

Jack Nicklaus hated what happened to Tiger Woods’ rivals on the PGA Tour

Had Woods managed to remain injury-free throughout his career, he may well have overtaken Nicklaus’ major haul.

Whenever he got into position, winning was pretty much a formality for him.

Nicklaus wrote a column for Golf Digest back in 2008, and highlighted how frustrating it was for him to watch so many PGA Tour players lack the ability to close out golf tournaments.

He said: “It’s hard for me to watch golf on television and see guys falter coming down the stretch. It happens to too many players today. It’s the biggest difference between Tiger and his challengers. He comes down the stretch and knows how to finish a tournament.

“During my career there were many times on the final nine when I knew I just had to play safe golf because the guys in contention probably would make mistakes and not finish. But I had a lot of challengers like Watson and Trevino who I knew were going to finish and not give the tournament to me. I think I had more guys like that than Tiger does. My feeling is that our college and professional systems don’t breed winners. With so much money in the pro game, conservative mediocrity sort of prevails.

“The goal is to make a good living more than it is to win. Yes, there’s a lot of depth in the pro game. If you took a large group of today’s players and put them against the group from my prime, today’s group would probably beat our brains out. But I think our four or five top guys, as a group, would have beaten the brains out of the top players of today.“

Jack Nicklaus vs Tiger Woods: Career records compared

Nicklaus got the better of Woods in many different departments throughout their respective careers, apart from the PGA Tour win column.

Here is how the records of the two greatest players of all time compare alongside one another:

Who knows whether we will see Woods play a PGA Tour event again.

It’s a miracle that he’s actually able to walk, given the amount of back surgeries he has undergone throughout his career.

However, one thing we should never do is write Tiger off.

Woods possesses one of the most incredibly strong mentalities in the history of all sports, and Nicklaus was obviously a huge admirer of that.