Editor's note: This story was originally published May 28, 2025, on The First Call's Substack platform.
We had just finished a 40-man shoot-out Sunday afternoon with a Ryder Cup-style team format and there were questions.
Not about the outcome. My side’s 10 teams crushed the other side by an 18-12 margin at our course in Pittsburgh’s North Hills. Thus, we won the Cup or, in this case, the other guys’ $50-per-man buy-in. (It wasn’t gambling, merely wealth redistribution.)
Two questions I got from a member of the losing squad were: One, did I think Scottie Scheffler was in a stretch of dominant golf akin to Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus? Two, who was better, Woods or Nicklaus?
Yes, these are the kinds of things guys talk about after a round once they dispense with the usual preliminaries.
Golfer 1: “How’d you play today?”
Golfer 2: “Crappy. You?”
Golfer 1: “Worse than that.”
Then came the questions, following brief periods of hot buttered popcorn and free trail mix from a grill room dispenser.
I said, yes, Scheffler has been dominant dating back to last year and even before. Don’t forget, he’s already racked up 138 weeks ranked No. 1 in the world and the only players who’ve done it more are Greg Norman and Woods. And on the big question, I waffled. Woods, I said, was a better player than Nicklaus because he had a more complete game — his short game was exquisite, and Nicklaus’ was barely adequate — but Nicklaus had a better record.
This answer sparked more debate, but got us no nearer to a consensus. That’s when I referred my friend to a definitive guide, a recently released book: “The Golf 100,” by Michael Arkush, in which the author ranks the greatest 100 players of all time, men and women mixed in together.
It is a thoroughly researched, well-thought-out and comprehensive listing that includes the disparate likes of Old Tom Morris, No. 46; Sergio Garcia, No. 86; Doug Ford, No. 79; Chick Evans, No. 84; and Louise Suggs, No. 35. It is also an entertaining read as Arkush reminds us what these great players accomplished, how they did what they did and who they were.
Spoiler alert. Here is Arkush’s top six: 1, Nicklaus; 2, Woods; 3, Bobby Jones; 4, Ben Hogan; 5, Arnold Palmer; 6, Mickey Wright.
Arkush devised a comprehensive and very smart points formula that also left room for some subjectivity — like giving Palmer extra credit for his impact on the game’s growth, for instance.
You may want to debate whether Phil Mickelson should rate higher than No. 13 but let’s face it, who’s No. 1 is the biggest talking point.
“To me, it really came down to numbers,” Arkush said in an appearance on The Golf Show 2.0 on YouTube.com. “You have to look at all the seconds and thirds in majors and how much Jack outpaced Tiger in those departments. If somebody argues that Tiger at his best was better than Jack, I’m not going to dispute that. But the numbers are the numbers, as they say on Wall Street.”
Nicklaus has the edge in top-three finishes in majors, 46 to Woods’ 26. Nicklaus also played in 164 majors (more than 40 of them after he turned 50 years of age) to Woods’ 95. Woods scored more official tour wins, 82-73, and he did it in 200-plus fewer starts (Nicklaus 586 appearances, Woods 378).
They played in different eras with different equipment and different numbers of quality opponents. Until the 1980s, only 60 players were exempt on the PGA Tour and the rest of the weekly fields were filled by Monday qualifiers who were forced to lead a gypsy life traveling tournament to tournament and their goal wasn’t winning as much as it was making the cut, which got them into the next tournament.
In the end, it’s fair to say Woods was as dominant in his time as Nicklaus was in his. Who was better? There is no correct answer.
“By the way, there was a moment in the whole process where I thought that Jones might be number one with bonus points,” Arkush said. “I think you can make a case for being the GOAT. Seriously, when you won 13 of his last 21 majors from age 23 until he retired at 30 while having a day job, which some people say is overstated, but he didn’t play that much and the competition wasn’t as deep but still, that’s an incredible accomplishment. Back in 1928, if people knew one golfer’s name it was Bobby Jones. So I gave serious thought to him being No. 1.”
But the numbers were the numbers. So it was Nicklaus.
There is so much fun data and anecdotes to pore through in this book. Arkush did extreme deep research, conducting interviews with many of the living members of the list. He also scoured every page of Golf Digest magazine going back to 1951.
The only ranking I thought was significantly out of whack was Kathy Whitworth at No. 37. Whitworth holds the mark for most victories on either the PGA or LPGA Tours with 88. Other notable women players ranked were Babe Zaharias, No. 18; Patty Berg, No. 19; and Annika Sorenstam, No. 26.
“You have to look at Whitworth, Phil Mickelson, Sam Snead and Nancy Lopez and the fact they did not win the U.S. Open takes a little something away from their greatness,” Arkush said. “Kathy had an incredible career, not only all the wins but 90 or more second-place finishes. But she never won the Open. She was remarkable. I was so fortunate that I spoke to her four or five times in the last few months before she passed away.”
“The Golf 100” is basically the history of golf in shorthand. The nice thing about it is, you can flip open to any page, start reading about a player and become immediately engrossed.
Two other items of note about the rankings. Arkush had a rule that any modern player who won at least three majors automatically qualified for his top 100 — “My book, my rules,” he joked. Since the book was published in April, Scheffler had yet to win his third major at the PGA Championship in May and thus did not crack the 100. Rory McIlroy, meanwhile, was ranked 26th before he won the Masters.
Where would those two players rank now? You’ll just have to wait until Arkush publishes an updated edition.
THE GROUNDS CREW
The only way I would devote space to golf tees would be if they could save the world.
Well, check out GreenUp Golf tees, created by a Danish outfit (not to be confused with the Danish I spilled on my outfit this morning) whose environmental-rescue solutions include golf tees and other accessories. GreenUp’s new environmentally friendly tees are made from coffee grounds.
“With our eco-friend tees, there is no deforestation, no cutting down trees, no micro-plastic,” says Kristian Kohn, director and co-founder of GreenUp Golf. “And you still get the same durability and functionality with our tees.”
Denmark, like all of Europe, is very environmentally conscious due to limited resources and space. Some greenskeepers there had complained about bamboo and hard plastic tees causing problems with mowers and blade damage. They expressed a desire for a safer, more sustainable substitute. Fellow GreenUp co-founder Jakob Nyvold got to work on the problem.
“Jakob found a base material to make tees from but needed something to add to it,” Kohn says. “His mom said, ‘Why not use coffee? I put coffee grounds in my garden.’ Almost every mom knows coffee is good for a garden. I didn’t, but Jakob’s mom did.”
It was a win-win idea because not only do the grounds act as a kind of fertilizer but GreenUp is able to collect coffee grounds from office buildings and other places that would have otherwise ended up in a landfill — the coffee grounds, not the office buildings. It’s not saving the world, exactly, but it’s something.
“Behind every inventor there’s a smart mom,” Kohn says.
Biodegradable tees have been tried in the U.S. but high pricing kept them from catching on. There’s still a cost upgrade for coffee-based tees. You can order GreenUp tees online from Volle.golf. A check of GolfGalaxy.com shows a 50-pack of Brentwood bamboo tees selling for $9.99, a 100-pack of Maxfli hard plastic tees for $12.99 and a 50-pack of GreenUp tees for $10.99.
What I didn’t expect is the durability of the GreenUp tees. I’ve played 20-plus rounds with them and still haven’t finished off a 50-count bag. It’s been a rainy spring in the Pittsburgh area where I live, so soft tee box ground has been part of it, but they are surprisingly difficult to break, unlike previous iterations of American-made biodegradable tees.
There’s one other perk for using GreenUp tees. They smell like coffee. I’m not a coffee drinker, but leaving a bag of the tees open in your car’s trunk works as an air freshener. The aroma of coffee is not my favorite but it’s better than the usual odor of wet golf socks, damp golf shoes and divot hangovers.
Save the planet, smell better.
