Why eighteen? More than a couple of centuries ago some Scotsmen in Fife
thought it was the number best suited to golf, so why change a winning
formula?
Which eighteen? Perhaps the hardest choices are whom to leave out.
There is a small and very select group that automatically selects itself—Ben
Hogan and Jack Nicklaus probably the most obvious. Maybe even the secondary list, let’s say the Greatest Ten, would not be too difficult to assemble, although numbers nine and eleven would probably be as hard to choose
as numbers eighteen or twenty-one.
So we set one standard. Those eligible for inclusion must have captured
more than one modern-day major championship, that is, more than one
title—not just two U.S. Opens or PGAs. So what’s Greg Norman doing
there, you ask? In defense, could anyone imagine leaving the Great White
Shark off the list of modern greats? Fortunately book editors, unlike golf
referees, are able to bend the rules from time to time. Which brings us to
another exception.Robert Tyre Jones, Jr.? An amateur in a money-rankings book? Hypothetical money, of course! Could we honestly have ranked twentieth-century
major championships and excluded Bobby Jones? Although he never
banked one professional cent from his victories, RTJ is a noble exception.
The Other Greatest? Arguably the contributing authors to this anthology, but among the wonderfully talented golfers excluded yet not ignored
are Roberto De Vicenzo, Henry Cotton, Arthur D’Arcy Locke, Peter Thomson, Flory Van Donck, Jimmy Demaret, Tom Kite, Johnny Miller, James
Braid, Doug Saunders, Bernhard Langer, Harold Hilton, Bob Charles,
Julius Boros, Tony Jacklin, Tom Weiskopf, Tommy Armour, and many,
many more. Frankly, we’d love to do another book on these guys as well.
