(Getty Images)
On the strength of his back-to-back wins at the British Open and Bridgestone Invitational, Rory McIlroy leapfrogged Adam Scott to become the No. 1 golfer in the world. Surely this makes Rory the odds-on favorite to win another major this week at the PGA Championship at Valhalla, right? Not so fast, my friends. History suggests the feat will be tough to accomplish.
With the exception of Tiger Woods, the last golfer to win a major while holding the No. 1 ranking was Fred Couples, who did it at the 1992 Masters. That’s a stretch of 90 majors.
The natural inclination is to assume this stat is a result of Tiger being No. 1 for so many weeks. And that’s partially true. It’s been more than 1,150 weeks since Fred Couples won the 1992 Masters and Tiger has been No. 1 for 683 of them. Of the 90 majors played since then, Tiger entered approximately 60% as the top-ranked golfer.
But that still leaves 40% of majors where another No. 1 could have backed up his rankings. None could. The list features: Nick Faldo, Greg Norman, Nick Price, Ernie Els, David Duval, Vijay Singh, Martin Kaymer, Luke Donald and Adam Scott. Many of those players won majors, but they did so before or after becoming No. 1, never during their stint. (Tom Lehman, Lee Westwood and McIlroy have all hit No. 1 too, but none played a major during those stints.)
(AP)
Just to show how hard it is: Faldo, who also had No. 1 reigns that preceded this stat, won six majors and was No. 1 for a total of 97 weeks but was never able to sync the two.
None of this means Rory won’t win the PGA this weekend. The only thing this stat proves is that winning majors is hard and that Tiger Woods was really, really good.
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