Yeah no. First as to personal life, how conveniently we forget the 1994 racist comments from Jack Nicklaus's past. And while Tiger's personal life was pretty troubled at times he also opened golf up to a whole new audience and was one of the pioneers is setting up a charitable foundation, which he set up in 1996. Jack didn't set his up until 2004. Now every player of note does it. Jack had the good fortune to marry a very strong woman at the outset of his career who kept him on the straight and narrow.
And how conveniently we forget how Jack repeatedly redefined what he thought should be the metric for greatest of all time (first to emulate Bobby Jones and remain an amateur and compete at the highest level, next to win more PGA events than Sam Snead, then to win a grand slam) before hitting on one he already had while writing out every predecessor candidate for the distinction. With one of the most self serving and dishonest statements you'd ever want to hear.
He said the only way to fairly compare player from different eras is their record in majors. This at a time when he had played in twice as many majors as anyone before him except Snead. Hogan played 58 majors and never played all 4 in a year. Snead played 114 majors but had only 4 years when he played all 4. Nelson played 51 majors with only one year when he played all 4. Jack's contemporary Billy Casper played 55 majors and only had 5 years where he played all 4. Jack played 164 majors and had 37 years when he played all 4. So of course majors are the "fairest" basis for comparison even though he had far and away the most opportunities. The fact is that until the late years of his career Jack didn't play any events with substantially all of the best players in the world playing. While in Tiger's 15 major wins, his 18 WGC wins, and his 2 Players wins substantially all of the best players in the world played. They would only miss one of these, if eligible, if injured.
As to the golf, there are a lot of ways to assess a golfer's career but the only remaining metric that has Jack ahead of Tiger is number of majors. And while the casual fans look at that as sone kind of gold standard, no player other than Jack has been crowned GOAT on the basis if most majors. Before Jack, no one ever considered Walter Hagen the GOAT. Most discussion about GOAT involved Hogan, Snead, and Nelson, with the ignorant throwing in Jones. Prior to Jack majors were not nearly as big a deal as they became later. The way we know this is that there were many times top players who were eligible simply didn't play them. Hogan only played one British Open. Snead played it 5 times. Byron Nelson played it twice. The more modern Billy Casper played it 5 times.
But the reality is that Jack never came close to being as dominant as Tiger. Tiger won 9 Vardon trophies. Jack won none. He won each of the 2 Player of the Year awards 11 times. Jack never won one of them and only won the other one 5 times.Tiger was leading money winner 10 times. Jack was leading money winner 8 times. The three longest winning streaks in modern time are 5, 6, and 7 in a row -- all by Tiger. Jack never won more than 3 in a row. Tiger has won 82 Pga events, tied with Snead for the most, although about a dozen of Sneads wins wouldn't count under current rules because of short fields or being team events. Jack won 73. From 1997 through 2008 Tiger was the best player in the world by a large clear margin for every year except 1998 and 2004, when he was making swing changes. Jack was always in the top 3 or 5 for a long time, but surprising rarely was he the clear best in the world. And never at Tiger's level of dominance. Tiger has a far higher winning percentage in both majors and non-majors. He has far and away the best record of closing out wins when leading after 3 rounds in both majors and non majors. From 2004-2006 he had 1,366 putts from 3 feet and in, one only missed 3 of them. And I could go on and on.
And all there is on Jack's side is that 18 > 15.
