The debate to settle the No. 1 and No. 2 golfers of all time doesn’t involve many candidates. You pretty much just have to decide between Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.
But what about choosing the No. 40 golfer? Or No. 80?
Good luck with that.
Enter Michael Arkush.
An author and former writer for Golf Magazine and Yahoo Sports (among others), Arkush in the fall of 2021 came up with the idea to create a book ranking the top 100 golfers. The next spring, he mentioned his plan to Jim Furyk, the 2003 U.S. Open winner.
“Tough task,” Furyk told Arkush.
A few hours later, Arkush realized, “This is not a tough task. This is an impossible task.”
That exchange is in the “Author’s Note” prelude to Arkush’s new book: “The Golf 100: A Spirited Ranking of The Greatest Players of All Time” (Doubleday: $30).
Arkush said the project took him 2½ years — the rankings were completed after the 2024 British Open. It was spurred, he said, by years of reading obituaries about golfers from days gone by and wanting to learn more about them.
“Who are these guys? What made them great? What made them flawed? What can I do to try to bring them back to life, at least in my own mind?” Arkush said in a recent phone interview from his home in Ojai. “I wanted to try to show readers that you know, too often I think we look at the greats of today and we forget about all those who paved the way.”
If Arkush forgot about any golfing great, it certainly wasn’t for a lack of effort. His research covers players born more than 170 years apart — from Old Tom Morris, born in 1821 and ranked No. 46, to Jordan Spieth, born in 1993 and ranked No. 59. (For the record, No. 100 is John McDermott, who as a 19-year-old in 1911 became the first American-born player to win the U.S. Open and is still the youngest ever to do so.)
Arkush said he read “tons of books,” went through every issue of Golf Digest since 1950, watched tournaments on YouTube and interviewed about 30 of the 100 players who wound up on his list.
“Some of the players from certainly the 19th century and early 20th century there isn’t a ton of information about them,” he said. “So I got whatever I could. There are enough sources to get at least some kind of sketch of each of the players.”
The most important aspect of Arkush’s task was obvious: Deciding how to pick the players. As he details in the book, he needed a formula to be able to compare golfers through different eras. And that formula would be heavily weighted toward golf’s biggest events, the majors.
He awarded points for top-five finishes in majors, with a large gap between first (2,000) and second (500) and down to fifth (50). He then had to decide which majors to include — the four current ones, obviously, but also the U.S. Amateur and British Amateur, which for decades had far greater standing than they do now. He counted those throughout history but awarded only half the points for those held after 1961. Victories in non-major events were worth 300 points.
To complete the rankings, he also awarded bonus points for those he believed made a larger impact on the game — the likes of Francis Ouimet, Harry Vardon, Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer and Woods — or those who departed the game early for different reasons — Byron Nelson, Tony Lema, Young Tom Morris, Willie Anderson and two women, Lorena Ochoa and Joyce Wethered.
Yes, women. Arkush believed it was important to integrate women, opting against a separate listing because, as he wrote, “women have been marginalized enough already.” He ranked the women separately, then decided where the 15 he picked should go on his overall list.
“I used my best judgment as a golf writer for 30 years and just assessed their talent, assessed their impact on the game,” Arkush said.
And he didn’t just toss the women in the bottom 20 or even 50. His top-ranked woman, Mickey Wright, is No. 6 overall. The San Diego native and Hoover High grad won 82 tournaments, including 44 in an incredible four-year span (1961-64). She captured 13 majors in just 50 starts. And she did all of that despite severely cutting back her schedule at just 34 years old.
“Mickey Wright was phenomenal,” Arkush said. “Ben Hogan said she had the greatest swing he’d ever seen. … I always imagined her in the top 10, I just didn’t know exactly where and it just seemed right at six. I mean, she couldn’t go with Palmer, Hogan, Jones, Tiger and Jack. You couldn’t put her above any of them, but what she achieved in the LPGA Tour … the talent, the dominance and she was 34 when she scaled back.
“Talking to Kathy Whitworth (at No. 37, the sixth highest-ranked woman) and others about her, (they) just could not stop raving about how incredible she was.”
Three other San Diegans cracked Arkush’s Top 100 — actually, his Top 40. Gene Littler is No. 39, Billy Casper No. 16 and Phil Mickelson No. 13.
“I can’t say enough positive things about Gene Littler, the man and the character and the resiliency and just what a great example of a role model for an athlete to be and how he came back from the cancer he had,” Arkush said. “I remember vividly the ’77 PGA and you know, nothing against Lanny Wadkins, but what a story it would’ve been if Gene Littler had been able to win that (he lost in a playoff to Wadkins). … I also vividly remember the ’70 Masters when him and Casper were in the playoff. San Diego must’ve been so into that.”
As for Mickelson … there are several golfers on the list that, as great as they were, could be considered underachievers, Arkush argues. Some are obvious — Davis Love III and Fred Couples each won only one major — but even with his six majors and one U.S. Amateur, Mickelson is also on Arkush’s list, as is Woods.
“I was surprised at how many great players you can make an argument did not achieve what we thought they would achieve,” he said. “I think Tiger underachieved from 2008 on. Phil, I mean, you can make an argument that Phil should’ve been a lot closer to double digits than he was. I think you can make a strong argument to that case.”
Arkush expects arguments about his list, but when asked what he hopes readers take away from it, he said:
“I want them to have a deeper appreciation of this game, of the greatness and the players who again paved the way for the players of today. They didn’t have endorsement contracts. They didn’t go in private jets. They came up the hard way in many cases and yet it was a game they loved, a game they put everything they had into it and it was because of them that others came and others prospered. I want readers to never forget how important those earlier players were.”
Posner is a freelance writer.
