The Hole Truth: Determining the Greatest Players in Golf Using Sabermetrics

Ever wonder whether Tiger Woods in his prime would have beaten Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, or Jack Nicklaus in their primes? And could any of them have beaten Babe Zaharias? Obviously, if Bobby Jones were returned to life and health and then given his old hickory-shafted mashie, persimmon-headed driver, and rubber-core ball in a match against Jordan Spieth, the outcome would be foreordained. But what if the impact of the training, equipment, courses, and traveling conditions could be neutralized in order to create a measurement? Now for the first time, questions are answered about the relative abilities of the greatest players in the history of professional golf.

In The Hole Truth Bill Felber provides a relativistic approach for evaluating and comparing the performance of golfers while acknowledging the game’s changing nature. The Hole Truth analyzes the performances of players relative to their peers, creating an index of exceptionality that automatically factors the changing nature of the game through time. That index is based on the standard deviation of the performances of players in golf’s recognized major championships dating back to 1860. More than two hundred players are rated in comparison with one another, more than sixty of them in detail with profiles providing context on their ranking. For the dedicated golf fan, The Hole Truth is an engaging way to see in the numbers where their favorite golfers rank across eras and where current players like Rory McIlroy and Inbee Park compare to the game’s greats.