For me, the whole "he's a great player because he won a major" argument is a lot like the qb an Super Bowl wins thing.

I don't see the comparison because in golf you rely solely upon yourself. If all QBs had identical teams and then took the field in the SB it would be much closer.

There is a lot of variance and luck involved in majors. Someone like Greg Norman got legit hosed out of 3-4 majors, while Ernie Els was outright handed two of his four majors. They aren't a perfect metric for measuring a golfer's ability, but they're still the best one available.

If you are discerning in your evaluation, it's easy to see why someone like Sergio Garcia or Lee Westwood is a far better golfer than Shaun Micheel or Todd Hamilton even though they haven't won majors.

A fair analysis requires a number of data points.

Rich Beem plays out of his mind for a week and wins a major.
Fred Couples battles through years of injury, wins a major, and several other tour titles.
Angel Cabrera shows up once every other year and competes in the US Open or at Augusta and ends up winning two
Westwood grinds around Europe for years, wins a ton of tournaments, contends in a lot of majors, yet routinely shits his pants.

If I'm ranking them as golfers I go:

Couples
Westwood
Cabrera
Beem

You do rely on yourself, but like you said, that's not the only factor in winning vs losing.

Same as matchups in football, course selection or the course being played plays a factor and some guys (like beem or the Asian that beat tiger at the PGA who's name eludes me) can get hot and win.

My assumption basically stops there. I don't think winning a major, by itself as a measuring point, is a good way to go.

After Scott, Watson is probably the second best golfer in the world right now. The top is as weak as I've ever seen it, maybe 1995 or so right before Tiger arrived. This leader board is really weak. If McIlroy doesn't revert to his prior form then you'll be seeing some serious no names (Shaun Micheel style) eke these future majors out.

Three of the players tied or within a shot of the lead are in the top 13 in the world, so I don't quite get the weak leaderboard talk (Spieth is also going to end up being a consistent top 5 player in his career in all likelihood). I've certainly seen worse.

There's just a changing of the guard going in at the top of golf right now. The guys from the Tiger era are declining (even though he himself remains #1 for now) while younger guys are overtaking them (Scott, Day, McIlroy, D. Johnson, Spieth, etc.).

I've always thought this course would be good for Woodland's game. Just needs to hit his putts and keep his nerve. He's in tough this week after that back 9, but maybe he can post a great score and hope.

Rickie Fowler, masters champion

The Masters will always have a "strong" leaderboard given that it's by far the smallest major of the year, and many of the players teeing it up are ceremonial--amateurs or aged past champions. That doesn't mean that it has a strong leaderboard compared to its normal leaderboards.

That's what people are bemoaning.

Compared to normal Masters leaderboards, maybe. Although that's mostly because Tiger and Phil are at or near the top 5 in most years. You do often see worse than this in the other majors.

Of course, because the fields are 156, not 90. A larger field opens up the possibilities for a rando getting hot.

In 1963, Jack Nicklaus became the youngest Masters winner.

17 years later, Seve broke the record.

17 years after that, Tiger broke the record.

17 years after Tiger?

http://cdn.dejanseo.com.au/wp-conten...12/11/whoa.jpg

jordan speith...get used to his name. In the past year he's been paired up with some great golfers...he beat woods by 9, rory by 11, and beat Scott by 6 strokes. He appears to be some kind of undertaker.

This isn't the major with the toughest field. That Major is played in August....as you know.

I have to root for the old Spaniard. It would be frickin' epic for a 50 year old, pony-tailed, wine drinking cigar smoker that never practices, restores one-off Ferraris, and has the most interesting warm-up in sports to win the Masters.

As Hamas said earlier just get some driveway markers. You can find them at Home Depot around the mail boxes.