Why Tiger's Consecutive Rounds Streak Might Be Better Than Joe DiMaggio's
Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941 is regarded by many as the greatest individual feat in all of sport. Volumes have been written about its unreachable heights, its once-in-a-lifetime happenstance. It is considered the ne plus ultra of stats.
As a passionate fan of golf and analytics, I was struck by the paucity of documented records and streaks in golf, especially compared with other sports. Thanks to the PGA Tour's wealth of scoring data, which dates back to 1983, I was able to do some digging—a lot of digging.
As records go, golf's longest beat-the-field streak may not sound as sexy as the Yankee Clipper's historic achievement, but it's almost certainly as astonishing in its dimension—maybe more so. A beat-the-field streak is the number of consecutive rounds in which a player's score is better than the average score of the field for that round. For example, if a player shoots 69 when the field average is 70.8, the player has "beaten the field." A Tour player stringing together a long run of fine rounds would be a great measure of dominance and consistency.
From August 1999 through November 2000, Woods beat the field's average score in an astounding 89 consecutive PGA Tour tournament rounds. That is roughly three times the length of the streak posted by his nearest competitor. (Only official PGA Tour stroke-play events are counted for this streak, so the WGC-Match Play, for example, is not included.)
Why is a beat-the-field streak significant? First and foremost, it identifies consistent good play—above-average performance in round after round, tournament after tournament. The two most similar streaks are consecutive sub-par rounds and consecutive cuts made, but they don't remotely stack up. Consecutive sub-par rounds uses the inferior benchmark of par, which is not a reliable measuring stick.
As stunning as his 89-round streak was, had Woods scored just one shot better in the second round of the 1999 WGC-NEC Invitational, his beat-the-field achievement would have lasted 112 rounds, starting from the fourth round of the Byron Nelson in May 1999. (I only count stroke-play events for the streak, so this ignores, for example, the Sprint International tournament, which used Stableford scoring.) Die-hard baseball fans might know that after DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak ended on July 17, 1941—he went O-for-3, with two hard ground-outs to third base—he proceeded to hit safely in his next 16 games, so Joltin' Joe was just one hit short of a 73-game streak.
Imagine that. With a bounce here or a birdie there, these feats of excellence and consistency might have been even more epic.
(Golf.com)
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