Daily Dose: April 15 - Where have all the champions gone?

So this conversation got me to thinking - if Phil, Ernie, Retief and Vijay are all old guys...and there are no "young" guys winning majors ... haven't we been describing Woods' impact on the game in too light of terms?

So I broke it down and yes, Woods has been the equivalent of a tornado meeting a prairie outhouse. He's wiped out the prime major-winning years of so many players its ridiculous.

Most think a "generation" is about 20 years, so no, Tiger is not the beacon of light in a generation of suckiness...but he's close...I put Tiger in the middle, so let's go 10 years older and 10 years younger (as of today) and see how many guys have majors...

22 - none
23 - none
24 - none
25 - none
26 - none
27 - none
28 - Trevor Immelman
29 - none
30 - Ben Curtis, Geoff Ogilvy
31 - none
32 - Tiger Woods (13), Zach Johnson
33 - none
34 - none
35 - Justin Leonard
36 - Padraig Harrington, David Duval
37 - Mike Weir, Phil Mickelson (3), Rich Beem
38 - Angel Cabrera, Ernie Els (3)
39 - Retief Goosen (2), Shaun Micheel, Michael Campbell
40 - none
41 - David Toms
42 - Jose Maria Olazabal (2), John Daly (2)

Did you really look at that list? How many of those players can you still call relevant right now, in 2008? There are 19 players there - I'd say 7 of them can contend in the US Open at Torrey Pines.

Then I looked at top 5 finishes in majors since Tiger's breakthrough win at the '97 Masters. (I believe Top 10's are irrelevant. You can finish 8th but never have mattered, once).
Here are the guys with the most top 5's (not including victories) since that Masters.
Els - 13
Woods - 11
Mickelson - 10
Jim Furyk, Sergio Garcia - 8
Goosen - 5
Leonard, Olazabal, Davis Love III, Vijay Singh - 4

In that list, only Sergio hasn't won at least one major.

I then combed the current Offiical World Golf Rankings, and of the top 50 in the world, 17 have never had a top 5 finish. Seven have only one top 10...five have 2 top 10's and four have 3...

Here's the other interesting thing...Tiger has pretty much wiped any golfer in his immediate age range right off the map! I mean, Curtis and Leonard's victories have proven to be flukes...leaving Ogilvy as the only hope for those players in their "prime" years of 29-35. That's amazing.

Tiger essentially kept Ernie, Retief and Phil from winning at least 2 more majors each in my opinion, and maybe one more for Vijay.

And his presence is helping stunt the major development of guys who should be winning now - like Luke Donald (31 on Dec. 7); Paul Casey (31 on July 21); Rory Sabbatini (32), Henrik Stenson (32), Ian Poulter (32), Tim Clark (33 on Dec. 17), Stewart Cink (35 on May 21) and Lee Westwood (35 on April 24).

Why you say? Because the early 30's is when guys should break through with their first major championships...

Zach Johnson was 31
Weir, Goosen, Beem and Fred Couples were 32
Furyk & Love III & Mickelson were 33
Micheel & Toms were 34

But look at that list - aside from Goosen, none of the others were able to find another title.

And Els won his last major (the '02 British) when he was 32. That was almost six years ago now!

So what does this all mean? It means guys like Monty and Vijay are done. They have no hope of winning another major in their mid-40's.

It means that guys like Mickelson, Goosen, Furyk, Els and Mike Weir have another 4 years to get it done....and that some guys will probably never sniff a title despite being one of the best in the world...

Oh - here's some exclusive video of Tornado Tiger ...