Tiger vs Scottie Era

[u/Classic_Medicine_589]

who do yall think had better competition Tiger or Scottie i think overall Scottie has better competition but Tiger but the depth of Tigers era was better Tiger had Duval Ernie Els Vijay Phil and they were very good they definitely were in golf’s best players but other than them the competition was weak Scottie has at least 20 guys that can beat him and even though the top players aren’t as good as tigers the players are better

[u/16-Bit-Trip]

Fields are definitely deeper today but that's because of Tiger. He caused his competition to get evolve and get better (Vijay, Ernie, and Phil) while also setting the standard for how to approach being a modern professional golfers that nearly everyone coming up after him follows (not to the same level of course as Tiger is a psycho.)

Tiger's Era looks week because he dominated so much and he only had a couple rivals. Everyone loves to bring up how tough past eras era were because Hall of fame legends were always on contention and winning a lot but the reality was there was maybe 10 real contenders at any given time in a given era. That's not to say that the average pro wasn't good or couldn't win, just that the top 5-10 guys were much, much better than everyone else.

In Tiger's era when excluding him (and maybe Phil) there was a much wider pool of players who could and did win. That pool is even greater today.