ESPN has an interesting analysis of how many times the top players have “beaten” Tiger Woods—that is, finished higher than him in a tournament (not necessarily won—just finished in a higher position).

For example, Tiger and Phil Mickelson have played in the same tournament 139 times. Tiger has finished higher than Phil 93 times; they tied on four other occasions. So Tiger has finished equal to, or better than Phil 69% of the time.

It’s the same story for all of the top players. Tiger finishes better than or equal to Vijay 70% of the Time; better than or equal to Jim Furyk 75% of the time; with Els, 68%; and so on.

Even more telling: nine of the top 25 have never finished first when Tiger is in the field.

Vijay has the most outright wins with Tiger in the field, with 11. Phil has nine; Ernie, eight; Double D has six (a number that is not likely to increase). None fo the hot young players has enough to mention.

In fact, it seems to me that a dark horse is more likely to win than one of the names.

Now that’s dominance.

Golf Perfume

Ridiculous Golf Item of The Week

Happy Blogging Birthday To Me!

I made my first post in GolfBlogger on March 22, 2004, so today GolfBlogger heads into its fourth year of golfing goodness.

When I started the site, blogging was a relatively new thing and I simply wanted to see what it was all about. At that point, it seemed to me that most of the blogs were about politics and technology, so I decided to stay away from those topics. I loved golf— I play and have coached golf— so I decided to write about that.

I think of GolfBlogger as a cross between two more well-known blogs—http://www.instapundit.com and http://www.gizmodo.com. Instapundit offers a series of short, pithy comments on political news; Gizmodo writes about new tech products. Combining these two with a golf twist led me to Golfblogger’s general format, which is to offer short, pithy comments on golf news, and links to new golf products.

Over the last three years, I have published 2,515 posts, avoiding the fate of most blogs where the authors write a few pieces and then quickly lose interest. A post a day has always been my goal, and as you can see by the numbers, its one I’ve easily met. And I see no reason to stop now. I love golf as much—if not more than before—and reading and writing about it is my second favorite thing to playing it.

Since its conception, I’ve also added a few extra items to the site, like the GolfBlogger Golf Blog Search Engine, which works like Google (and in fact runs on Google), but limits searches to golf blogs. There’s also a directory of golf sites, which lists 6,570 sites in 312 searchable categories, a gallery of courses that I’ve played, a forum (sadly underused), and much more.

What’s next? Well, the biggest project is going to be a site redesign. I’ve hired a professional designer to turn my homemade look into something more exciting and useful. That, hopefully, will get going very soon.

Stay tuned.

This year, it’s all about geometry. Square drivers, hexagonal drivers, triangular drivers—and now, Hireko Golf’s Acer Mantara Driver: a driver shaped like a manta ray.

The purpose of all of this geometry is to move the weight to the perimeter of the clubhead. This increases the moment of inertia (resistance to twisting) for straighter, more accurate shots. Moving the weight low and back creates higher launch conditions.

The Mantara is a 460cc titanium driver head that comes in 10.5 and 12 degree lofts. It’s one degree closed, making it easier to close at impact than square or open faced drivers. The downside is that it may be slightly more difficult to “work” the ball.

I don’t need to work it. I need to stripe it down the middle.

You can get the Mantara for as little as $89, custom built to your specifications. The club comes with a 60 day satisfaction guarantee.

The first Major of 2007—the Masters—is just around the corner. Who’s favored?

These are the latest odds for the Masters, provided courtesy of Bodog.Com, the world’s largest online sports betting destination.

The Nick Hotchkiss Collection has released another neat tie—this one featuring golf carts.

I own a couple of Nick’s ties and love them. The designs are subtle and yet fun. From a distance, the ties look as though they’re an abstract design. But up close, you see the fun designs.

SureShot Golf GPS

The SureShot is the latest entry into the golf GPS beauty pagent. Apparently prominent in the European and Australian markets, the SureShot can store ten courses and give you the distance to the front back and middle of the green from any location. It also can show the distances to up to fifteen hazards per hole.

It also keeps tracks of statistics, such as fairways hit, greens in regulation and putts. WIth a USB connection and the included Windows software you can crunch the numbers and keep statistics for multiple games.

The downside is that it requires a an annual subscription fee of $19.95 after the first year. This grants access to the online database of courses.

What I can’t tell is if there is a way to map your own courses. While there are more than 800 courses in Michigan, there are only a dozen or so listed in the SureShot database. In that case, it wouldn’t be particularly useful unless there was an easy way to map a course as you play it.