Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods are the two greatest golfers ever to have graced our wonderful game.

While golf fans often debate who was the best player out of the two, what cannot be questioned is the fact that they are both in the top two of the all-time list.

Sadly for Woods, numerous serious injuries, back surgeries and multiple off-course controversies cost him the chance of ever breaking Nicklaus’ major record.

Nicklaus once even admitted that Woods was a better player than him. Woods’ dominance from the late 1990s through 2008 really was remarkable.

Let’s not forget, he had to fight off the likes of Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh and Retief Goosen throughout that period as well.

And Nicklaus put much of Woods’ success down to one key factor.

Jack Nicklaus once criticized Tiger Woods’ PGA Tour rivals

Back in 2008, Nicklaus explained one thing about the modern game that he found particularly difficult to watch.

“It’s hard to watch golf on television and see guys falter coming down the stretch,“ Nicklaus admitted.

“It happens to too many players today. It’s the biggest difference between Tiger and his challengers. He comes down the stretch and knows how to finish a tournament.

“During my career there were many times on the final nine when I knew I just had to play safe golf because the guys in contention probably would make mistakes and not finish. But I had a lot of challengers like Watson and Trevino who I knew were going to finish and not give the tournament to me. I think I had more guys like that than Tiger does.

“My feeling is that our college and professional systems don’t breed winners. With so much money in the pro game, conservative mediocrity sort of prevails.

“The goal is to make a good living more than it is to win. Yes, there’s a lot of depth in the pro game. If you took a large group of today’s players and put them against the group from my prime, today’s group would probably beat our brains out. But I think our four or five top guys, as a group, would have beaten the brains out of the top players of today.“

Nicklaus echoed a similar sentiment back in 2025 after Scottie Scheffler’s win at the Memorial Tournament.

The Golden Bear explained how the very best players in the world know exactly what they need to do at all times in order to beat their competitors.

Jack Nicklaus commented on how comfortable Scottie Scheffler is when leading

Following the four-time major champion’s victory at Muirfield Village, Nicklaus highlighted how Scheffler’s know-how and experience of winning made his task so much easier.

“Well, I think that great players are ones who rise to the occasion and ones who know how to play coming down the stretch in important events,“ Nicklaus said.

“Looking at the leaderboard today, he didn’t have – I mean, Ben Griffin’s a nice player, Sepp Straka is a nice player, Nick Taylor is a nice player. Those were all the guys that were there basically coming down the stretch. But he knows that those guys, you know, are not in his league.

“Now, if he would have had – I don’t know who else it might have been, but if he had somebody else at the top, if Xander or somebody like that would have been there, he might have said, ‘Well, that might be a little tougher. I might have to do something different.‘ He didn’t have to.“

Jack Nicklaus definitely has a point. There are a select few in the game today who have a psychological edge on 98% of the fields they play in purely because they know how to get the job done.

Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy are the two standout players who fit into that category, while Tiger Woods was obviously the same.

Meanwhile, players like Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm have similar mentalities to those mentioned above.

However, the majority of players on the PGA Tour are not comfortable when they are in or around the lead. It’s incredibly difficult to win at the very highest level of professional golf, and only a select few feel comfortable when the chance to do so presents itself.