The Olympics are underway, outside Paris at Le Golf National. Sixty men are playing this week, and 60 women will tee it up next week. Gold, silver and bronze medals will be awarded in each golf competition. It’s fair to say that those who finish second and third likely will leave France feeling better than if they had the same results in normal play, even in a major championship. There was quite a contest for the men’s bronze at the Tokyo Olympics, with C.T. Pan prevailing over six others, Rory McIlroy and Collin Morikawa among them.
In a recent social media post, Golf Digest's Jamie Kennedy posed a question worth pondering: What if golf, particularly in the majors, had a “podium” mentality more than every four years?
Golf returned to the Olympics too late for Tiger Woods, whose blunt 1996 assessment of his “winning is the only thing” mindset was a big deal as he turned professional in 1996. “I would explain to my dad,” Woods told interviewer Curtis Strange during his pro debut in Milwaukee, “Second sucks, and third’s even worse.” Perhaps Tiger would have tucked away a silver or bronze in a drawer he never opened. It’s very doubtful a third place would have thrilled him the way it did Matt Kuchar, bronze medalist in Rio after a closing 63, who has two top-three finishes in 67 major appearances, notably his runner-up to Jordan Spieth at The Open in 2017.
“The whole thing about playing was to win,” the record 88-time LPGA winner Kathy Whitworth told me in 2019 for a Golf Digest story. “My attitude is, be the best at what you do, whatever that is. Jack [Nicklaus], Sam [Snead], Ben [Hogan], Tiger, me—the whole purpose, the fun, was to try to win. We didn’t always, but it was in the trying.”
But what about when the effort comes up just short? How much should a second or third in a major championship matter?
With Nicklaus, more than anyone, his close calls underpin his major superiority, just how often he was in the mix when it mattered most. His 18 professional major titles are accompanied by 19 second places and nine third places for a total of 46. (A caveat: For the purposes of these hypothetical golf “medals,” ties are included; eight of the Golden Bear’s “silvers” are shared, five of his “bronze” are.)
No one has come close to being on the “podium” as often as Nicklaus. Among men, Woods has 26 “medals” (15 major wins, 7 seconds, 4 thirds). Phil Mickelson (6, 12, 7) is next with 25. Snead, who experienced heartbreak multiple times in the U.S. Open decades before Mickelson had the same kind of problems in that championship, “podiumed” 20 times (7,7,6).
Snead contemporary Patty Berg, whose 15 major titles are the most in women’s golf history, has twice that many overall “medals” with nine seconds and six thirds to go with her victories. More recently, Annika Sorenstam achieved the same type of major record with 10 victories, six seconds and four thirds.
McIlroy is six strokes out of bronze through 36 holes at Le Golf National, lots of work to be done. Whatever happens this weekend, he will go into 2025 hoping to freshen his majors “medals” line, which reads 4-4-4, having mined no gold for 10 long years.