The hardest question you can ask a golfer is not how to get out of the Road Hole bunker at St. Andrews. It’s who is the ultimate GOAT in their eyes. Jack Nicklaus? Or, Tiger Woods? The trouble for the most part is they never competed against each other in their heydays. But ask Max Homa, and he has his answer ready.

Spoiler here: Homa picks Tiger Woods. He has idolized the 48-year-old since he was a kid. Homa was just six when Woods won the 1997 Masters. And, he doesn’t hide his fondness for the 15-time major champion. 

So, when Join the Lobby podcast host, Swagg asked who is the Greatest of All Time, Homa started with this honest line: “I am incredibly biased here.” Yet, you had to stay back to hear his full response. Besides the numbers – Woods’s 15 to Nicklaus’s 18, Woods’s 82 to Nicklaus’s 73 – Homa looks at their dominance and physical condition.

The six-time PGA Tour winner explained, “Tiger [Woods] has hurt a million times. So, I believe his shelf life got kinda diminished… I don’t know Tiger won tournaments by 15 strokes. it’s quite common that you win by one. 15 is… I never heard of that.”

Woods bested Tom Kite by 12 strokes for his maiden Green Jacket. Three years later, he won the US Open by 15 strokes, the largest margin of victory in the history of golf majors. Woods also won the 2000 Open Championship by eight strokes. 

Overall, in his career, the former World No. 1 has won by seven strokes or more 12 times. In between, the 82-time PGA Tour winner went through multiple surgeries. His back has undergone more surgeries than his Green Jackets. 

Comparably, Nicklaus’s largest margin of victory came at the 1965 Masters (nine strokes). But then Golden Bear also had 35 top-ten finishes from his 40 appearances in the majors in the 1970s. His 46 top-three finishes in the majors are yet to be bettered by anybody. It’s also good to remember that Nicklaus played with Persimmon drivers and without Trackman and other modern-day technologies. 

Nevertheless, Homa believes, Woods made Golf more popular among the youth. He made it cool; which brought a number of today’s top players into the game. The six-time major winner added, “You could potentially say like Jack is the greatest champion. Just using the words. Because yeah, he did win more majors. But I would argue that the competition got deeper since Tiger… Tiger kinda made it deeper.” 

However, there truly is no surefire way to compare two players who played against different fields with different gears and never teed off against each other in their prime. Homa’s argument definitely has merit. Indeed, Woods’s impact transcended beyond the greens. In an era of rapidly growing Internet, the 15-time major champion became a pop culture icon as well. 

Max Homa details the impact of Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods made a ‘dorky’ sport look cool. Max Homa believes so. Undeniably, Woods transcended the sport beyond its self-imposed threshold. In the same podcast, the UC Berkeley alum revealed, “When will my friends be like you play golf? I will just show them videos like, ‘Look at this f**king dude [Tiger Woods]. Tell me that’s not cool.’”

Homa also considered playing the Masters with Woods a dream come true. Before that, he considered getting paired with the 15-time major winner at the 150th Open as a divine intervention from the golf gods.

Talking about Woods’s impact, the 33-year-old reiterated, “He gotta be one of the three most famous people in a 10-15 year stint… He just changed the whole sport.” Max Homa is a true Tiger Woods fan, and he never hides it. Good for him that he is already on the same team as his idol in the TGL, Jupiter Links GC.