The Greatest of All Time? Spare me. It’s hard enough picking the best player of 2022.
Like Jack and Tiger in golf, I don’t know how anyone can say with any certainty that Lionel Messi or Pele or Maradona is the GOAT. Different eras, different games in many ways.
It’s not even subjective, really. There are surely only a handful of qualified people who saw Pele and Messi play their peaks.
They were the best of their eras, as Jack and Tiger were. You can’t measure whether one had tougher competition than the other, either. All you can say is that they beat what was what in front of them in their particular time.
You’re on much safer ground going year-to-year, but it’s been no easier recently. There’s been no consensus on the leading player in golf these last two years.
Scheffler’s first four months
Scheffler after duffing his second shot into the 3rd hole in @TheMasters final round… pic.twitter.com/b7qWZi0B3Z
— Golf Monthly (@GolfMonthly) December 15, 2022
The two main American awards, the PGA Tour player of the year and PGA player of the year, went to Patrick Cantlay and Jon Rahm respectively in 2021.
This year the Jack Nicklaus award, voted on by the tour membership, went to Scottie Scheffler, while the PGA of America award went to Cameron Smith.
My fellow members of the Association of Golf Writers, confined to golfers of a Europe-based persuasion, voted Rory McIlroy, winner of both main tours, as their Player of The Year in 2022 (The 2021 award went to Catruona Matthew and the Solheim Cup team).
My vote for that actually went to Matt Fitzpatrick, because my personal method of selection has majors counting triple. But T2G’s overall selection is not confined to Europeans.
Scheffler was certainly the best player of the first third of the year. The 26-year-old won four events in just 56 days. The first of them, the WM Phoenix Open in February, was his first tour win, and the last was the Masters, his first major.
Actually, the rest of Scheffler’s year was not shabby, if not to those unapproachable standards. He was second at the US Open, and at the Tour Championship.
The crowning glory of Cam Smith’s season was his final round 64 to win The 150th Open, a fittingly historic kind of round for that most historic of championships.
Looking over all of this year’s majors, that’s definitely going to be the one we remember, even putting aside Smith’s subsequent ‘defection’ to LIV Golf.
The Australian also won the Players Championship and the year-opening Tournament of Champions. He may also have won a LIV event – I think – but seriously, I’m not counting them.
Rory’s two tour wins
"I was able to find a lot of quiet inside the ropes"
RTÉ Sport Sportsperson of the Year nominee Rory McIlroy has been opening up about his 2022
Watch the RTÉ Sport Awards live on @RTEOne & @RTEplayer
📺 Watch live – https://t.co/hFIl8szvbB
📱 Updates – https://t.co/dn1Cy5X9cQ pic.twitter.com/6pglgO6Nfj— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) December 17, 2022
McIlroy, as we noted above, won both tours, finished in the top five of three majors and was eighth in the other, all while dealing with the distraction of becoming the Face of The PGA Tour © and being the leading figure among the players against golf’s great schism.
While we really should put aside Rory’s advocacy – and his good humour and eloquence when CONTINUALLY being asked to comment about it – you do feel it had a positive influence on how he played.
As we’ve noted before in T2G, Rory seems to play better when in adversity of some kind. Like bouncing back from his Masters disaster to win the US Open. Or turning up just in time on tee at Medinah to help lead Europe to the miracle. Or the embarrassment of his very public relationship break-up in 2014 to winning two majors that year.
‘Escaping between the ropes’ has again been the theme of his end of year musings. One obviously doesn’t wish any particular ill on the likeable Northern Irishman in 2023, but you kind of think some additional turmoil might get him over the remaining hump that is another major victory.
But he didn’t get one this year. Matt Fitzpatrick did, and the US Open was his first PGA Tour win, and his only one of the year.
But ‘Fitz’ got my vote for the AGW Trophy because of that major, and because I don’t think any player has more systematically and positively changed himself ovre the past two years.
Bryson DeChambeau’s personal transformation hogged the headlines, but he was really not that much better bulked up than he was normal-sized, even before injury and a LIV contract intervened.
Fitzpatrick’s much more subtle transformation embraced statistical study of his game and venues, an overhaul of his ball speed and mechanics, and the odd idosyncracy like his cack-handed chipping.
We can make other cases – notably for Lydia Ko, who like McIlroy carried off all the major season prizes in the LPGA and women’s game, if not a major.
But Cam Smith at St Andrews is what we’ll remember
A stunning 64 for Cam Smith, a worthy Champion🏆#The150thOpen pic.twitter.com/PqGUMtcvYq
— The Open (@TheOpen) July 17, 2022
It’s a crowded field. But the most significant victory of the year shoves one player out front.
For some Cam Smith’s entire year, and what happened after his victory at St Andrews in July, is enough to disbar him from the running. But although I have no time for LIV, what he did in the “mainstream”, all year, is enough for me.
Scheffler was unstoppable in the first four months, but Smith was in step with him most of the way. He chased the American all weekend at Augusta, and won The Players in superb style.
But it was St Andrews that clinched it. Especially after a near disaster on Saturday at the 13th, when he seemed to have blown his chance.
On Sunday, he had a back nine – on maybe the best back nine the game has – for the ages. His putting was simply incredible, but it was also his tactical approach that belied his Aussie ‘bogan’ image.
In particular, the peerless plan for the 14th, 15th and 17th was really the difference between him securing the Jug ahead of McIlroy and Cameron Young.
Smith’s decision to go to LIV could mean that is the high water mark of his career. That would be a shame, but it still doesn’t detract that he was my Player of The Year for 2022.
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