Golf Odds & Predictions: Can Tiger Woods Pass Jack Nicklaus In Majors?

There is no golf being played on the PGA Tour right now because of the coronavirus pandemic, but there’s still golf betting to be had at Sports Interaction. Today, a look at Tiger Woods’ chances of reaching 19 career major championships.

COVID-19 Postpones Two PGA Majors

The four major championships in golf – they are all events on both the PGA Tour and European Tour – are the Masters in April (always at Augusta National in Georgia), PGA Championship in May, United States Open in June and the British Open in July.

Will any of them be played this year? That question sadly is not answerable right now with the coronavirus shuttering both major Tours and everything else in sports. The PGA Tour hasn’t had a full event since the March 5-8 Arnold Palmer Invitational in Florida. The first round of the Players Championship was played March 12 also in Florida, but then the Tour shut down. All non-major tournaments through mid-May have been canceled.

The Masters and PGA Championship have not been canceled but postponed. The PGA this year was to be held at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco for the first time. Early reports are that the Tour is hoping to stage the PGA Championship in the spot formerly held by the Olympic golf competition in Tokyo from July 3-Aug. 2. The 2020 Games have been pushed back to 2021.

Augusta National officials – they run the Masters, not the PGA Tour – are apparently eyeing early October, but obviously nothing can be set in stone right now. It’s only a matter of time before the June 18-21 U.S. Open at Winged Foot in New York is postponed. The British Open, scheduled July 16-19 at Royal St. George’s in England, probably will take longer to make a decision.

Tiger Woods vs. Jack Nicklaus

Jack Nicklaus holds the record with 18 major championships, winning them over a span of 25 years from 1962 (when the Golden Bear was 22) to 1986, when Nicklaus won an incredibly memorable Masters at age 46. He played in a record 154 consecutive major championships for which he was eligible from the 1957 U.S. Open to the 1998 U.S. Open.

Nicklaus won the Masters six times, the PGA Championship five times, the US Open four times and the British Open thrice. Perhaps even more amazing, Nicklaus finished second in a major 19 times!

Tiger Woods, meanwhile, won his 15^th career major championship at the 2019 Masters for his fifth green jacket. He has won the PGA Championship four times, and the U.S. Open and British Open three times each. Woods has finished second in a major seven times.

Sports Interaction has a yes-only prop at +1200 of Woods getting to at least 19 major titles. That’s going to be tough because Woods will be 45 this December, and he might lose an entire season’s worth of majors depending on the coronavirus. Very, very rare for 45-year-olds to win a major. Julius Boros holds the record when he won the 1968 PGA Championship at age 48 years, 4 months and 18 days.

Plus, Woods hasn’t exactly been a picture of health with a handful of surgeries on both his back and left knee over the years. He hasn’t played much this year because of injury, although he did win the Zozo Championship in Japan in October. That was victory No. 82 all-time, tying Sam Snead’s PGA Tour record.

There’s also a prop on whether Tiger wins a major this year with no at -455 and yes +280. Let’s just hope they are played.