1. Byron Nelson, 1945
The most famous year in golf history, and deservedly so: 18 total wins, 11 of them consecutively. Let's say that again - eighteen wins, including 11 in a row. And unbeknownst to many golf fans, Lord Byron actually won another tournament in that streak, which would have made the streak 12 straight and the win total 19. However, that was a 36-hole tournament (by design, not because of weather), and so is considered unofficial.
There are a couple arguments thrown out by people who believe Nelson's 1945 record isn't as impressive as it looks. First is that the PGA Tour in 1945 included several team events, and several of Nelson's wins came with him as part of a 2-man team. Second is that it was a war year; World War II, the argument goes, caused the fields to be weaker due to missing players. Specifically, detractors say, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead weren't around to challenge Nelson for supremacy.
There were several team events on the schedule in 1945, but only one of them - the Miami Four-Ball - is among Nelson's 18 victories. So the first point is, well, pointless. There is some validity to the second point, but its impact is overstated. The overall quality, from top to bottom, of the fields in 1945 was certainly weaker than it would be in 1946. But many of the top players were, like Nelson, around the full year. Jimmy Demaret and Craig Wood, for example, played full seasons.
And Hogan and Snead were most definitely around. Hogan played 19 tournaments in 1945, while Snead played 27 (Nelson played 30 or 31 events, depending on who's doing the record-keeping). So Snead played a full season, while Hogan played about two-thirds of it. Hogan and Snead both won multiple times in 1945. In fact, Hogan set a 72-hole scoring record in one tournament, only to have Nelson break it two weeks later.
The reason Nelson won so much in 1945 is that he was playing the best golf the PGA Tour has ever seen. Not only did he win 18 times, but he finished second seven more times (that's 25 times in the Top 2!). He lowered his scoring average by almost a full stroke from the previous year, and he set a record for scoring average (68.33) that stood for more than 55 years. He shot a then-record 62 in one tournament, set another then-record of 29-under par in another, and, as stated earlier, broke the record Ben Hogan had set two weeks earlier with a 259 total for 72 holes. In one stretch, Nelson played 19 consecutive rounds in the 60s.
To top it off, Nelson won the only major championship played in 1945, the PGA Championship.
The year 1945 was the high point in a three-year stretch for Nelson in which he won 34 times and finished second 16 times. In that three-year stretch, Nelson finished out of the Top 10 exactly once.
Byron Nelson's amazing 1945 is the best individual year in the history of golf.
