The Most Exciting Golfers to Watch in History

There is a perception that many of today’s leading tour professionals are like automatons, robots who come off a production line, with little or no personality.

Their swings all look the same, they hardly react to any shot they play, good or bad. Everything seems to be a process. First and foremost, they are now athletes.

Jack Nicklaus won 18 majors and, in my view, is the greatest golfer ever to draw breath. 

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But was he exciting to watch? Apart from his victory at the 1986 Masters, when he was 46 years of age and nobody expected him to win, he was the ultimate professional. 

Tiger Woods won 15 majors but was an entirely different sort of golfer. Quite frankly, he was thrilling to watch because you never quite knew what was going to happen next.

Would you rather watch Nick Faldo or Seve Ballesteros in their prime? I know which one I would choose. Every single time.

So here are 10 golfers I would go out of my way to watch.

Arnold Palmer 

Known as The King for good reason. His swing and technique were unconventional, to say the least. And he played golf in a way that captured the hearts and imagination of millions of golf fans around the world. His approach was to hit the ball as hard as he could, go find it and do it again. It was an approach that did not always work and there were many times when he came up short purely and simply because of his style. But he played golf with a smile on his face, often wore his heart on his sleeve and, single-handdly, saved The Open Championship, crossing the Atlantic to play when most of his fellow Americans chose to stay at home.

Tiger Woods

The winner of 82 PGA Tour titles and 15 majors, Woods redefined the way the game is played. He spent hours in the gym honing his physique, working on the muscles that would allow him to hit the ball the furthest possible distance. In his prime he brought golf courses to their knees with a combination of power and imagination. Woods missed a lot of fairways and the shots that live in the mind are the recoveries, such as the pitch he holed at the 16th hole at Augusta on his way to winning The Masters, and the unlikely putts he drained on his way to winning the 2008 US Open on a broken leg.

Bryson DeChambeau

There are many who regard DeChambeau as little more than a bomber, a man whose sole focus is to stand over the golf ball and hit it as hard as he possibly can. Of course he altered his body shape, piled on a load of muscle and blew our minds with his huge hitting but he soon realised that there was more to the game than smashing 400-yard drives. He truly came of age in 2024 in finishing runner-up to Xander Schauffele at the US PGA Championship, producing a never-ending series of mind-boggling shots. And he proved he was the finished article by winning the US Open four weeks later. Who wouldn’t pay to see him strut his stuff?

Seve Ballesteros

Arguably the most exciting golfer the world has ever seen - certainly the most unpredictable. From the start of his professional career, the Spaniard struggled to find fairways with a driver in his hands. To put it mildly, he was wayward. Really wayward. And that meant he spent a great deal of his career playing recovery shots from the most unlikely of places. He learnt to play the game with one club on a beach in Spain and it taught him to play with an imagination that was beyond most mere mortals. Give him a car park, a swimming pool, three-foot-high rough and he would produce a moment of magic.

Rory McIlroy

In my view, the Northern Irishman is the most gifted golfer of his generation. Would you rather watch him or world number one Scottie Scheffler? I am guessing that most of you would opt for McIlroy. When he is on song and blasting 340-yard drives there is no more exciting sight in professional golf. He produces laser-like long irons, hits wedges stone dead and holes unlikely putts. But he is just as likely to pull out a wedge and fly the green by 20 yards or, completely out of the blue, to miss a three-foot putt. His frailties are almost as large a part of his attraction as his ability to shoot the lights out.

Tyrrell Hatton

Let me state here and now that I am not a fan of Hatton’s tantrums but it is also part of his attraction. He is capable of looking like a world-class golfer. He is a genius with a wedge in his hands - and is probably the only golfer on the planet who slams a club into the ground as the ball flies through the air and finishes two feet from the hole. With Hatton there is never a dull moment.

Phil Mickelson

They didn’t call him "Phil The Thrill" for nothing. Like Ballesteros, Mickelson was truly wild from the tee. He was capable of hitting the ball miles, but in any direction. But he didn’t care where the ball finished - pine straw, thick rough, cart paths were all the same to Lefty. If there was a gap in the trees he would try to find out and to heck with the consequences. And he lived for the adulation of the galleries. His short game was the best I have ever seen. He could get the ball up and down from impossible positions. And his ability to play - and control - the flop shot was legendary.

Walter Hagen

I may be getting on a bit but trust me when I tell you that I never saw Hagen play the game. However, I wish that I had. In an era when professional golfers were generally treated like second-class citizens, Hagen was different. He dressed immaculately and played the game with style and flair. I particularly enjoy the stories about him heading out for the night, eating, drinking, gambling, partying and forgetting to go to bed - but still turning up on the first tee the next day ready to give his best.

Tony Lema

Another golfer I never got to see in the flesh and another who enjoyed the good life off the course and attacked the ball on it. There is no telling what he might have achieved had his life not been cut short in a plane crash in 1966. He spent four years in the US Marine Corps before turning to professional golf in 1957. Between 1962 and 1966 he won 12 times, including The Open in 1964. He nearly won The Masters in 1963 and the US Open in 1966. He enjoyed an active social life and became known as Champagne Tony Lema.

Payne Stewart

The American was a larger than life character whose life was cut short when his private plane crashed not long after the 1999 Ryder Cup - the infamous Battle of Brookline. Horrified by the way American fans verbally abused his singles opponent, Colin Montgomerie, he berated them before conceding the match to Monty. He won the 1989 US PGA Championship and the US Open in 1991 and 1999. He was famous for his caps and plus fours in the colours of the NFL. He even appeared in an episode of the American sitcom Home Improvement and was a member of a blues rock group called Jake Trout and the Flounders. 

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