Of GNOMEs And BP-WAMYs

Clockwise, from top right: Harry "Lighthorse" Cooper, Colin Montgomerie, Doug Sanders and Macdonald Smith each can be called a legitimate GNOME – Greatest No Major Ever. Photos: USGA

We all have various thresholds for tolerance that some might consider irrational. Pet peeves. Small things that can make our neurons explode over something others might consider irrelevant. The kind of triviality that drags you into a Twitter argument while others look on and think, “really?”

I’ll confess there are too many of these insignificant traps laid inside my head. One of them is baited to go off in two months when someone will inevitably refer to top-15 players Xander Schauffele or Tony Finau or Viktor Hovland as “one of the best players never to have won a major.” When that happens, I’m going to snap.

That phrase gets used so often that it cheapens the concept. At the same time, it is grossly unfair to many of the golfers to which it is directe...