Okay, so I was messing around today trying to get a definitive list of golf major winners. Sounds simple, right? It wasn’t. Here’s how I went about it, and believe me, it was a bit of a journey.
The Initial (Naive) Approach
First, I just went straight to my usual search engine. I figured, “Hey, this is basic information, should be everywhere.” I typed in “golf majors won” and… well, I got a lot of stuff, but not a clean, easy list. I got articles, I got partial lists focused on specific players, I got recent tournament results. Ugh. It was a mess.
Digging Deeper (and Getting Frustrated)
So, I started trying different search terms. “List of all golf major winners,” “golf major champions by year,” things like that. I clicked on a bunch of different sites. Some had decent info, but it was always presented differently. One site would list by player, another by tournament, another by year. I was getting increasingly annoyed. I just wanted ONE comprehensive list!
Trying to Compile (The Manual Labor Begins)
At this point, I decided I’d have to do it myself. I started opening a bunch of tabs, each with a different source. I thought, “Okay, I’ll just copy and paste the info into a spreadsheet and sort it.” Famous last words.
The problem? The formatting was all over the place. Some sites used tables, some used bullet points, some were just paragraphs of text. Copying and pasting was a nightmare. Names were sometimes “Last Name, First Name,” sometimes “First Name Last Name.” Years were sometimes just the year, sometimes with the month and day. It was a data entry horror show.
The Spreadsheet Struggle (Almost Giving Up)
I spent a good chunk of time cleaning up the data in my spreadsheet. I had to manually correct names, standardize dates, and delete a bunch of extra junk that got copied over. I seriously considered just giving up several times. It felt like I was spending more time wrestling with formatting than actually getting the information I wanted.
Finally, Some Progress (and a Little Relief)
After a lot of tedious work, I finally had a reasonably clean spreadsheet. I could sort it by player, by tournament, by year – whatever I wanted. It wasn’t perfect, but it was way better than what I started with.
The Lessons Learned (and Why I’m Sharing This)
- Don’t assume simple information is easy to find. Sometimes, the most basic stuff is buried under a mountain of less-than-useful content.
- Be prepared to get your hands dirty. Sometimes, you just have to do the manual work to get what you need.
- Data cleanup is a real thing. Don’t underestimate how much time it can take to wrangle messy data into a usable format.
So, yeah, that was my adventure in trying to find a simple list of golf major winners. It wasn’t glamorous, but I got there in the end. Hopefully, this little rant saves someone else some time and frustration!
