Tiger Woods

Tiger is the greatest golfer of his era and a good case can be made that he is the greatest of all time. He is at the top of his game and may be on the verge of a historic year starting with the Masters next week. It should be very interesting because the other top golfers – Mickleson, Singh, Cink, Choi, Stricker, Leonard and Ogilvy, as well as Scott, Furyk, Donald, Els and Goosen, seem to be playing well at this time. Unless one of these guys brings his A++ game, I expect Tiger to prevail.

gw67

its an upset when he doesnt win. If he places 2nd or 3rd its a news story. That is total domination. The overall competition he faces whenever he tees it up is far superior to when Jack and Arnie played, and yet he still manages to make it look easy. At Doral he clearly was off his game, and he finished in third place (I think).

Has any player ever dominated an entire sport like this? Michael Schumaker perhaps in F1, Federer or Borg in tennis . . . there arent many.

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Originally Posted by steven52682

Has any player ever dominated an entire sport like this? Michael Schumaker perhaps in F1, Federer or Borg in tennis . . . there arent many.

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Navratalova?

I'm interested in the debate about comparing achievements across sports. The tennis / golf comparison is frequently made as they are the two highest profile individual sports (leaving aside stuff with cars because it bores me ;)). In my view, Tiger's accomplishments are more impressive than those of Federer and Navratilova due to the breadth of the competition. Each tennis match is one on one, so there's less random chance involved: you only need to worry about one other player getting hot. In golf, any player in the field can get hot and post strong scores for a few days.

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Originally Posted by billybreen

I'm interested in the debate about comparing achievements across sports. The tennis / golf comparison is frequently made as they are the two highest profile individual sports (leaving aside stuff with cars because it bores me ;)). In my view, Tiger's accomplishments are more impressive than those of Federer and Navratilova due to the breadth of the competition. Each tennis match is one on one, so there's less random chance involved: you only need to worry about one other player getting hot. In golf, any player in the field can get hot and post strong scores for a few days.

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CAR STUFF BORES YOU?!?!?!?

As an aside - I really think the only comparison to Tiger is Michael Schumaker. They had to change the rules because of that guy.

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Originally Posted by steven52682

CAR STUFF BORES YOU?!?!?!?

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Terribly. Sorry. :)

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Originally Posted by billybreen

I'm interested in the debate about comparing achievements across sports. The tennis / golf comparison is frequently made as they are the two highest profile individual sports (leaving aside stuff with cars because it bores me ;)). In my view, Tiger's accomplishments are more impressive than those of Federer and Navratilova due to the breadth of the competition. Each tennis match is one on one, so there's less random chance involved: you only need to worry about one other player getting hot. In golf, any player in the field can get hot and post strong scores for a few days.

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Yes, but you have to go 1 on 1 7 matches in a row for the grand slam events - we know how much of a crapshoot the NCAA tournament can be and that's one less round. I have a hard time putting one above the other (Tiger and Federer)

But I do agree car stuff is boring.

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Originally Posted by snowdenscold

Yes, but you have to go 1 on 1 7 matches in a row for the grand slam events - we know how much of a crapshoot the NCAA tournament can be and that's one less round. I have a hard time putting one above the other (Tiger and Federer)

But I do agree car stuff is boring.

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Yeah, that's definitely the counter argument, and it's a good one. I wonder if there's a statistical way to make this case, perhaps comparing performance in tennis and golf tournaments against ranking.

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Originally Posted by billybreen

Yeah, that's definitely the counter argument, and it's a good one. I wonder if there's a statistical way to make this case, perhaps comparing performance in tennis and golf tournaments against ranking.

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The simplest comparison is that in golf you have to beat 100+ opponents as you mentioned, while in tennis you only have to beat 7 (in a slam) or 5 or so in most other tournaments. In golf, if you have an off day you're almost certainly out of the competition, while in tennis you can survive an off day assuming your single opponent isn't as good or also has an off day. I'd say golf is harder to dominate.

Tiger Woods versus the field...who would you take? To me its a no brainer.

And I agree golf is harder to dominate.