Moments after Tiger Woods finished his stroll through Medinah, otherwise known as his 12th major championship with a win Sunday at the PGA Championship, ESPN columnists were quick to declare Woods the greatest athlete ever.
Certainly, Woods is the greatest golfer since Jack Nicklaus and will probably go down as the greatest winner in the game’s history and has done more for golf, long term, than any golfer since Bobby Jones. Remember, Jones dominated the game and made it relevant in the United States, while winning the Grand Slam. Woods’ slame stretched over two seasons, but he is the only golfer to win all four modern era majors in a row.
But is he really greater than the legends of other sports? Is it too soon to really write such a column, considering that Woods is 30 and has a good 20 years left on the PGA tour, if he doesn’t burn himself out.
Let’s take a look at past champions from other individual sports. It’s not really fair to compare Woods to athletes from team sports, because their contributions and success are as much about the team as it is the individual.
In tennis, Pete Samprass won 14 majors throughout his career, 12 of which came in the 1990s. He did so in a way that was quiet and dominating. Also, while going up against guys like Andre Agassi and others. Samprass was dominant at Wimbledon and the US Open, but get him on clay and it was his kryptonite. The French Open was the one tennis tournament that Samprass never won and will probably cloud his career. Especially if Roger Federer, who already has eight titles, gets over the hump and defeats Rafael Nadal at the French. Nadal has won the past two, and has dominated Federer on clay.
So we can eliminate Samprass simply on the fact he never won the French.
What about boxing, one would argue that Muhammad Ali was probably the greatest heavyweight champion of all time. In his career, Ali/Classius Clay, whatever you want to call him, was the undisputed champion twice in his career. In all, he won the WBC title two times, and held the WBA championship four times. That’s pretty impressive in an era when champions typically only had one or two shots at the belt.
Ali certainly had the charisma and the controversy of a champion. He kept people’s interest in boxing, some none of the current champions can do, but the sport was already popular. It has sense, with the demise of Mike Tyson and others, dwindled.
We will argue that Ali is the greatest boxing heavyweight champion of all time, but we will stop short of declaring him the greatest individual athlete of all time.
Next we head to the world of auto racing, and we will look at Richard Petty. In a career that stretched four decades, Petty won 200 races - still a record in auto racing - won the Daytona 500 a record seven times, and won seven NASCAR titles. There is a reason he is called “The King.”
His mystique still carries with him today. However, since his retirement in 1992, Petty’s run as the greatest NASCAR champion of all time has been taken a back seat to other drivers, namely Dale Earnhardt who tied the legend in 1994 with his seventh Cup title. Petty’s own Petty Enterprises has failed to really dominate the sport like it did in previous generations since switching to Dodge.
Even Petty’s wins must be looked at with a skeptical eye. NASCAR’s schedule back in the 1950s and 1960s was much like what you would see at your local dirt track, racing sometimes twice a week in small venues across the nation, focusing on the southeast region. NASCAR no longer runs the schedule that it did back then, but if it did certainly drivers like Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon would’ve been able to take a stab at the mark.
So, Petty is not even the greatest in his sport.
Without getting into the Olympic sports, it is safe to say that Tiger Woods will likely go down as the greatest individual sport athlete of all time. He is a winner, certainly in that he has never lost from the lead going into the final round of a major.
Woods’ only downfall is that he has never came from behind to win at a major. He’s came close before, most recently at the 2005 US Open in Pinehurst. When he does come from behind to win, it will only add to his mystique as a golfer, a champion, and as an athlete in general.
