Some say Woods' achievement is the most extraordinary
By Drew Sharp
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
No one doubts that Tiger Woods' victory at the Masters was
a monumental achievement.
British television commentator Peter Alliss said it transcended
sport and could be compared only to the precocious talents of
Mozart and Chopin.
Associated Press golf writer Ron Sirak wrote: "Imagine
if Jackie Robinson had not only broken the color barrier but Babe
Ruth's home run record as well.
"That's sort of what Tiger Woods accomplished at the Masters."
Woods' accomplishment was so extraordinary, it poses this question:
Was it the greatest individual performance in a sporting event?
Was it better than Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game 35 years
ago? No other NBA player has come close. How about Bob Beamon's
1968 Olympic long jump of 29 feet, 2-1/2 inches - nearly two feet
longer than the previous record - a feat that remained unsurpassed
for more than 20 years?
Mark Spitz's seven Olympic gold medals in 1972 - each representing
a world record - stands untouchable in swimming. And Jesse Owens
won four Olympic track medals in 1936 with Adolf Hitler watching.
Reggie Jackson's 1977 World Series performance is another contender.
When Jackson went to the New York Yankees that year, he boasted
that he would become so famous, they would name a candy bar for
him. His record three home runs in the final game of the Series
- on the first pitch from three Dodgers pitchers - might be baseball's
greatest individual moment.
And the Reggie bar was born.
Will the Tiger bar soon follow?
"This will be long remembered as one of the 10 greatest
athletic achievements of all time," said New York Times columnist
Dave Anderson, who has witnessed many of those historic benchmarks.
"Regardless of whether or not he wins another major, that
Masters win will forever be frozen in time. It has all the elements
of great drama."
Those principal elements are:
Youth: Woods, 21, is the youngest winner of a major golf championship.
Experience: Woods was the first to win the Masters in his first
professional attempt.
Performance: Woods obliterated the course at Augusta National,
setting six tournament records. Among them were lowest score (18-under
270), and maybe most impressive, biggest victory margin - 12 shots.
Social/political significance: Woods became the first black
player to win a major golf championship.
"If you use all four of those factors, you might not be
able to find another individual athletic achievement that even
comes remotely close to what Tiger did," said longtime Los
Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray, a noted sports historian.
"Perhaps what would come closest would be if the first
African-American major league baseball player ever hit home runs
in his first five at-bats. And of course, we all know that never
happened."
Fittingly, Woods' victory came two days before the 50th anniversary
of Jackie Robinson's trailblazing first major league game. But
Murray largely dismisses the parallel. Baseball's integration
had much further-reaching social implications.
For black athletes, though, Woods' breakthrough shares the
mantel with Owens' Olympic performance, Joe Louis' first-round
knockout of German Max Schmeling in 1938 and Arthur Ashe's 1975
Wimbledon title.
But former Chicago Cubs star Ernie Banks, who went to Augusta
and followed Woods' historic march, finds nothing absurd in making
correlations between Woods and Robinson.
"I saw Jackie, Jesse and Joe Louis, and the impact Tiger
has on the public is the same," Banks told the Chicago Tribune.
"He generates self-esteem, a self-confidence, an attitude
that penetrates all around him. I talked with a lot of kids at
this event, and Tiger makes them feel good about themselves. He
makes them think they can do the same thing someday."
Compounding Woods' achievement are the incredible expectations.
He was anointed the game's heir apparent long before he took his
victorious stroll up the 18th fairway Sunday. But who could have
imagined Don Larsen's World Series perfect game, Nadia Comaneci's
perfect vault or Jack Nicklaus' perfectly sublime 1986 Masters
championship at age 46?
"There's no greater pressure than to dominate an event
when many expect domination," Anderson said. "That's
why Secretariat's Belmont Stakes" - in which the horse clinched
the 1973 Triple Crown with a 31-length victory - "ranks as
one of the greatest feats of all time. The only real element of
surprise with Woods isn't that he brought Augusta to his knees,
it's that he did it this quickly."
A performance's ability to endure time is also determined by
how it reshapes a sport. Chamberlain's 100-point game in 1962
led to the widening of the three-second lane, forcing big men
to set up farther from the basket.
Before the 1967-68 season, the NCAA banned the dunk to neutralize
the effectiveness of Lew Alcindor, a rising sophomore at UCLA.
Undeterred, Alcindor perfected the sky hook and became the most
dominating college player of his era.
"Modifying the rules has a much different effect on teams
as opposed to individuals," Murray said. "A rule change
could hurt one player while making a teammate that much more effective,
thus balancing it out. But if you change the rules to make it
more difficult for Tiger, aren't you also making it more difficult
for every other golfer?"
As significant as Woods' victory was, 85-year-old Byron Nelson
doesn't consider it the biggest achievement in golf.
Nelson said that honor belongs to Bobby Jones, who captured
golf's first Grand Slam in the summer of 1930, when he won the
Open and Amateur championships of the United States and Britain.
"You can't fit it into Jones' Grand Slam," said Nelson,
one of the game's greatest iron players, who in 1944 won 11 straight
tournaments. "Jones was so idolized that in England when
he won, the gallery carried him on their shoulders. He came back
to New York and had one of the biggest ticker-tape parades in
history."
But Jones' Grand Slam wasn't confined to one event. And Nelson
said Woods' victory was bigger than Jones' in a different way
because of what it meant.
"There are so many kids, underprivileged kids, out here
beginning to play the game because of him," Nelson said.
"If Tiger continues the way he does, retaining that respect
that he has from all people, that is the plus side of what's happened
to him.
"The game of golf has been raised again, by him. I've
known Tiger since he was 15 years old. I've been amazed by his
growth. It's nothing short of a miracle - not his play, but the
way he can keep his focus when he's out playing with all the accolades.
The way the gallery treats him - so much exuberance.
"Certainly, no one would contradict the fact that he is
the greatest player, at 21 years of age, in the game of golf.
But where does he go from here? That is the question."
Using the aforementioned four variables, Anderson rates the
U.S. hockey team's Miracle on Ice victory in the 1980 Olympics
as the most compelling sports story ever. That's hard to dispute
considering the swell of pride that overtook a country drained
by Cold War tensions and the Iranian hostage crisis.
But Anderson thinks it's impossible to equate one sport's individual
treasures with another's. Why should we want to rate Woods' performance
as better than Beamon's or Chamberlain's? Why not just cherish
them for their own unique charm?
(c) 1997, Detroit Free Press.
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