Capelle On Golf

The New York Times’ Debate
On Sunday the New York Times conducted a brief video debate between staff writers Charles McGrath and Michael Sokolove over whether or not Tiger Woods is the greatest athlete of all time. Viewers were then asked to vote. Here are the results.

27% Woods is the greatest athletic performer ever.
73% Woods is not the greatest athletic performer ever.

Viewers were also asked to make a comment. I posted my opinion and became commenter #343. Here is a link to my comment if you wish to read it (and the others) at the Times and recommend it. If not, then it is posted below.

My Comment for the NY Times
The question of this debate is all wrong. Tiger Woods shouldn’t be up for consideration as the greatest athlete of all time because he’s not even the best athlete among the golfers. According to Sports Illustrated, Jack Nicklaus is the Best Individual Male Athlete of the 20th Century, ahead of performers such as Muhammad Ali, who Michael Sokolove feels is a better athlete than Woods.

Sokolove mentioned Babe Didrikson Zaharias, the number two pick on SI’s all century list of female athletes, citing her all-around athletic abilities. In this department Nicklaus wins again. While Woods stuck to golf as a kid, Nicklaus starred in baseball, track, and basketball. In the later, a sport for the so-called true athlete, he was honorable mention for All-Ohio, averaging better than 18 points a game his senior year while sinking nearly 90% of his free throws.

Every sport has its most athletic activity. In ice skating it’s the triple axel. In baseball it’s the home run. In golf, it’s the long tee ball. It takes an abundance of athletic talent to consistently swing a club in excess of 120 MPH. Despite Tiger’s advantage in equipment, which makes it so much easier to hit the ball straight, Nicklaus was a much better driver of the golf ball. He was much straighter, and just as long for his time. Why in 1980 at age forty he ranked tenth in distance and thirteenth in accuracy, a record setting combination that has never been equaled.

Yes, Tiger might become the greatest golfer some day, but that is far from a certainty. According to the popular majors won yardstick, he still trails Nicklaus 18 to 13. The reason he’s even this close is that he’s never had to face such killers as Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, and Tom Watson, who together deprived Nicklaus of 10 major titles. And when Nicklaus was not winning he was in contention far more often than Woods. By the not so popular (yet) but even more important career top fours measurement, he leads Woods by an insurmountable margin of 54 to 23.

Best golfer? It is still Nicklaus, and it will remain so until proven otherwise.
Best athlete? No contest, it’s Nicklaus.