The beautiful thing about lists, especially in sports, is that they are only designed to do one thing: spark arguments.
Take, for instance, ESPN’s new list of the top professional athletes of the 21st Century, a list released just this week. How can anyone legitimate compare the brilliance of swimming star Michael Phelps, the dominance of tennis legend Serena Williams and the artistry of soccer great Lionel Messi?
Which brings us to Tiger Woods. Of the four golfers on the EPSN list, Woods is naturally ranked highest. The 18-time major winner is ranked eighth, right behind gymnast Simone Biles and just head of track star Usain Bolt.
It’s important to remember that the list takes into consideration only accomplishments since 2000, so the entirety of Woods career isn’t being looked at by EPSN for this year. Only 13 of Woods majors have come since 2000, for instance. And certainly Woods’ career has tailed off since his last win at the 2019 Masters, with injuries, the car accident and age all catching up with the great star.
Among those higher than Woods are Phelps at No. 1, Williams at No. 2, Messi at No. 3, LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers fourth, football’s Tom Brady fifth, tennis star Roger Federer sixth and Biles at seventh.
Cream at the top
Those are formidable names, for sure, and trying to rank any of them higher or lower than the others is pretty tough. Toss in Bolt at ninth and Lakers star Kobe Bryant at 10th and you could throw a blanket over the top 10. Draw any of those 10 names out of a hat and you could make a convincing argument for that star to top the list.
Only …
It seems that Woods could easily have been higher on this list. Perhaps his career achievements in this century are no greater than Phelps with 23 Olympic gold medals for swimming or Williams’ 23 Grand Slam titles. But Woods might easily be higher ranked than James, for instance, or even Biles, who is a great Olympic star but not a star in the last Olympics. Many would rank James behind the other basketball player in the top 10, Bryant.
Messi being so high on the list may disturb American fans looking for football basketball and baseball stars (Albert Pujols is the top baseball player at 24). But soccer fans will argue Messi is so great and makes the sport look so easy and has won so many league and national titles that third seems low for him.
What Woods has done on the course is one thing, but Woods’ impact on his sport is another thing entirely. He literally energized a sport that was struggling to find a new star and a new reason for a different demographic to be interested in hitting the little white ball.
And so it goes. Perhaps rather than ranking the individual athletes, the list is really ranking the individual sports. The Summer Olympics means a lot around the world and having Americans winning gold is important. The NBA is more popular than golf, and Federer might be more popular in his sport than even Woods is in his sport. So Woods at eighth makes sense for the ESPN list, even if golf fans feel he should be at least top five if not top three.
The other golfers on the list may give a clue to how golf is viewed on the list. Phil Mickelson, second to Woods for years and years, is 68th, Annika Sorenstam is 89th and Rory McIlroy is 93rd, just ahead of soccer star Ronaldinho. Those are pretty low numbers for some of the greatest to ever play golf, and with just four golfers on the list but 15 soccer players and even six tennis players on the list, perhaps we can understand where this particular group of panelists were coming from. It’s an eclectic, global list.
So Woods will have to be content knowing that being in the top 10 of this list means he’s achieved much and had a massive impact on his sport and the sports world in general. As for the rest of the list, it’s just a way to start a few arguments.