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Frank Deford ponders if Roger Federer is more dominant at tennis than Tiger Woods is at golf?
BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Ours is a youth-centric culture, and nobody is supposed to care about history anymore. But curiously, it’s really quite amazing the attention that sports fans pay to legacy, to how their favorite has-beens rank for posterity. History is history, except for sports. And, with fans, the present is always playing the past. Mirror, mirror on the wall, Who’s the fairest of them all . . . all-time?
All this is underscored at this moment because we find an absolute glut of brilliance. Is it possible that right now we have, plying their genius before our admiring eyes, yea, verily, at their peaks, the greatest professional football team ever, the greatest quarterback ever, the greatest tennis player ever and the greatest golfer ever? Really, have ever so many supernovas been aligned in the athletic heavens at once?
Of course, part of the mania to designate superiority in sports is because sports is, after all, competitive.
But it is also true that it is an article of sporting faith that athletes are always getting better. In no other area do we believe this. The greatest writers and composers and painters are all long dead — they don’t make ‘em like they used to — but inasmuch as the cliché tells us that records are made to be broken, then it follows for many that the record-breakers are bound to be better than all the erstwhile record holders of the past, ergo, the greatest in sports must always be right before our eyes.
Only right now the empirical evidence suggests that maybe that sophistry really is so, that the New England Patriots are the best team ever put on God’s green grass, and Tom Brady is better even than Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana, and Roger Federer and Tiger Woods have surely come down from Mount Olympus to toy with the poor mortals who would dare take them on.
Because heroes in individual sports are not dragged down by imperfect teammates, it‘s easiest to rate the likes of Woods and Federer. Since the preponderance of opinion now is that they both are indeed better than anybody who’s ever picked up a club or a racket, since that’s settled, the new parlor game is to argue: is Federer more dominant at tennis than Woods is at golf?
It’s impossible to choose, though, because the challenges in the two sports are so different. Woods can have a bad day and survive, but he can’t stop some other golfer, otherwise a nonentity, like Zach Johnson, at the Masters last year, from getting hot and beating him without ever really playing him directly head-to-head.
Federer only has to play one man at a time, so he controls his own fate better, but also: unlike golf, there are no off-days he can recover from; one bad match and he’s eliminated. In the Australian Open the other day, in fact, Federer almost got taken down by tennis’ own version of a Zach Johnson. Down under, Federer’s seeking his eleventh straight Grand Slam final. That’s simply impossible. Even as I sit here and say these words, I think: he must get beat. Must. And Tiger can’t possibly beat all the world’s best golfers at all four majors. And surely it’s only the law of averages for Brady to have an absolutely rotten day in the Super Bowl. And the Patriots are ripe to be upset.
But: No, no, no and no. Sometimes, I guess, they don’t make ‘em like they used to because, in fact, they make ‘em even better.
Frank Deford’s column also appears Wednesdays on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. He can be reached at flamegarden@aol.com.
Comments from Examiner Readers
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Examiner Reader said:
Dude, come into the 21st century and leave your old white guy racist beliefs behind. Are you friggin' serious? Nah, you gotta be kidding. Some old fart like you? Geez!
4 agree | 3 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
your chauvanistic gilman background shows. what about hoff she is from baltimore too. you seem to dismiss the williams as unamerican---perhaps because they are women also
4 agree | 5 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
This is quite possibly the stupidest article I've read in a while. Frank, was press time five minutes away when you coined this piece?
11 agree | 10 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Great article; agree with it entirely. The Olympics have lost their prestige, and this year in Beijing, the IOC will recognize this reality when it sees the declining interest from worldwide audiences. And indeed, let's ask the athletes to skip the opening ceremonies and demand that President Bush boycott the games altogether; it's his job to speak diplomatically with action.
9 agree | 11 disagree
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Brian O'Rourke said:
Alas, poor Billick...we knew him well!
130 agree | 133 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
this so called legal system will destroy a thousand white men to destroy one black man. if they want him bad enough. and they do. racism is more clandestine and senister in this country than anywhere else in the world. we black men are considered a threat and always have been. but the table is taking a slow turn. but don't worry we'll show you some love. obviously something you know nothing about.
151 agree | 168 disagree
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avid reader said:
Angelos would not listen to anyone who made sense about making baseball interesting again in Baltimore.
191 agree | 168 disagree
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Michael said:
Football was named after the length of the ball, one foot. It has nothing to do with using your feet. And no one cares about soccer anyway. You could change its name to kickball. Oh, and basketball will be bounceball. And change tennis to racketball, racketball to wallball, and golf to metalstickball. Hey, volleyball. Theres one you can keep. Some people will search high and low to find something to complain about. Isn't there real sports news in D.C. that you can write about.
313 agree | 295 disagree
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Ron Redmerski said:
No way was this supposed to happen. Not like this, anyway. Four years ago when the ACC decided to expand, the prevailing thought on Tobacco Road was that the SEC had some competition. Finally. A 12 team super conference that included two Florida schools and, arguably, New England’s top athletic program. The talent-rich, fertile Newport Beach/Hampton recruiting areas were going to help the ACC yield top five football programs like Pez dispensers spit out candy. Well, if yesterday was any indication of how far the ACC has come, we won’t be eating Elvis Pez any time soon. Losing to an underrated East Carolina team is one thing (not to mention struggling with UAB, a program beaten by Michigan State 55-12 the week prior), but getting run over, completely throttled, by LSU and Oklahoma is quite another. The aforementioned powers made quick and decisive work of Virginia Tech and Miami (and that’s saying it nicely), respectively, the two programs that had John Swofford and the ACC bras
317 agree | 337 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Frank Deford's editorial on tall tales: Best athletes seem to rise Growth hormones does wonders ask my 16 year old son who is on them for medical reasons due to cancer treatment as a baby! If an adult or even a child is using them and they shouldn't be who knows what problems they may have down the road.
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Examiner Reader said:
Reminds me of the old line about horseracing as the sport of kings. But you never saw any kings @the $2 window.
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