Clearly, He Stands Alone

We're about at the point with Tiger Woods when it's pointless to limit the conversation about his competitive brilliance to the game of golf. With only Jack Nicklaus in that discussion we have to search for a larger context to put Woods's still ascending career into proper perspective. Winning the Match Play Championship over the weekend was another emphatic reminder that we're about at the point where Tiger's peers aren't Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els as much as they are Michael Jordan, Joe Louis and Babe Ruth.

In his last nine worldwide events, Tiger Woods has won eight times. The one tournament he didn't win, the Deutsche Bank, he tied for second. The Match Play had the strongest possible field, the top 64 players in the world rankings. Yet, his overwhelmed opponent in the final match, Stewart Cink, told reporters afterward: "I spent this whole week demoralizing my opponents because I was playing really well and they just didn't have a chance. And [Sunday] I was the one who was demoralized because I didn't have a chance."

Woods, certainly not given to the egomaniacal self-congratulation of so many of this generation's team sports athletes, nonetheless said of this latest run of success, "I think this certainly is the best stretch I've ever played."

It's a staggering thing to hear from a man who already has won 13 major championships, yet just turned 32 years old. He is just now entering the physical prime of a career that could easily last another 10 years. Mickelson, the game's second-best player, didn't win his first major until he was 33. The only numbers left to chase in the world of golf are Nicklaus's total of 18 professional majors and Sam Snead's all-time mark of 82 tournament victories, both of which Woods could overtake in three years. The Nicklaus mark could fall sooner than that if Woods does what has previously been unthinkable and wins the Grand Slam -- say, this spring and summer.

In the meantime, while we watch and savor, it would be a waste of time to confine the comparisons to golf. Tiger has not only raised expectations to the point where it's surprising when he doesn't win, but also to the point where it's fair to wonder just how high he can go.

Can he have a summer that forces legitimate comparisons to Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941? Edwin Moses won so many hurdles finals, 122 in a row over 10 years, it led some hurdlers to simply quit. The Russian wrestler Alexander Karelin went undefeated from 1987 to 2000, taking three Olympic gold medals and nine world championships in the process. In a 10-year stretch, Karelin didn't give up a single point. Opponents would let themselves be pinned for fear Karelin might literally break their necks.

Okay, nothing in golf inspires that kind of physical fear, but the most appropriate comparisons might be in wrestling and boxing.

Excuse me, but Roger Federer's recent stretch of dominance, impressive by any historical standard for tennis, doesn't come close to Tiger's. Winning a tennis tournament requires beating six opponents, not the field. Tiger doesn't ever have the luxury of having another opponent take out, say, Mickelson and Sergio Garcia. It's up to Tiger alone. And while Jimmie Johnson's back-to-back NASCAR championships are no doubt impressive, there's no drafting in golf as there is in stock car racing, no teamwork that could result in the kind of "Push From Heaven" that determined the outcome of the Daytona 500.

Golf, as different as it is from boxing, is entirely self-reliant. Michael Jordan, great as he was, still had Scottie Pippen. Jordan hit plenty of game-winning shots but there were times he passed to teammates, notably John Paxson and Steve Kerr, to win games with final shots. Tiger doesn't get to toss the putter to an open teammate on the 18th green at Augusta National.

If anybody stands up to comparison with Tiger it's probably the greatest of the great prize fighters. Rocky Marciano, heavyweight champion from 1952 to '56, won every one of his 49 fights. Sugar Ray Robinson scored 91 consecutive victories from 1943 to 1951, including five over Jake La Motta, and 19 in one year, 1950. And most impressive to me is Joe Louis defending his heavyweight title 25 consecutive times over 12 years, from 1937 to 1949. He knocked out 23 opponents in 27 title fights, and did so at a time when the biggest and best athletes in the United States opted to fight, not play tight end or power forward.

Muhammad Ali's stretch of sheer genius in the ring was a lot shorter, from 1964 when he defeated Sonny Liston until 1967 when his boxing was suspended for his refusal to be drafted into the U.S. Army. Still, there is a bit of Ali in Tiger when he leaves the U.S. to play in Dubai or Japan because Ali, if anything, was a traveling champion, likely to pop up anywhere from Zaire to Manila to fight. While boxing is the most exacting, most brutal sport of them all and golf is almost never physically punishing, at least Ali didn't have to fight Joe Frazier and George Foreman at the same time. Golf is the game in which you have to beat every single competitor, at the same time, all by yourself. And it's not just the best in the United States playing the big tournaments, it's the best in the world.

It's the one thing that might just give Tiger an edge in such a discussion over any great baseball or basketball player. Tiger doesn't have Lou Gehrig cleaning up behind him as Babe Ruth did. There's no question but that Ruth was the most important athlete in America the first half of the 20th century (Jackie Robinson played in the major leagues only the last three years of the first half of the century) and Jordan was the most popular, most celebrated, most decorated athlete in the world the second half of the 20th century. He won at every level possible: one college championship, six professional championships, two Olympic gold medals.

But you can make the argument that Bill Russell, with his two NCAA championships, 11 NBA championship rings and one Olympic gold medal, was a greater basketball player than Jordan. You can make an argument for Magic Johnson, who reached the NBA Finals nine times, three more than Jordan. You can make the argument that Willie Mays was as great a player as Ruth, or perhaps that Henry Aaron stands shoulder to shoulder with the Babe.

But we're very quickly coming to the point, with Tiger Woods (63) having surpassed Arnold Palmer (62) on the list of all-time PGA Tour victories and pulling up on Ben Hogan (64), Nicklaus (73) and Snead (82), that Woods will have reached an objective number that trumps any and everybody who ever held a golf club. Passing Nicklaus and Snead would make Tiger No. 1 in his sport, which the others can't indisputably claim.

When somebody asked Woods on Sunday afternoon if it's possible he can keep winning every time he competes, he said: "That's my intent. That's why you play. If you don't believe you can win an event, don't show up."

It's not what Tiger's competitors want to hear, but it's exactly what could make watching Tiger between now and the end of August a once-in-a-lifetime experience.