Does “greatest athlete” equate to most athletic individual, or does this term refer to the performer who is furthest ahead of his/her peers in their endeavor of choice? If we go with the former definition, then we probably need to differentiate between games and sports. One does not need to be particularly athletic to excel at a game. This leads us to the question, is golf a sport or a game? I must admit that I know very little about golf. I can’t tell a bogey from a Bacall. I couldn’t tell you the difference between being under par and meeting Jack Parr. What I do know is that someone need not be especially strong, fast, quick, or agile to play it. They don’t need to own a tremendous vertical leap, possess an especially impressive set of fast twitch muscles, or have exceptional hand-eye coordination. There are certainly honed skills involved in the playing of golf, but not particularly athletic ones, or else the Sunday morning golfers encountered at your local course would be in considerably better shape. As I see it, golf is more comparable to billiards or bowling or darts than it is to basketball, baseball, football, boxing, or tennis. Someone can run a pool table, average over 200 on the bowling lane, or hit the bullseye on a regular basis without being a gifted athlete. So too is it possible for a flabby, middle-aged man be a better than average golfer. By this reasoning, the greatest golfer in the world (and there is no disputing that this would be Tiger Woods) is not necessarily all that athletic. I have no idea what Tiger clocks in a fifty-yard dash, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t anything special.
To answer the question posed at the beginning of this article, I have decided to take into account every event that is routinely covered during the sports portion of a newscast. If it’s featured on ESPN, Fox Sports and the like, then I will consider it worthy of the title of sport. This definitely puts golfers in the running. I suppose I must then also include jockeys and/or the horses they ride in on, even if I am quite reluctant to do so, for I do not believe that a jockey’s achievement of simply hanging on to be of sufficient merit, nor do I feel that non-humans deserve to be in such a contest. That said, I will proceed to run down the applicants who in my opinion are credible candidates.
