Roger Federer
or
Tiger Woods.
I would give the heads up to Federer, due to his sheer dominance of the sport starting in 2004.
What do you guys think?
As a non-sports type person I would say Woods. Mostly because I’ve never heard of Roger Federer.
Really? You’ve never heard of Federer. Even if you don’t like sports, go to youtube.com and watch some highlights.
Federer is really really good. But I think Woods dominates his field more consistantly in a sport where it’s hard to dominate. I mean, how many other really good tennis players are there right now compared to how many really good golfers?
Well, Federer has won 8 out of 12 grandslams, only losing, something like 19 matches since the olympics of 2004.
He has only lost 5 times this season, and only to two players, 4 times against the world #2 Nadal (even though Federer beat him twice, in there last 2 encounters) and only once to Andy Murray.
Mickelson is good. Garcia is good. Vjay Is Good.
In tennis, the 40th player in the world, can on a good day, beat anyone…
At this very moment, probably Federer. If you want to compare Federer today to Woods of 2000, then probably Woods. However, Woods has won the last two majors so perhaps he is peaking again.
In any given tournament, Federer faces 1 opponent at a time. The first 2 or 3 opponents are often lower ranked and he doesn’t need to play his best to win. He can have a somewhat off day and still win the entire tournament.
Woods, on the other hand, is battling 10 other top players every single day. 1 off day during a tournament and he is likely not going to win the tournament. This is particularly true in the majors.
Gretzky owns 'em both.
Solo game vs. team game. Too hard to fairly compair. Good benchmark, though.
Federer for heads-up dominance of his sport in his time, but Woods has transformed the entire game of golf.
You mean in golf?
Do you mean more dominant in their sport or dominating the sports world as a hugely popular figure.
If the first I would agree that Federer had dominated Tennis more than Woods has dominated golf lately.
If the second, Woods is the best known sports figure in the US & Canada. He is the highest earning player in the world including endorsements.
For the record I am neither a Tennis nor Golf fan.
I think Jordan has a huge edge over the Great Gretzky in living team sports figures. I would put Ruth way ahead of Gretzky in addition.
Jim
More to the point, I think the luck of the bounce (and all that entails) figures into
golf more than tennis. In golf if you have a few putts which hit spike marks and just
miss the hole, you probably played yourself out of contention. While the luck factor
undoubtedly figures into tennis, there you have 2 athletes in a controlled environment
playing each other exclusively. In golf you can have a dozen people in contention
going into the last round, all playing in a semi-controlled environment, and one could
be a journeyman who just has a hot putter at the right time.
So that said I am more impressed with Tiger. We haven’t seen his like since Jack
really. We’ve seen Federer’s recent equal in Pete Sampras. [Small sample size
warning I’ll admit]
If you mean fame, then yeah (I guess… :shrug: ) in terms of sheer dominance of
their respective sports Wayne is most certainly the equal of the other two, tho
Jordan was better in his 30’s than Gretz was. In terms of championships, statistical
domination, leadership, or what have you I don’t see where Michael has any edge
at all. For the extra rings Jordan has we can probably put the blame on Peter
Pocklington
I’m going to start by agreeing with you, and then disagree with you a little. 
If you compare Sampras and Federer at age 25, they are roughly equal in the most important measures. Federer has won 9 Grand Slam titles and 45 titles overall, and finished three years at #1, Sampras had won 8 slams and 44 overall titles and been #1 four times up to that point in his career. If you look a little closer, I think you’d have to give Federer the edge and say he dominates more thoroughly than Sampras ever did - Sampras never won three Slams in a year, which Federer has done twice, and Federer reached the finals of the French Open this year (which Sampras never did), and thus came within inches of holding all four Slam titles. Federer’s best year to date, 2006, is certainly better than Sampras’ (1994): three Slam titles to two, 12 championships to 10, 92-5 vs. 85-16. In terms of what they do on the court, Federer makes even the top matches look easy in a way Sampras never did. Sampras had guts and loads of talent, but Federer makes it more obvious that he is kicking ass. It’s a judgment call to this point, but Federer at his best (if this is his best) has better results than Sampras did. The question then becomes “did they play against equal competition?”
John DiFool is right that Woods’ dominance might be more historic, but right now, Federer is more in control of his sport than Tiger is. Federer reached the finals of every major this year - I don’t know what the comparable achievement is in golf, but Tiger missed the cut at one major, so he didn’t do it - has reached the finals of six straight majors and the semifinals of ten in a row. Tiger won six tournaments in a row this year; Federer reached the finals of 16 of the 17 tournaments he played this year and won 12 of those. And he’s been at that same level, pretty much, for three years. Tiger has come in and out a few times - “the slump” only ended at the 2005 Masters, and he’s won four of the last eight majors.
I’d rank Ali up there with Gretzky. Woods is big but I think golf was too established for him to dominate it like those two did there’s. And I’m another person who never heard of Federer, which I think shows where he ranks.
In terms of who is the best at what they do, Federer stands alone in the world of sports. Numbers show that he is the most dominant tennis player ever, but his method is what makes it so unbelievable. He’s not a big hitter winning with an avalanche of aces; he wins with ball placement and court position. He can return anything with such precise placement as to boggle the mind.
That many casual fans haven’t heard of him doesn’t say anything about his virtuoso ability; Anna Kournikova wasn’t the greatest women’s player either. (She was very, very good, though, and much maligned without cause.) Federer is not a minority breaking new ground, nor is he elevating an insecure city in a popular team sport. And while he’s (by all accounts of his peers) a genuine, nice and affable guy, he is the opposite of charismatic.
The best description of Federer playing tennis is the one Joe Mantegna used in Searching For Bobby Fischer:
“He’s better at this … than I’ve ever been at anything in my life… He’s better at this … than you’ll ever be, at anything.”
As far as Tiger goes, he’s phenomenal. But in the past several years there have been schmoes nobody’s ever heard of winning major tournaments. That simply doesn’t happen in tennis; either Federer wins it all, or a big name beats him out in the finals. Federer isn’t missing any cuts, which would be the equivalent of losing a match in the first week of a slam. In fairness, Tiger is five or so years older than Federer, so it remains to be seen if Roger can maintain the pace whereas Tiger dropped off a bit.
Also, I disagree that it’s harder to win at golf for many reasons. First is that there is no human applying active defense to your shots. Second is that Tiger can – and does – have a bad round and then come back strong in later rounds to win it. Tennis is a single elimination format; after a bad round you go home, not to the clubhouse to get your mind right. I would point out that Tiger is only average at match play. That is, when he plays straight up against an opponent he doesn’t perform any better than anyone else. Federer excels at that exact type of competition.
Tennis, as a sport, is very open about the mental component to the game. You can hear bigtime players talking openly about how they’ve choked. Andy Roddick had an entire ad campaign about trying to get his mojo back, fer chrissakes. The closest Federer comes to choking is only winning a set in the finals of a grand slam on his worst surface. In the words of Ivan Drago: “he is like a piece of iron.” As a sports fan, I’m all about admiration of “the best”, and Roger Federer is the most perfect personification of “the best” I’ve ever seen in my life.
If I were to make a Mount Rushmore of sports, I would put up Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Roger Federer. Of those four, Ruth and Federer would be the least arguable. Right now it is admittedly premature to put Federer up there, since he’s only 25 years old and has a lot of career still ahead of him. But by the time he hits 30 I have no doubt that he will have earned the spot.
…said the huge Federer fan.
I bet you hate Rafael Nadal, don’t you?
My point was that it is easier for a great player to dominate tennis than it is for a
great player to dominate golf (because of the luck factor). Yes the statistics you
quote are all true, but it doesn’t adjust for luck at all. I do think that in many cases
Tiger’s challengers seem to “wilt” toward the ends of tournaments, for whatever
reason (aforementioned bad luck, intimidation, etc.).
Consider a tennis serve to a golf drive. Yes there’s luck involved in where exactly
the serve lands, but that’s nothing compared to the golf drive. In tennis you are
trying to hit a fairly small patch of court 60 feet away, but very few outside
influences might cause the stroke to go awry-for the most part it’s your skill
deciding if it is in or out (and if it is out you get a second chance!).
The golf drive tho-you are trying to hit a 20 yard square patch of fairway (I am
assuming the golfer is trying to not just hit the fairway but is aiming for a certain
part of the fairway to give him a good angle for his 2nd shot). But a gust of wind
could catch it. It could hit a knob in the fairway and skip into the rough. It could
end up in a divot. A golfer hits 270-280 strokes per weekend, any of which could
be subject to outside influences which he has no control over. A tennis player
hits THOUSANDS of strokes per tournament. One bad bounce then in golf is much
more (potentially) damaging than it would be in tennis. You hit a crappy serve?
Do over. You hit a crappy drive into the lake? Effective 1-2 stroke penalty, which
could mean the difference between 1st and 3rd.
If you could minimize or eliminate the bad breaks in golf (not suggesting that at
all as it is part of the charm of the game) I’m sure Tiger would rule over his sport
to a much greater extent than he already does. No I don’t want golf to be played
in antiseptic indoor arenas full of artificial turf-but if it was I’d put my money on
Tiger every single time.
Ultimately I don’t think you can compare the 2 sports directly, for this (and other
reasons). Historically the two men are both doing what has been done very
rarely, which is enough in my eyes to pretty much make them equal. In the end
Tiger will have more majors, but that is because golfers have a much longer
competitive period (in terms of age) than tennis stars do.
People who know nothing about any sport whatsoever know about Tiger Woods. I wouldn’t know sports if they bit me inthe ass, but I know Tiger Woods. If you say “tennis” I think Arthur Ashe or John Mcinroe.
Woods is to sports what Bobby fisher is to chess.
Precisely. That it is Roger, or some other big name winning each week, while in
golf we can have “no-names” winning is exactly because talent trumps luck to a
much greater extent in tennis than it does in golf. Thanks for making my point for
me. 
Nobody since Byron Nelson, against a war depleted field in 1945, has won over
half the tournaments he’s played in golf in a given year (I think Tiger came close).
In tennis it is not unusual for the dominant player of the era to win 60-80% of the
tournaments he plays in (/year).
Again read above. An upset in a golf match play tournament is much more likely
than it is in tennis, for reasons already stated. And the times a player overcomes
a truly horrid round to come back and win are rare; you spot the field an 8 stroke
edge after two rounds and, while you are still playing, your chances of winning
are virtually zilch.
I don’t fault you for watching more golf than tennis, but Federer’s opponents generally pull the same disappearing act. The players talk about him like he is way above their level. After the semifinals of Wimbledon, his opponent said the following: I felt like I played a guy who was near as perfection as you can play the game. He just made it look so easy. I had the best seat in the house in a way." I remember a match against James Blake where Blake, by the end, was audibly saying “too good” and clapping at Federer’s best shots. This goes beyond politeness; these people simply don’t think they can beat him.
You’re only talking about the big-name tournaments, though. There are always multiple events going on.
Not true. Federer has done that for the last three years, but Sampras, for example, never won 50 percent of his tournaments in a year. Lendl did it, I think, twice. Today’s players often don’t play quite as many tournaments anyway.