Last night I was at a friend's house for dinner and got into a lively debate over who the more dominant player was, Tiger Woods or Roger Federer.  I took the side of Tiger and a couple of adults at the table took the side of Roger.  I insisted that we defined the word "dominance" because that was the essence of the debate.  They took dominance to mean the most tournaments won out of tournaments entered.  Of course if you define it that way, Roger comes out the winner.  However, golf tournaments and tennis tournaments are structured so far differently that I argued you could never compare the two strictly by how many tournaments one wins versus enters.

Dominance is pretty easy to identify in team sports.  You look at the best player on the best team, see how many times he comes through in the clutch and how often he carries his team to a championship.  To put it more simply, who would you want on your team in the last 2 minutes of a game?  Who would you want with the ball at the crucial juncture of your season's defining moment?  Who would you want guarding the other player's best player in a crucial moment?  Who would you want on the mound?  etc.  However, sports like golf and tennis don't play out that way.  It'd be like saying Floyd Mayweather Jr. isn't the best boxer in the world because he couldn't beat Samuel Peter in a fight.  Well, Peter's a heavyweight, Mayweather a welterweight.  You can't compare the two and so I would argue as to golf and tennis.  You can't stand the two sports side by side and start arguing statistics.  The stats don't correlate.

In golf, a player has to contend with an entire field every round.  If Tiger is tied for the lead and shoots a 75, he's probably got about 10-15 golfers passing him.  It doesn't matter that the guy in 5th place had a poor round also because guys 2-4 and 6-10 all played well so Tiger falls out of contention.  In tennis, the players only play one person per round.  Roger Federer only has one opponent on any given day.  If Roger falters, he could still win because his opponent could falter as well.  I made the point this way, if North Carolina plays North Dakota State in basketball, North Carolina could play its worst game of the year and win by 20.  Following that line of reasoning, Roger Federer could play the 350th player in the world, have a terrible match by his standards, and still win in straight sets if the other guy doesn't play out of his mind.  That doesn't happen in golf.

Now, I know what you're thinking, golf has match play events; the Ryder Cup, President's Cup, etc. and Tiger doesn't always perform well in those.  True, but I guarantee you that Tiger would approach those matches differently if they were majors.  Tiger works on his swing and plays certain shots in different tournaments because he's gearing up for the majors.  He'll play a draw on a dogleg right at the Buick because he's trying out the shot for the 13th at a Augusta in a few weeks.  If the Masters was a match play event, is there any way Tiger loses?  When I wrote the column comparing Tiger Woods to Michael Jordan, many of you who spoke to me about it agreed.  What if I had written the same story comparing Roger Federer to Michael Jordan?  Would you have agreed then?

Coming back to the question of dominance, I know you may be shocked, but the dictionary does not define the word "dominance" as tournament or major victories.  It is defined as "rule; control; authority; ascendancy."  When I see those words, in this day and age, I think of one athlete, and he wears a red golf shirt on Sundays, not a beige sweater vest.  Sure, I was surprised that Federer lost yesterday.  It was the best tennis match of our generation and I would have thought Federer would have won in the end, especially with the momentum of coming back from two sets down.  However, I wouldn't have put any money on him in the fifth set to win.  Now, flip to golf.  Let's say Tiger surrendered a final round lead to Phil Mickelson, only to rally and tie on the final hole (basically, replace Rocco Mediate with the world's #2 player in the U.S. Open).  I'm not even going to pose the hypothetical because there is zero chance that Phil or any other golfer beats Tiger in a playoff.  There's a better chance of Phil crapping his pants than of his beating Tiger.  If Phil did somehow beat Tiger, the stories wouldn't be about Phil winning, but of Tiger losing.  Nadal beat Federer yesterday.  I've never seen anybody beat Tiger.  I've only seen Tiger lose when he's not at his best.  I wrote my column proclaiming Tiger the winner against Rocco and posted it as such while they were on the 17th hole of the playoff.  Is there any other athlete in the world I'd have the confidence in to do that?  Nope.  Kobe almost got there for a minute but it turns out that it was more hope on my part than reasonable conjecture. 

Now, I don't want you to think that I hold Roger Federer out to be something other than the best tennis player alive, because that's exactly what he is.  He's the best I've seen since Sampras.  However, Tiger's the best I've seen since . . . well, ever.  I've talked to people who were alive and well during Jack Nicklaus' reign and they all agree that Tiger is the best they've ever seen.  Going back again to dominance, there's only one player in my lifetime that I would have written endings for before they happened and that was Michael Jordan in his prime.  He never lost a big game.  Again, the problem with golf is that Tiger is not always in a 50/50 or win/lose position.  Golf requires so many things to go right for four days that it is impossible to compare it to tennis where, just by the odds, you have a 1 in 2 chance of winning every round. 

Take baseball for instance, was Ted Williams not dominant?  He only reached base roughly 40% of the time at his best and nobody has achieved that number since.  Does that mean Shaq is a more dominant free throw shooter than baseball players are hitters because he shoots better than 40% from the line?  Of course not.  Dominance can't be defined numerically and, as a result, the dictionary doesn't define it that way.  If you ask me, which I guess you have to because I'm the one writing, dominance is defined by how much an individual overwhelms his competition.  When Sergio Garcia won the Players Championship in a playoff, the biggest win of his career by far, the first thing he did was say thank you to Tiger for not playing.  He was serious.  Every golfer knows that he is competing for second place in a tournament if Tiger plays anything close to his "A-game."  They try so hard not to piss him off because they've seen what happens to players who get under his skin.  They get annihilated.  Do you know how many times Tiger has lost a major when he's had the lead or been tied headed into the final round?  Zero.  You bring Tiger head to head with anyone in a big spot and he doesn't lose.  Never has.  To conclude, if you had to bet everything you had on one player going up against anyone else in the world at his sport, who would you choose?  I would choose Tiger and not feel the least bit worried.

Best weekend:  Rafael Nadal.  Clay, done.  Grass, done.  Hardcourt . . .

Worst weekend:  Tyson Gay.  Fails to qualify for the 200m and injures himself in the process.  It's ok, the Olympics come around pretty often and nobody pays attention anyway.

Thank you to all of you who are reading, I just looked and we passed 1,000 hits on this site on Friday.  Thanks for the support.  I'm having a lot of fun writing this.  -Eric