This is part 3 in a series.

A very good friend of mine, Gerry Fey, senior graphic designer for the Erickson Tribune and I were talking in great length about whether Roger Federer and Tiger Woods were really the best there ever was in their respective sports.

Well, believe it or not, Gerry had an answer and backed it up with facts and stats. His take on the whole subject was fascinating, so I asked him to put it down to share with you all.

Here is his take. Enjoy:

Woods vs. Nicklaus

 Previously, we took a look at Pete Sampras and Roger Federer, trying to determine which tennis player performed best against the strongest competition. Based on our analysis, I think Sampras wins, hands down.

Now to a much more difficult analysis, Tiger Woods vs. Jack Nicklaus. First of all, Nicklaus’ career still outshines Woods’. However, the comparison should chart an equal amount of time, so we’re going to look at Nicklaus’ first 12 years of professional golf, which will equal Woods’ career thus far.

An initial look puts these players neck and neck. Nicklaus ended with 18 majors, but in his first 12 years, he had 12. Tiger, before the U.S. Open in two weeks (which he surely must be considered the favorite), sits at 14 major titles.

But the key is their competition. As we showed with Sampras and Federer, Sampras was winning against Hall of Famers, while Federer is beating Rafael Nadal and that’s about it.

Looking at Tiger’s career so far, from 1997 to 2009, 25 players besides him have won majors, 7 with multiple wins. In the same time frame for Jack, there were 26 other players who won majors, with 6 multiple winners. To me this shows that both eras have a pretty good depth of talent.

Here are the multiple winners in Woods’ era:

Angel Cabrera (2), Padraig Harrington (3), Phil Mickelson (3), Ratief Goosen (2), Vijay Singh (3), Ernie Els (2) and Mark O’Meara (2).

 Here’s Nicklaus’ comparable list:

Arnold Palmer (3)*, Gary Player (6)*, Julius Boros(2)*, Billy Casper (2)*, Lee Trevino (5)* and Tony Jacklin (2)*.

* members of World Golf Hall of Fame

Obviously, from a Hall of Fame standpoint, Jack’s list dominates. However, in my opinion, the World Golf Hall of Fame is a little loose with its inductees and, given time, I would say Harrington, Mickelson, Singh and Els will all end up in the Hall of Fame. Therefore, I’d give a slight nod to Nicklaus, but not by much.

Coming soon:

Part 4- Who did they play?

This is part 2 in a series.

A very good frind of mine, the senior Graphic Designer for the Erickson Tribune, Gerry Fey and I were talking in great length about the weekend’s sporting events and we got into the discussion of whether Roger Federer and Tiger Woods were really the best there ever was in their respective sports.

Well, believe it or not, Gerry had an answer, and backed it up with facts and stats. His take on the whole subject was fascinating, so I asked him to put it down to share with the you all.

Here is his take. Enjoy:

In the list of repeated players, guys who crossed over Sampras and Federer’s careers, here’s how the two faired, record-wise:

Lets’ look at who Federer has beaten to win his grand slams compared to Sampras:

FEDERER

I don’t know about you, but take out Nadal, and you’re looking at a pretty sorry list of competition: Agassi at the end of his career in 2005, Roddick (who many consider to be overrated) and Lleyton Hewitt are about it.

SAMPRAS

If your counting, that’s four Hall of Famers (Rafter, Chang, Becker and Courier) and one future Hall of Famer (Agassi).

I’m going with Sampras over Federer for now. It’s one thing to be great, it’s quite another to dominate the competition when the competition is at its best. And that’s what Sampras did.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering what happened when the two faced each other, it happened only once. Here is a link to it on Youtube. It happened in the 2001 Wimbledon round of 16, a 221-minute thriller that ended with Federer winning 7-6(7), 5-7, 6-4, 6-7(2), 7-5. Knowing what we know now about Federer, wouldn’t you love to go back in time and watch that match again?

If you have any feelings on the subject of who’s the best tennis player, or the comparison between Federer and Sampras, please drop us a note!

Coming soon: Tiger Vs. Jack.

A very good frind of mine, the senior Graphic Designer for the Erickson Tribune, Gerry Fey and I were talking in great length about the weekend’s sporting events and we got into the discussion of whether Roger Federer and Tiger Woods were really the best there ever was in their respective sports.

Well, believe it or not, Gerry had an answer, and backed it up with facts and stats. His take on the whole subject was fascinating, so I asked him to put it down to share with the you all.

Here is his take. Enjoy:

With the golf and tennis worlds getting back to normal this weekend, this seems like an appropriate time to put the accomplishments of Tiger Woods and Roger Federer into the proper light.

I would argue that Woods, right now, is the best golfer ever to play the game, while Federer still has A LOT of work to do for anyone to make the claim that Federer is best.

If you missed the action, Tiger Woods won the Memorial Tournament Sunday, putting him in prime position to make yet another run at the U.S. Open, a major tournament he’s won three times before. By the way, Tiger came back from 4 strokes down to win after shooting a 74 earlier in the tournament, his worst competitive score in two years.

Tiger- The best of the best?

Meanwhile, Roger Federer captured his career sweep of the four grand slam tournaments, finally winning the French Open, his only struggle in an otherwise spectacular resume. He becomes only the sixth player to accomplish the feat.

If you’re counting, that’s 14 grand slam tournaments for Federer and 14 major titles for Woods.

Now, comparing the two is practically impossible, given the different sports they play. However, what I think is possible to do is compare the athletes to their predecessors. Federer ties Pete Sampras for most grand slam wins, while Tiger sits four back from Jack Nicklaus’ unbelievable record of 18 majors.

This snapshot would give the impression that Federer, who still has plenty of tennis left to play, will finish his career head and shoulders above Sampras, while Woods has more work to match Nicklaus.

But let’s look at Federer and Woods’ competition compared to Sampras and Nicklaus.

Looking at the World Tennis Rankings right now, Federer is ranked second behind Rafael Nadal. But that’s not the most interesting stat. Right now, in the top 10, not counting Nadal and Federer, only two players have won a grand slam, Novak Djokovic and Andy Roddick — one each.

Here’s tennis’ current top 10, with their grand slam wins:

Rafael Nadal (6)
Roger Federer (14)
Andy Murray
Novak Djokovic (1)
Juan Martin del Potro
Andy Roddick (1)
Gilles Simon
Fernando Verdasco
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
Fernando Gonzalez
 
In contrast, here are the tennis rankings on June 7, 1999, which was the 11th pro season for Sampras, equal to Federer’s current career:

Yevgeny Kafelnikov (2)
Patrick Rafter (2)
Pete Sampras (12)
Andre Agassi (5)
Richard Krajicek (1)
Tim Henman
Gustavo Kuerten (1)
Alex Corretja
Marcelo Rios
Mark Philippoussis
 
Sampras’ competition, by this chart, was much tougher. Basically, these days it’s Nadal or Federer and that’s it. Also, take into account that Federer’s first season as a professional was 1998. He did not win a grand slam until Wimbeldon 2003. Now let’s look at those who have won grand slams NOT named Nadal or Federer since 1998:

Djokovic, Roddick, Marat Safin, Gaston Giaudio, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Andre Agassi**, Sampras, Lleyton Hewitt, Albert Costa, Thomas Johannson, Goran Ivonisevic, Gustavo Kuerten, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Patrick Rafter*, Petr Korda, Carlos Moya.

These are the players NOT named Sampras who won grand slams from 1988-1999, the first 11 years of Sampras’ career:

Kafelnikov, Rafter*, Agassi**, Richard Krajicek, Kuerten, Moya, Korda, Boris Becker*, Thomas Muster, Sergi Bruguera, Jim Courier*, Stefan Edberg*, Michael Stich, Andres Gomez, Ivan Lendel*, Michael Chang*, Mats Wilander*.

Bold denotes repeats. *-denotes Hall of Famer. **-denotes probable Hall of Famer

You be the judge on which list is more impressive. Eight Hall of Famers won grand slams in Sampras’ first 11 years of tennis. Sure, some of Federer’s competition could put together Hall of Fame careers, but I don’t think so.

Part 2 coming soon-

“Digging Deeper: Who did they beat?”

The May tradition, the 134th running of the Preakness Stakes is already upon us. But the second jewel in the Triple Crown is a bit different than any other major sporting event.

The truth is, unfortunately, horseracing is a dying sport. There aren’t too many people who follow horseracing like the NFL or NCAA basketball. Horseracing’s true blue fans and afficionados love it, bet on it, and follow it. But the average sports fan (like myself) really just check it out twice a year — once for the Kentucky Derby and once for the Preakness Stakes to see if the Derby winner can make a go for the Triple Crown. Then, on the rare occasion that the horse wins there, maybe we’ll try to catch the Belmont. 

There’s not too much chatter at the Water Cooler or even on the national radio and TV networks about it, aside from the decision of the host, Pimlico Race Track,  to disallow outside beverages from being brought in and that’s a shame, especially given its history and traditiion.

The trditionally rowdy Preakness crowd may be a bit more subdued this year since Pimlico Racetrack banned adult beverages from being brought to the infield.

So here a few other things you need to know if you tune into NBC this Saturday, May 16th at 4:30 p.m for the big race:

-Despite winning the Derby (while being 50-1 odds) Mine That bird is far from the favorite in this years Preakness. The odds have the only filly entered in to the race,  Rachel Alexandra as the true favorite at 8-5 odds.

-From a historical perspective, the chances of Mine That Bird winning the Preakness is pretty good. But even if Bird does win. the chances of him winning the Triple Crown is slim.  There have been 41 Triple crown “misses.”  

-So how slim are the chances of Mine That Bird winning the Triple Crown? Check for yourself. There have been just 11 Triple Crown winners in history. That boils down to just 8% of the horses. There has not been a Triple Crown winner since Affirmed won in all in 1978. The first winner was Sir Barton in 1919.

Jockey Johnny Lofton sits atop the first Triple Crown winner, Sir Barton.

As much as I handed out the praise last week for Tiger Woods, heading into the Masters, I have to be even handed about it and make a comment today about his poor performance.

I’m not talking about his performance on the course, which was average (at least for Tiger), but what happened after he was done playing-  His post match comments were embarrassing and came off like a petulent child who didn’t get his way.

High expectations or not, Tiger came off as a ”bad loser” when he said he still almost won with a “Band Aid swing.” 

Whether you are an ultra-competitive person or not, you don’t complain about losing or having an off day, simply congratulate the winner, learn from the day and move on. I understand exlaining what happened out on the course, but saying that you played poorly and still almst won, is disrespectful to the winner, Angel Cabrera and more embarrassing than Tiger’s performance from the fairways.