Roger Federer and Tiger Woods are both transcendent champions who have come to define a generation of professional tennis and golf. Both are on pace, statistically and by other less rigid criteria, to become the greatest performers in their sports, ever. They are feared and revered, and they are routinely expected to perform in heroic fashion. As a rule, I generally avoid comparisons of apples to oranges, but, due to recent comparisons by Nike and others between the two stars, I felt compelled to defend the rightful and obvious winner of this contest: Tiger Woods.

In many ways, the two athletes stack up equally. Tennis' Grand Slams and golf's Majors are essentially the same-they are the sports' prime tournaments, and annually there are four of each. Federer, age 26, holds 11 Grand Slam titles before the conclusion of this week's U.S. Open, three shy of Pete Sampras' record of 14. Tiger, age 31, boasts 13 Majors, five away from Jack Nicklaus' record of 18. Federer has won 50 career tournaments, 59 shy of Jimmy Connors' record, and Tiger has won 59 career tournaments, 23 shy of Sam Snead's record. Federer broke Connors' record of 160 consecutive weeks ranked number one, and Tiger owns the records for lowest total score relative to par at three of golf's four Majors. He is tied for the record at the fourth Major. Tiger won the most tournaments for any player under age 25 (24), and he won the most tournaments for any player in his 20s (46). Tiger's scoring average of 68.17 in 2000 was the lowest ever for a single year.

But the two are not the same. First, for all Federer's dominance, there exists an entire segment of professional tennis in which another player has proven unquestionably superior: Rafael Nadal on clay courts. Nadal has won the last three French Opens. The French is played on a clay surface. Just as tennis shifts surfaces-from hard courts to clay and grass-golf shifts venues radically, from tight, tree-lined parklands courses in the U.S. to windswept, wide-open links tracks built on sand dunes. Tiger wins consistently, no matter the venue. Moreover, Tiger's greatness is remarkably versatile. In a tight moment requiring clutch performance, he can blast a drive down the middle of a fairway or hit a 15-foot putt. If my life depended on the success of a drive, approach shot, pitch, chip, putt, or recovery from trouble, I would want Tiger to take the shot in every category-not because of his statistics but because of his record under pressure.

Most important, each of Tiger's wins should carry more weight than Federer's. For Federer to win a tournament he need only beat the seven players whom the draw mandates he oppose. For Tiger to win a tournament, he must outperform 150 players over a four-day period. In this sense, it is 20 times more impressive for Tiger to win a tournament than for Federer to do the same. This is not to say that Federer wouldn't beat 150 players in a single tournament if his sport gave him the opportunity. Considering the differing difficulty levels inherent in golf's and tennis' tournament systems, Federer would have to win many more tournaments than Tiger for the two to be considered even relative equals.

Stein's Rebuttal

Although I could offer dozens of reasons why tennis is a more difficult game than golf, the Federer-Woods debate does not come down to the difficulty of the sport each man plays or the level of athleticism each man displays. Simply put, no athlete dominates his or her respective sport more so than Roger Federer dominates the game of tennis. The great Tiger Woods said, "What [Federer] has done in tennis I think, is far greater than what I've done in golf," after the Associated Press named Federer the 2006 Athlete of The Year. If the words of Federer's greatest "rival" himself aren't proof enough of Federer's superior athletic prowess, let the numbers speak for themselves. Since winning his first Grand Slam title, the 2003 Wimbledon Championships, Roger Federer has gone on to win a total of 11 Grand Slam titles. In that same four-year period, Woods has won a mere five. Since 2004, Federer has not lost before the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam, even on the clay courts of Roland Garros. Let me remind golf fans of the 2006 US Open, where Woods failed to make the cut. For 187 weeks straight, Federer has held the number one ranking in the world and won more than 90 percent of the matches he has played. In 2006, Federer played in 17 tournaments, made the finals of all but one, and while winning 92 matches, lost only five. Most remarkably, since Federer has become the number one player in the world, only two people have beaten him more than once: Nadal and Canas. And one can hardly call clay Federer's weakness, when Federer came within one win of the French Open title this year.

While Woods can make up for a bad round of golf in the next day of a Major, a bad day eliminates Federer from the championship race. Nevertheless, Federer has not faltered on the biggest stage, having made nine Grand Slam finals in a row. At the age of 26, Federer has many more years of greatness ahead of him and many more opportunities to win the elusive French Open title. It is only a matter of time before Federer surpasses Pete Sampras as the all-time Grand Slam leader. Federer's greatest competitors will likely prove to be himself and the history books. Most impressively, on his way to becoming one of the greatest athletes of all time, nothing has gone to Federer's head. In his own words: "It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice."