Tiger Slam vs Rafa Slam

[nevets88]

I know I'm getting ahead of myself. If Nadal wins the AO, he'll hold all 4 major titles.

Which do you think is harder? I'm biased, but I think Woods' achievement was more difficult.

[whatwhatwhat]

Golf is alot harder, there are only 3 real major contenters in tennis, and in a tennis tournament you play each player one by one, kind of like matchplay in golf.

[pittpanther]

Golf is alot harder, there are only 3 real major contenters in tennis, and

So doesn't that make the tennis tourney MORE difficult? In tennis your results do not carry over into the next round like they do in golf. So in golf if I shot a 65 on Thursday and par the other 3 days, I have a pretty good chance of winning many tournaments. But in tennis, one great day won't help you in that next match...

[whatwhatwhat]

So doesn't that make the tennis tourney MORE difficult? In tennis your results do not carry over into the next round like they do in golf. So in golf if I shot a 65 on Thursday and par the other 3 days, I have a pretty good chance of winning many tournaments. But in tennis, one great day won't help you in that next match...

Yeah but apart from the top 3, they walk past the rest of them with ease

[Tiger Spuds]

I think swinging a tennis racket is a more natural movement than swinging a golf club. A golf swing has so many moving parts etc, it's harder to get right. Golf is made up of 2 different games that you need to master, if you think about it, long and short game. Add to that, Golf is played on a different course every week, in all kinds of conditions. The grass on the greens can be a different type week in, week out. There can be differing lenghts of rough etc. A Tennis court is the same every time apart from the different surfaces. I'm not trying to knock the sport, and Rafa is a great athlete, but Golf is obviously the harder/more skillful game. Tiger's achievement is more impressive.

[mcfc_nick]

Tiger's. there's way over 100 players in a major and any of them has the chance to win legitimately (see tom watson last year), whereas you dont get a rank outsider winning the tennis grand slams

[Chilli Dipper]

This might be a golf forum, but if I'm grading the value of tennis' grand slam to golf's grand slam, tennis wins, and it's not that close.

[jamo]

The golf grand slam is much harder. Tennis is by far and away much more of a star-based sport, compared to golf where the best 5 players in the world only win one or two majors a year combined. In tennis, a top 5 player wins nearly every time. In fact, since the start of 2004 only 3 majors (grand slams events, whatever) have been won by players outside the top 3 seeds. If it weren't for Rafa Nadal owning the clay court at the French Open, Federer would have numerous slams by now.

[allin]

I vote golf, there is less variation in tennis courts than golf courses. Clay, Grass, 2 hard court tournaments. Compared to the differences in greens and conditions among golf courses this is minor. The pure physical toll of being healthy enough and fit enough to win all 4 tennis tournaments is the biggest argument in Tennis favor. If someone was to compare the percentage of majors won over a twenty year period by one of the top ten ranked players is there much difference, how about the top 5? I believe there would be a much higher percentage of golf majors won by players outside the top 5 or 10. Still multiple majors held at a single time is a rare and impressive acheivement in either sport.

[iacas]

We've had this discussion before: http://thesandtrap.com/forum/threads...sive-14-Majors .

[Arthur]

I don't follow tennis. I think a good benchmark would be how many people have won grand slams in each sport. Two for golf. Any for tennis?

[jamo]

I don't follow tennis. I think a good benchmark would be how many people have won grand slams in each sport. Two for golf. Any for tennis?

Rod Laver did an actual grand slam twice. No one has done it in "Tiger Slam" fashion where it has spanned two seperate years. I'm guessing by the two for golf you are counting Tiger and Bobby Jones?

[Chilli Dipper]

I don't follow tennis. I think a good benchmark would be how many people have won grand slams in each sport. Two for golf. Any for tennis?

Rod Laver is one of only two men (the second being Don Budge in 1938) to win a calendar-year grand slam, and he did it twice: in 1962, when the four majors were restricted to amateurs, and in 1969, the first full year of the Open area. Laver, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer, and Rafael Nadal are the four men's players who have won the career grand slam in the Open era (since mid-1968): the latter three won titles on all three surfaces, while Laver never won a title on hard courts (since the U.S. Open was held on grass or clay courts until 1978, and the Australian Open on grass until 1988).

Since 1968, two golfers (Nicklaus and Woods) have won the career grand slam; Gary Player achieved the feat during the period as well, but his U.S. Open victory came in 1965.

[Mizuno Guy]

In tennis you have to beat what a total of 5 people and in golf you have to beat over 100 people. I would say golf is much harder.

[Paradox]

In tennis, your results don't need to carry over like golf does. All you have to do is beat the other person. You can force them into mistakes, you can make them play your game, you can capitolize on their mistakes. In golf, its just you and only you. You cannot dictate what another person does. You can't change the way they play the game, you can't make them do anything differently.

In physical respects..you're hitting a big ball with a gigantic raquet that provides you with way more than enough energy to hit the ball hard. You have a big space to hit the ball in to. In golf, both the ball and clubhead are small. You cannot visualize the impact because of this. You have to generate a lot of the power you have through swing speed and also have to be accurate across very long distances. Off by 1/4 of an inch with a golf club and your ball will be out of play. Off by 1/4 of an inch with a tennis raquet and you MAY lose a point but you have about as much possibility of the ball staying in play. Nevermind that weather has such an effect on golf ball flight...the direction, distance, spin, so on and so forth. You don't have that in tennis. In golf, you have to interact with the ground much more so than tennis. You have to read the ground just to score, you have to be able to play off a lot of different surfaces. In tennis, you can score by getting points from someone elses mistake.

In regards to scoring. You only get one opportunity each day to play every hole. There is no going back, no re-do's, and no chance to correct an error. In tennis, you may lose one game, but you still have many more in just the one set, and on top of that, you get up to 3 sets to try and win one.

All that said, both sports are very hard and pretty precise..but one beats out the other..and thats golf. Just too many variables in play.

[InTheFairway]

Both are difficult in their own respects. In tennis, you have such rivalries between players. A tennis tournament goes on for two weeks not just 4 days as in a golf tournament. But in tennis you are playing your opponent, that's the biggest difference, and usually the better player prevails.

In golf, you are battling the course and the conditions. Even if you play better than your pair, it doesn't mean you'll score better than him. Golf is a fickled game, so many things can go wrong, and you have to keep control of your emotions and nerves. I would say golf is much more difficult to repeat major championships than tennis because its bigger than beating your opponent, there's much more variables involved.

[wagon b0y]

Here's the same question asked on a tennis forum. Almost everyone picked FED and said golf isn't a sport. And said golf is like darts and chess.

They were saying something about only winning once or twice a year. I don't think they understand how hard it is to win a golf tournament. Some guys only win one or two their whole career

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?t=340707

[max power]

I played high school tennis and post college golf. We could argue ad infinitum about the relative merits of each activity as a "sport". Tennis clearly wins this argument, but it nothing to do with the question asked. As a competitive athletic activity it is relatively more difficult in golf to obtain any type of "slam". Just look at the numbers, and factor in the number of opponents that have to be vanquished over the course of a golf tournament.