No contest for the number one spot. Tiger Woods's win at the US Open was not just the golfing highlight of 2008, it may well have been the greatest single sporting achievement of all time. Tiger Woods beat the best in the world with two fractures to his tibia and a knee full of frayed elastic bands. You could sometimes hear the snap, crackle and pop when he was swinging. Woods double bogeyed the first hole almost every day and still came back
By Mark Reason
He needed a 9-footer to get into a play-off and made it. He had to hold off a charging Rocco, the people's favourite, and still came through. He had to commit to every swing without flinching at the pain that he knew was coming. How can you shut down your subconscious like that? The man is scary. I believe this was not only the greatest single sporting achievement of all time, but it also crowned Woods as the greatest sportsman of all time. It's a claim that seems to make a lot of Ali fans very angry, but for my money the title fight should be contested between Woods and Don Bradman.
OK, so it's sentimental, but the sight of Greg Norman walking up the 18th fairway in the lead of the Open Championship brought a tear to everyone's eye. The grandstand gave a standing ovation in the late evening sunlight as Nick Faldo looked on at his old adversary with genuine affection. Shame it was only Saturday. We tried to kind ourselves the Great White Shark could hang on. We tried to believe that a 53-year-old man could find his youth and lost nerve by drinking the elixir of love. Chris Evert looked on and smiled, but surely not even she believed it was possible. It wasn't.
Padraig Harrington's second shot on the 71st hole of the Open Championship was a blow from the gods. Harrington had a comfortable lead and 249 yards left to the pin when he extracted his 5-wood. Eyebrows went up and jaws dropped at the club selection. Why not play safe? What if he finished against the face of a bunker or swept his ball into the hairy stuff. Such cautious souls tend not to end up winners. It was the sort of choice that Harrington himself might have made 6 or 7 years ago. But in 2008 the defending champion – how sweet that sounds – committed to his shot and watched as his ball bounced and rolled to 3 feet from the hole, setting up an eagle and a four shot victory.
The duel between Padraig Harrington and Sergio Garcia at the PGA Championship might well have won in other years. Harrington went through the back of a green and recovered brilliantly. Garcia knocked it into the water, but got up and down for his bogey. Both men hit scintillating tee shots to the fiendish par-3 17th hole. But when Harrington holed first, you sensed the thrust might be too much for Sergio and so it proved. Even then there was a bit of drama left. Harrington made a horlicks of the final hole and needed a 20-footer to be sure of victory. It never looked like missing.
The Saturday afternoon of the Ryder Cup contained some of the finest match play golf that this grand old shooting match has ever contained. The jagged orange flash on the scoreboard warned of lightning in the air. By the time Ian Poulter and Graeme McDowell reached the final green, sedate ol' Kentucky was going crazy, pullin' for home boy Kenny Perry and his partner Jim Furyk. Poulter was loving it. When he rammed home his four-footer for the match, he turned round with fist clenched and madness in the eyes and yelled: "Come on" like Peter Ebdon on steroids.
The first tee of the Ryder Cup is one of sport's magical arenas. Most big sport doesn't take place at this time in the morning. There is something almost eerie about the cool dewy air. The rookies look as if they have just thrown up and even some of the veterans seem a bit a queasy. The American crowd was loud and boisterous in Kentucky, and lacked imagination with their USA, USA. But captain Azinger knew their importance and whipped them up. The Europeans were typically rowdy and witty, making even the Americans laugh. What an atmosphere. It was everything sport should be. Funny and fearful at the same time, but a place where you could take your kids. Sheer magic.
Rocco Mediate's comeback at the US Open was the everyman story of the year. Rocco is Joe the plumber with a golf bag. Apparently he does stop talking in his sleep, but only for a few seconds. His comeback in the play-off of the US Open against Tiger Woods was heroic. And he very nearly wisecracked his way to victory. The crowds loved Rocco. They see one of their own, a man who knows that sport is still a game, even when played for millions of dollars.
When Anthony Kim holed his par putt on the 14th, he walked off the green with barely a backward glance and headed for the 15th tee. Sergio Garcia stood there with a crooked smile on his face. The match was over, but Kim had no idea. He was so wrapped up in what he was doing, so driven by adrenalin, that someone had to call him back and tell him that he had just won his Ryder Cup singles. The kid's a killer.
The moment itself was without drama, but that is often the way with great sporting achievement. At the 2008 Masters Trevor Immelman played a standard of golf that was way beyond the rest of the field. With Tiger you get flair and heroic deeds. Immelman was a machine, a latter-day Hogan. He dissected the field with utter, remorseless accuracy. Like a cold, clear winter's day, Immelman's performance was a thing of beauty.
Who can forget the clown of the Ryder Cup straddling his driver as he walked off the first tee and whipping himself down the fairway in homage to the Kentucky Derby. Boo Weekley's antics revved up the crowd and released the pressure on the American players who as a team have a recent history of being too uptight. All week the fields of Kentucky echoed to the chant of "Boo-S-A."
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