If Rory McIlroy completes grand slam it would be greatest achievement by any GB or Irish individual sports person

James Corrigan wrote:The emergence of a letter written by a nine-year-old Rory McIlroy to Tiger Woods shows that the Northern Irishman always knew how good he would be. Now, if the rest of the United Kingdom would only catch up.

If McIlroy wins next week’s Masters and so, at the age of 25, becomes only the sixth player in history to complete the career grand slam then this could be credited as the greatest individual achievement by any Great British or Irish individual sports person. Alas, that claim would likely be shot down in a hail of three-irons.

Sir Steve Redgrave would be the favourite riposte and nobody can, or surely would, deny the merits of the rower with five golds from five consecutive Olympic games. Except, Redgrave was not an “individual” sports person. He had team-mates; sometimes just the one, sometimes three. And although he was the highly uncommon denominator in this glorious quintet he could not have done it without his hombres. Indeed, he would simply have gone around in circles.

Golden boy: Sir Steve Redgrave's five gold medals are a stunning achievement
Cycling is more difficult to categorise. When put alongside his own Olympic successes, Sir Bradley Wiggins’ feat in becoming the first British winner of the Tour de France must rank right up there. But again, Wiggins was part of a team. The domestique bliss of Team Sky was paramount and even in the velodrome this so often applies. Two of Sir Chris Hoy’s six gold medals were earned alongside colleagues. So much of cycling is encapsulated in the team ethos.

It is the sports such as golf, tennis, boxing, athletics and sailing which are all about the individual and only about the individual. They might rely on great coaching and the very best of equipment but their triumphs are not governed by the speed of their car or of their horse (with utter deference to AP McCoy). When the gun goes, the bell rings, or Ivor Robson says “on the tee’ it is all on them.
Joe Calzaghe, Lennox Lewis and legends such as Ted “Kid” Lewis and Jack Broughton afford Britain such a rich boxing pedigree but when it comes to the “pound-for-pounders” they are rarely mentioned. That is why Fred Perry has to miss out and, indeed, Andy Murray.

As the world’s greatest Olympic sailor, Sir Ben Ainslie would be my current first choice and it would merely be a personal preference to supplant him with McIlroy. But then, it is impossible to consider such imponderables without the influence of bias.
The quickest of peeks at the Sports Personality winners list would confirm that athletics would garner a lot of UK support and the likes of Sebastian Coe, Daley Thompson, Dame Kelly Holmes, Mo Farah have justifiable claims. Yet surely not as justifiable as Sir Roger Bannister.

Track record: Sir Roger Bannister is a legend of athletics
What he did on that windy evening at the Iffley Road, Oxford in 1954 will forever, in my opinion, stand as the greatest individual moment in UK sport - the ultimate UK milestone. He not only broke through the four-minute barrier, but in doing so smashed the world record by more than two seconds. Bannister went where no human had before and where no junior doctor had before.
Goodness knows where he would have finished in the athletics pantheon had he taken the entirely wrong decision to dedicate his life to the track instead of medicine. Yet as his sporting body of work stands, it does not boast enough volumes.
There are snooker players whose records stack up, a certain darts player whose record definitely does and there are comparable claimants from other niche sports. But these sports are not played the world over and thus the pool in which to be judged is too small. That clearly does not apply to golf, not with more than 20 nationalities having won majors. It is a global game and in Sir Nick Faldo and, now McIlroy, Britain has golfers whose CVs are discussed in global terms.

Tall tale: Nick Faldo is Britain's most decorated golfer
Currently, Faldo still has the edge, six majors to four. Yet a set of five with all four of the major titles is better than a set of six from two. It is who Mcilroy would be joining which would single him out in the roll call of British and Irish greats: Nicklaus, Woods, Player, Hogan, Sarazen. McIlroy would be the only European and would have cracked the cabal at such a young age, emulating Nicklaus and Woods in winning all four before his 26th birthday. And what’s more he would have predicted it more than a decade and a half before.
McIlroy’s shot at immortality features on the cover of the New York Times magazine (in itself, another first for an individual UK sports person). In the guts of the near 5,000-word profile comes a startling and telling revelation. McIlroy agrees that the note he sent to Woods after winning the Under-10s World Championship in 1998 went something like this: “I’m coming to get you. This is the beginning. Watch this space.”
Amazingly, a green-jacket next week would be nowhere near the end. It would simply be the continuation of an unprecedented UK sports story. We would genuinely never have seen the like.

McLaren wrote:McIlroy is a long way from being even the best among the players he has played against.  Phil and Tiger are clearly still a level above Mcilroy.

kwinigolfer wrote:Hey, What about Shack and Philip Mead?

dummy_half wrote:LP
Add to your list of motorsports greats John Surtees - the dominant motor bike racer at the end of the 50s, start of the 60s (7 world titles across the 350cc and 500cc classes) and then changed to car racing and won an F1 world title there as well. A feat very unlikely to be matched in the future.