RevSportz Comment
Last week, Tiger Woods shot rounds of 75, 70, 71 and 72 to finish 18th in the Hero World Challenge, an event that he has hosted for over two decades. The score was immaterial. For Tiger, who turns 48 on December 30, what mattered was competing a tournament after his return from ankle-fusion surgery.
At around the same time, Rafael Nadal announced that he would play in Brisbane in early January, as a precursor to tilt at a third Australian Open title. For his legions of fans, it was welcome news after he limped away from Melbourne after a second-round defeat last January. In fact, discounting the Covid-19-affected 2021, this is only the third year since his first Grand Slam win in 2005 that Nadal has not won a major title.
After the last round of World Cup qualifiers in November, when Argentina went to Brazil and won 1-0, news started filtering out that Lionel Messi could be persuaded to continue through to the World Cup in North America in 2026. With Argentina currently looking the most accomplished of international teams, surely the temptation to push on and win back-to-back World Cups could convince him?
Messi will be 39 by the time the next World Cup is played. He now plays his football in the United States of America, with Inter Miami. He last won the European Champions League – the Holy Grail of club football – back in 2015. After leaving Barcelona, his two seasons with Paris Saint-Germain saw 32 goals in 75 games. Those are not dismal numbers, but they aren’t GOAT ones either, and no tears were shed by PSG fans when he moved on in the summer.
As for Tiger, it will be five years next April since his last major win, the come-from-behind success at the US Masters in Augusta in 2019. That, his 15th victory in a major, was itself an anomaly. You have to go back to 2008, over 15 years ago, for No. 14, a play-off victory against Rocco Mediate at the US Open.
As for Nadal, it’s worthwhile to recall 2015 and 2016, when he failed to go past the quarterfinals in any of the Grand Slams. Some of the injuries he had then were so bad people wondered if he would ever return. That he has gone on to win eight more Grand Slams since turning 30 is testament to a will quite unlike any other that sport has seen. But the physical toll that it has taken is horrific, with the wear and tear comparable to a man in his 60s or 70s.
There are all athletes that transcended the limits of their sports. When Tiger won three of the four majors in 2000, his margins of victory at the US Open (15 strokes) and the Open Championship (eight shots) made people double-check for typos in their newspapers. Such a level of sporting dominance was simply unheard of.
Messi scored at least 40 goals for Barcelona in ten straight seasons. And he wasn’t even your typical centre-forward. There were hundreds of assists too, with defenders left bedazzled by his trickery. Nadal went to Australia in 2022 and battled the toughest conditions – especially the infernal heat – to win his first title there since 2009.
Closer home, MS Dhoni last played a T20I for India nearly five years ago. He was last seen in an India shirt in July 2019, during that heartbreaking World Cup semifinal loss to New Zealand. Yet, in March, months before he turns 43, he will be back for one more shot at IPL glory with the Chennai Super Kings. He started the last season in barnstorming fashion, but then tailed off as injuries, the lack of year-round practice and match play caught up with him.
It would be simplistic to say that these men carry on for financial reasons alone. They have earned enough for generations of descendants, and there is no sponsor on Earth who could intimidate men of their stature. But such is the outpouring of public emotion each time retirement is mentioned that they wouldn’t be human if it didn’t affect them.
It would be nothing short of a miracle if Nadal won Grand Slam No. 23 in 2024. Tiger, lucky to be alive after a ghastly car crash a few years ago, will almost certainly not get any closer to Jack Nicklaus’s tally of 18 majors. Messi’s days as the king of the castle are long gone. Kings play in Europe, after all, and not in Florida.
But whether it’s professional pride or the belief that they can somehow postpone Father Time’s tap on the shoulder, they keep going, just as Dhoni has for nearly half a decade as an occasional cricketer. The fan reactions each time retirement is mentioned make you wonder whether we understand the nature of sport at all. One day, all our heroes face that walk in to the sunset. Do we want them to carry on till there’s nothing left to give?