This post is part of a larger list looking at some of the top individual performances in all of sports history. Check out the full list here.
When two-way great Shohei Ohtani turned his slugging slump into the greatest game in baseball history in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, it started a discussion in the Sports Illustrated newsroom: What are some of the other top individual performances in sports? And how do they compare to Ohtani’s 10 strikeouts and three home runs?
Here are our picks from men’s and women’s golf.
Men’s Golf: Tiger Woods’s 2000 U.S. Open win by 15 strokes
Tiger Woods set a major championship record when he was the only player under par, shooting 12-under at Pebble Beach to win the 2000 U.S. Open by 15 strokes—eclipsing the previous mark of 13 by Tom Morris Sr. in 1862 set at a British Open contested by eight players. Woods had two bogey-free rounds while the other 155 players in the field combined for one; he had no three-putt greens; he hit 51 greens in regulation, seven more than anyone else. And he made just six bogeys or more over 72 holes. “It’s just not a fair fight,” NBC analyst Roger Maltbie famously said during the second round. Woods eclipsed his own modern record for victory margin set in a major when he won the 1997 Masters by 12. Afterward, Ernie Els, who played with Woods on the final day and tied for second with Miguel Ángel Jiménez, quipped: “If you put Old Tom Morris with Tiger Woods, he'd probably beat him by 80 shots right now. Hey, the guy is unbelievable, man.”
Greater than Ohtani? Like baseball, golf has been around for 150-plus years, and while Woods holds the major championship record of victory margin, there have been four times when a player exceeded it in a regular tournament—all winning by 16. So we’ll go with Ohtani topping Tiger—but barely. —Bob Harig
Women’s Golf: Karrie Webb’s wire-to-wire win in Palm Springs
Annika Sorenstam and Karrie Webb were the headline rivals of the LPGA as the calendar turned to 2000, with the Aussie (Webb) making her strongest case over the older and more decorated Swede with a 1999 season that included Player of the Year honors and a 6–2 edge in wins. At the first major of the 2000 season, Webb put a temporary end to the argument entirely with a 10-shot win at the Nabisco Championship (once informally the Dinah Shore, now the Chevron)—her fifth win in six starts, prompting John Garrity to write in SI that “the Justice Department is targeting her as a monopolistic enterprise.” Webb went wire-to-wire at Mission Hills Country Club, opening with a 5-under 67, owning an eight-shot lead after 54 holes and, to put a cap on it all, making a Sunday hole-in-one on the way to her coronation. Webb finished at 14 under, defending champion Dottie Pepper was runner-up at 4 under, and Sorenstam, in a rare well-down-the-leaderboard week, was 18 shots back at 4 over. Webb would add another major in what would be a seven-win Player of the Year season, but nowhere was her dominance better on display than during that March week in Palm Springs, Calif.
Greater than Ohtani? Tough to compare four rounds vs. one night, but let’s just say both sports knew who their very best was at that moment. —John Schwarb
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Greatest Golf Performances of All Time.