There are a lot of athletes who are good at more than one sport, just ask Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders, both of who played professional baseball and football. Tiger Woods’ father was a great golfer and baseball player. Fellow golfer Tony Finau was able to dunk a basketball. Can Tiger Woods dunk?
It’s not common knowledge whether or not Tiger can dunk or not. Tiger Woods is a one-sport athlete. While he may have been a child prodigy when it comes to golf, his other athletic skills don’t compare. Since he seems to be the only PGA Tour golfer in the top ten not to play basketball, at least into high school, we probably won’t be seeing him compete in any basketball competitions any time soon.
While he hosts charity events with other professional athletes, he only teams up with them for golf, never trying out their sport of choice. Though he has played poker, and those in the World Poker Championship know that it takes a different kind of endurance to make it through all rounds.
Not the Only Woods Making Waves
Tiger Woods’ father, Earl Dennison Woods, had a few things in common with his famous son, including being the product of a second marriage. In addition to that, Earl was a bit of an athlete himself. He was an amateur golfer, with a single-digit handicap, but his number one sport was baseball.
Earl played baseball for Kansas State College, which has since been renamed Kansas State University. He was one of the first African-American students to play baseball for the institution, which came with some extra challenges outside of the sport itself.
At one point he was denied the ability to play in a game in Mississippi, due to his race. The entire Kansas State team stood by their teammate and all of them refused to play the baseball game, leaving instead, in protest.
Earl Woods was good enough to make it as a professional baseball player, being offered a contract by the Kansas City Monarchs, the longest-running franchise in the Negro Baseball Leagues. Woods turned down the contract, instead, he decided to finish school with a Bachelor of Science degree and becoming a commissioned officer in the United States Military.
Basketball and Golf
At first glance, you may not think that there are many similarities between basketball and golf, but apparently you’d be wrong. Don’t worry, I was too. There are a lot of golfers who can play some pretty good basketball and some basketball players who play pretty good golf.
I think a lot of professional athletes are relatively good at golf, many of them hitting the links when their sports season is over for the year. Basketball players seem to be exceptionally well at golf due to some similar skills required at both sports, according to Titleist Performance Institute.
TPI mentions things such as height, which is a factor in driving the golf ball further, and the fact that basketball is a dynamic sport, and that will help as golfers move their bodies in different directions.
Golfers Who Could Play More Than One Sport
Tigers Woods didn’t make the list, but the Bleacher Report did an article on PGA players who could have played other sports. In addition to basketball, some of the sports that top golfers excel at include:
- Soccer
- Fishing
- Motorsports
- Pool
- Tennis
- Rugby
- Cricket
- Surfing
To be honest, I’m a little surprised that baseball didn’t make the list. While I understand swinging a bat and swinging a golf club are two different things, I still figured that someone would have excelled at both. Football and hockey are two other top professional sports in which golfers don’t excel at.
There are a lot of hockey players who play golf, and some of them better than others, perhaps due to long periods of not getting very far in the playoffs, which allows them more time to spend on the greens.