A few seasons back, Tiger Woods seemed unbeatable. On the most superficial level, the reason that no one seemed to be able to touch him was that he was simply better than anyone else. He made hitting an eagle seem as natural as walking. But of course playing golf isn't inherently natural. The reason that he was able to play better than anyone else on the tour on such a consistent level was that he put in longer hours practicing as well as the fact that he practiced in more well-thought out and focused ways than his opponents. This added to his natural talent to make him the player to beat in every tournament in which he appeared (http://www.setanta.com/story.jsp?story=WCContent;id-51264).
For the past year, however, he has been dogged by questions about his playing, with many reports calling his recent performance a "slump". We may thus ask what is the cause for Tiger's recent losses in so many tournaments to different players. In fact there seems to be not just one reason but at least two distinct ones. The first is that he isn't playing as well as he did two years ago: Such fluctuations do occur in the career of nearly every athlete. But the cause of Tiger's slump appears not to be so much his own playing - which is still superb - but the fact that his previous years' performances were so stupendous that every other player in the game has had to improve to meet Woods's challenge. By raising the standard of the entire game, Woods has prompted his opponents to work as hard as himself.
Even if they weren't sisters, tennis fans would probably still set about comparing the playing of Venus and Serena Williams. But because they are sisters the comparisons have been ubiquitous. This fact has tended to obscure the real differences in the playing styles of the two. They do share a number of playing stylistic points, including their signature powerful serves and their intens
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