While the debate about the greatest of all time (GOAT) is a prominent topic in tennis, who is considered the ultimate sporting legend outside the world of tennis?
The tennis GOAT debate has been centred around Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer over the past decade and Federer was initially widely accepted as the best of them all, but many believe the Swiss Maestro has been overtaken by his fellow Big Three rivals.
Nadal was first to edge ahead of Federer before Djokovic surpassed them both.
The Serbian is clear of his two great nemeses in most stats as he currently leads in terms of Grand Slams won and weeks spent at No 1 and fans believe he will go down as the greatest tennis player of all time, although the answer to the GOAT question is often subjective.
But the GOAT debate is not just synonymous with tennis as in football there is the traditional Lionel Messi v Cristiano Ronaldo v Diego Maradona v Pele argument while in basketball you have Michael Jordan up against Kobe Bryant.
During the recent Shanghai Masters, some of the world’s top tennis players were asked to name their non-tennis sporting GOATs.
ATP Tour stars Tommy Paul, Jannik Sinner, Ben Shelton, Hubert Hurkacz, Stefanos Tsitispas, Daniil Medvedev, Sebastian Korda and Diego Schwartzman were the players who took part in the “survey”.
Of course some of these answers were not surprising with the American duo of Paul and Shelton going for basketball legend Michael Jordan along with Hubert Hurkacz and Stefanos Tsitsipas.
If you thought Korda’s decision to go with Tiger Woods was a surprise then you probably forgot that he has strong golfing roots as his sisters Jessica and Nelly are professional golfers so he was always going to opt for someone in that field.
Schwartzman’s selection of Messi and Maradona is the least surprising as he is a football fanatic and even attended some Argentina’s matches during their 2022 Qatar World Cup title run.
So there you have it, folks. According to that small sample of tennis players, Michael Jordan is the GOAT outside of tennis with four votes and he is followed by Lionel Messi (2) while Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, Cristiano Ronaldo and Diego Maradona all received one vote.
