Eimear Ryan: Why are we so obsessed with the idea of the GOAT?

By what metric do we measure success? In titles, tallies or in difficulty levels? To compare two players from different eras is, in many ways, like comparing apples with oranges

Wed, 14 Sep, 2022 - 17:00

Eimear Ryan

Australian tennis icon Margaret Court (nominative determinism if ever I saw it) caused a minor kerfuffle recently when giving an interview on the occasion of Serena Williams’s announcement that she was soon going to retire. ‘Serena, I’ve admired her as a player,’ Court told the Daily Telegraph. ‘But I don’t think she has ever admired me.’

Court – whose heyday was in the sixties and early seventies – raised further eyebrows when she said that she would have loved to play in Serena’s era, offering that tennis is now ‘so much easier … How I would love to have taken family or friends along with me. But I couldn’t. I had to go on my own or with the national team. People don’t see all that. We didn’t have psychologists or coaches with us. It’s a whole different world. That’s what disappoints me – that players today don’t honour the past of the game.’

It was certainly A Choice to make Serena’s retirement all about her and her sense of being under-appreciated, but the redoubtable Court wasn’t finished, going on to point out that she won more titles after becoming a parent than Serena had: ‘I came back after two babies. After having the first baby, I won three out of the four slams … Serena hasn’t won a slam since [becoming a mother].’

I am always despairing when the culture pits two successful women against each other, often with the suggestion that one must take a side in the inevitable cat fight (witness the Team Kate vs Team Meghan drama unfolding in the UK right now). But when it’s instigated by one of the women in question? A clear case of handbags.

Not that Serena will be too ruffled, I’m sure, by Court’s comments. This is a woman who has dominated women’s tennis since her first grand slam win in 1999, who has earned almost $95m in prize money throughout her career, who has won the US Open in three separate decades, who has four Olympic golds medals to her name – and who got to announce her impending retirement with a cover story in Vogue, no less, writing that she was ‘evolving away’ from tennis, the most inspired euphemism since Gwyneth Paltrow’s conscious uncoupling from Chris Martin.

But crucially, Serena has a mere 23 grand slam singles titles to her name, while Court has 24. Williams acknowledged this in her Vogue piece, saying: ‘If I’m in a grand slam final, then yes, I am thinking about that record … But I didn’t get there. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. I didn’t show up the way I should have or could have. But I showed up 23 times, and that’s fine.’

This requires a bit of qualification. Thirteen of Court’s grand slam titles were won in the amateur era, when the field was smaller; eleven of her titles were won at the Australian Open, in her native country, in an era when it wasn’t hugely practical for international tennis players to make the journey.

This isn’t to diminish Court’s achievements – she is rightly regarded as one of the best players of all time – but to contextualise them. But then, by what metric do we measure success? In titles, tallies or in difficulty levels? To compare two players from different eras is, in many ways, like comparing apples with oranges; knowing this, why are we so obsessed with the idea of the GOAT (greatest of all time)?

Take All-Ireland tallies, for example. The traditional hurling triumvirate of Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary have 36, 30 and 28 titles, respectively (a hierarchy that my Cork friends delight in reminding me about). Speaking as a Tipp fan, our most recent win in 2019 was a near-perfect campaign, beating seven counties along the way, the sole defeat being the Munster final against Limerick.

Contrast this with the 1899 title, in which Tipp were given a walkover in the Munster semi-final, beat Clare in the Munster final, and were then straight through to the All-Ireland final against Wexford, a match which ended up being abandoned (although Tipp, being 14 points ahead, were awarded the win anyway).

Of course, it makes sense that victories in living memory are more treasured than those of the distant past, and the fact that 2019 was so hard-won makes it extra special. But both 1899 and 2019 count for the same in the All-Ireland tally, and if you tried to disqualify the 1899 win on account of the final not being finished, this Tipp fan would be up in arms.

Sport is always evolving and improving; the bar is always being raised higher. But equally, the heroes and heroines of today are inspired by those who came before: they stand on their shoulders. One of the most inspiring recent examples of this was that on the night that Ciara Mageean broke Sonia O’Sullivan’s Irish 1500m record of 3:58.85 by almost two seconds, winning her Diamond League race in Brussels with a time of 3:56.63.

O’Sullivan was in the stands cheering her on, enjoying the pleasure of watching an athlete in the prime of their career just like everyone else. A striking photo was captured of the two of them: Ireland’s athletics legacy and its future.

Mageean was three when O’Sullivan set the previous record, and has idolised O’Sullivan – Ireland’s GOAT of middle-distance running – her entire career. After the race, she said: ‘I’m on cloud nine. To be in the same realm as Sonia O’Sullivan, she’s a name everybody knows, not just in Ireland but globally, and to surpass her time is something I’ve always dreamed of.’

It’s a complicated dynamic, to surpass your hero, often the very person who put you on the path in the first place. But, as the fella says, records are made to be broken; and as the other fella says, you can only beat what’s in front of you.