Sports stars who have just been so far ahead of their (national) rivals that a national championship would have been like Ronnie O'Sullivan being asked to play me and my mate Sean at pool in a pub.
Vijay Singh being not only Fiji's only major winning golfer but possibly their only golfer ever to break par in a professional event springs to mind. Francesco Molinari would leap off the page as Italy's current equivalent but actually Italy had gone through a little bubble of producing several players of note, not least Francesco's brother Eduardo. The same was true of Spanish golf in the 70s - lots of people think Seve came "from nowhere" but while he clearly went on to be the best, there was a whole generation of very good Spanish players around him at the time.
Rafael Nadal was hardly a one-off in terms of Spanish clay court talent. And wasn't Wawrinka kind of a contemporary of Fed? Tiger Tim might be a better example in British tennis than his successor, but even in Tim's era we always had other players scratching about iirc, plus Greg jumped on board.
Any ideas?
Vijay Singh being not only Fiji's only major winning golfer but possibly their only golfer ever to break par in a professional event springs to mind. Francesco Molinari would leap off the page as Italy's current equivalent but actually Italy had gone through a little bubble of producing several players of note, not least Francesco's brother Eduardo. The same was true of Spanish golf in the 70s - lots of people think Seve came "from nowhere" but while he clearly went on to be the best, there was a whole generation of very good Spanish players around him at the time.
Rafael Nadal was hardly a one-off in terms of Spanish clay court talent. And wasn't Wawrinka kind of a contemporary of Fed? Tiger Tim might be a better example in British tennis than his successor, but even in Tim's era we always had other players scratching about iirc, plus Greg jumped on board.
Any ideas?
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