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World? Shut your mouth

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    World? Shut your mouth

    You'd think winning a world title would be a pretty big deal. But these days "world" seems like sport's version of "diverse" and "vibrant" in city council bumf - everyone's claiming it, devaluing the meaning.

    I don't mean things like the World Series in baseball. It may not be global, but it is the one the players want to win, and people bother to watch. I mean stuff like the world cups and matchplay titles in golf. How many of those are there? And who cares who won? Various Brits seem to claim these titles more often than Tiger Woods, and even Michael Campbell's got one, and he's not even a household name in NZ these days.

    Plus there are all these World Cups in swimming and cycling etc, which seem to be held about a month after the Olympics. Are they worth squat?

    I want a world title before I die. What's my best bet? Boxing?

    #2
    World? Shut your mouth

    Badminton.

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      #3
      World? Shut your mouth

      The golfing "World Championship" events are in name only, it's true, golf's most important events have always been and will always be the Open Championships of the R&A and the USGA, and the Masters Tournament (which, if Bobby Jones had not been so modest about the intention of his "Tournament", probably would have been instantly accepted from the outset as a true "World Championship" if he'd chosen to propose it as one. He only begrudgingly came to accept the idea of allowing his Augusta National Invitational even to be referred to as the "Masters"). The USPGA - the fourth "major" of the modern 4-event "Grand Slam" - is very much the least important one; the idea of golf having 4 professional "Majors" was mainly the invention of marketing guru Mark McCormack in the late 60s, as he wanted to give his client Arnold Palmer a "Grand Slam" to aim for like Rod Laver had achieved in tennis. McCormack, I've always suspected, dearly wanted to confer the "fourth major" honour on the Australian Open (his clients regularly played in, and won it), but the USPGA could not be ignored as it was the championship of the PGA Tour, the one all the leading players played on year-round. Ironically, having been re-badged as such, the PGA remained the one "major" Arnold Palmer would never win, so in a sense, McCormack denied his man the "Grand Slam" he would have been recognised as already having won, had golf just stuck with the concept of its three "majors" being quite enough.

      Certainly the World Championships in events that are blue riband ones at the Olympics - athletics, rowing, cycling, swimming, ski-ing - do not seem as important as the Olympic gold (and in cycling, arguably, none of the track medals are as important anyway as the classic stage events on the road).

      Possibly the only sports where the "World Championship" is the big thing are those that don't form part of the Olympics - snooker, darts, motor sport - and football and rugby union, where the "World Cup" is the ultimate prize. Even here, the use of the term "World Champions" to describe football's World Cup winners is seldom used by British journalists, betraying (perhaps) the deeply maintained suspicion of anything run by FIFA. Professional boxing has become such a joke in its increasing alphabetti spaghetti of different world champions (not to mention the ever-expanding plethora of meaningless weight categories like "super-light-welterweight" that it's hard to recognise anyone, at any given time, as a true "World Champion".

      Test Cricket, of course, remains probably unique among major world sports in that it not only has no recognised "World Championship", but doesn't even really have any major trophies of note to play for, apart from the Ashes. And yet test Cricket continues to survive perfectly well without any ultimate "prize". I wonder why that is?

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