Yes, Tiger's a genius - but he's a balding genius

When William Shakespeare wrote 'Macbeth' and 'King Lear' in a calendar year, that was his grand slam

Tomorrow, at Muirfield near Edinburgh, the world's greatest golfer, Eldrick Tiger Woods, will attempt to subdue one of the world's greatest golf links in his bid to win the world's greatest golf tournament. There's a lot of greatness going on along the Firth of Forth this week.

If Woods does win the 131st Open championship – and the bookmakers rate his chances as 7-4 on, unprecedentedly short odds in what is still technically a156-horse race (the next favourite is 10-1 against) – then he will have completed three quarters of a feat not long ago considered to be impossible in modern professional golf: the so-called grand slam of the sport's four major championships.

Having held all four titles simultaneously, Woods has already achieved what no man has ever done; now his aim, having already won the 2002 US Masters and US Open, is to add this week's Open and next month's US PGA. Then he will have bagged the set in the same calendar year.

Even if he fails in this formidable quest for golf's holy grail, he is already Sir Lancelot and Sir Galahad rolled into one. The one consolation for the lesser fry at the round table is that he seems to be thinning rather alarmingly on top, which may be why, in time-honoured baldie fashion, he has sprouted a bit of a beard.

But it's not much for the others to cling on to, so to speak. In every other department, he is manifestly superior. He is better, stronger, fitter, richer and lovelier than the rest. Even his teeth are whiter. His father, Earl, offended America's evangelical right when he compared his boy with Jesus Christ, but you can kind of see where Earl was coming from.

From America, to be literal about it. In fact, it's not too fanciful to say that Tiger symbolises America. He is golf's absurdly dominant nuclear superpower; when he hits the towering peaks of his capability, all the others can do is to gaze upwards in awe, envy and pique.

But as with America, there are many who assert that his pre-eminence is bad for the game; that it instils an inferiority complex in what might loosely be called his competitors, a sense that they are only ever striving to be second best. Which in turn ends up with some of them bitterly resenting the fact that he keeps winning, to the extent that they might even now be plotting to clip his wings in various fiendish ways... but maybe that's stretching the America analogy too far.

Whatever, this phenomenon of absolute dominance and palpable superiority has materialised from time to time in most spheres, in most centuries. Alexander the Great was the Tiger Woods of his field, Leonardo da Vinci the Tiger Woods of his. When William Shakespeare wrote Macbeth and King Lear in a single calendar year, that was his grand slam. If Ladbrokes had opened a book on which engineer was likely to mastermind the building of the Clifton suspension bridge, then I dare say Isambard Kingdom Brunel would have been 7-4 on (next favourite 10-1 against).

Instead of being faintly unsettled by a level of genius that even other geniuses can only dream of, we should cherish the opportunity of seeing it unfold within our lifetime. Just as there was never another Renaissance man quite like Leonardo, it could be that there will never be another golfer quite like Tiger Woods.

Some will no doubt suggest that it verges on the blasphemous to compare the creator of The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa with the winner of this year's US Masters and US Open, but to these cynics I say: give Leonardo a break. His wrist-cock and shoulder-turn might not have been in the same league as Tiger's, but you surely have to admit that his brushwork was pretty special.

Granted, it is ridiculous to compare levels of achievement even between different sports, let alone between sport and art, or architecture, or politics, or literature. But at least sport, with its abundance of records and titles, not to mention vulgar money lists, allows us to measure the dominance of, say, Venus and Serena Williams.

And the example of the mighty Williams sisters raises another interesting question. Where does such overwhelming dominance come from?

Like Tiger Woods, the Williams sisters owe their supremacy in women's tennis to a ferociously ambitious father. It seems they were made, rather than born, which is not to say that champions cannot be born rather than made.

Take young Jaden Gil Agassi, the son of Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf and a case of genetic engineering if ever there was one. It will be a surprise if, 20 years from now, his forehand is not, in tennis-playing terms, a weapon of mass destruction. But who knows? Perhaps he'll prefer golf.

b.viner@independent.co.uk