In becoming only the fourth man to ever win consecutive Masters, Rory McIlroy has sparked debate among Daily Mail Sport staff and the wider British public: is he now the greatest-ever sportsperson from these shores?
McIlroy won his second Green Jacket on Sunday, beating America’s Scottie Scheffler by one shot on a tense and emotional afternoon at Augusta.
He now has six majors to his name and looks well poised to add more before he brings the curtain down on his career.
Daily Mail Sport’s RIATH AL-SAMARRAI watched McIlroy in action last week and compiled his own top-15 list for the greatest British sportspeople this century.
But do his colleagues agree with his list? Oliver Holt, Jonathan McEvoy and Ian Herbert have now had their say…
Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy won his second-successive Masters title on Sunday
Oliver Holt
5. Sir Lewis Hamilton
A magnificent driver, talented, brave and brilliant in the wet, which is always the acid test of an F1 great. He has won seven drivers’ world titles which puts him equal with Michael Schumacher at top of the charts so he has a claim to be the best there has ever been.
The only thing that stops me putting him right at the top of this list is the old F1 caveat about how much influence getting in the right car has had in his success but that caveat applies to every F1 driver. The best drivers tend to earn the right to sit in the best car.
4. Ricky Hatton
Maybe there is a bit of sadness in this pick. There is certainly a lot of sentiment. Like everyone who was lucky enough to have known Hatton, I loved being in his company and I loved watching him fight.
His victory over Kostya Tszyu at the Manchester Arena in 2005 when Hatton won the light welterweight championship of the world was the greatest fight I’ve ever seen in the best atmosphere I’ve ever witnessed in boxing. Tens of thousands of his fans followed him to Las Vegas when he fought there and he became a two-weight world champion. He is sorely missed.
3. Sir Andy Murray
Murray won Grand Slams in the greatest era of tennis history. He won the biggest tournaments at a time when Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer were trying to do it, too. It’d be like McIlroy trying to win The Masters in a field that also included Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Arnold Palmer in their prime.
Murray gave me the greatest British moment I’ve seen live in sport when he won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon in 2013, the first time a British man had won it for 77 years. He’ll always have my gratitude and devotion for that.
2. Rory McIlroy
McIlroy’s second win at Augusta National this weekend pushed him above Murray in my list. I’ve always believed that McIlroy is the most talented golfer of his generation and now he is putting up the numbers to back that up.
He is a swashbuckling genius of a player, a man who makes golf as entertaining to watch as any sport in the world and a man who has become a leader for the game. He is the greatest player Europe has ever produced and one of the top six in the sport’s history. He is a wonderful figurehead for UK sport.
1. Joe Root
The greatest batsman I’ve ever seen play the game, a relentless accumulator, a wonderful, classical batsmen who is also an innovator and a part of the England line-up that won the 2019 World Cup Final at Lord’s, the greatest game of cricket I’ve ever seen.
I’d have loved to have had Jimmy Anderson and Ben Stokes in this list, too, but it was a thrill to be at the Gabba in Brisbane last December to see Root score his first Test century in Australia, something that felt akin to seeing McIlroy win his first Masters. Root has done it all. Only Sachin Tendulkar has scored more runs than him in the history of Test cricket and that record is firmly in Root’s sights.
Joe Root is Oliver Holt’s No 1 pick – with Holt labelling him ‘the greatest batsman I’ve ever seen’
Ian Herbert
5. Chloe Kelly
I’ve covered many football games this century and harboured many hopes of England winning an international trophy. The same player provided on the mere two occasions it’s happened.
Strange to select a substitute, you might say, but Kelly transformed England in the second half of the greatest victory by any of our national sides in these 26 years, against Spain in last year’s Euros final – four years after her iconic winner against Germany in the final on home soil. Ice cold sublimity.
4. Wayne Rooney
The off-field pantomimes skewed the narrative of the peerless, God-given, visceral talent he brought, scoring in ways beyond mere mortals’ comprehension.
I was there on the winter’s Manchester day in 2011 when he scored that scissor kick from Nani’s cross against City. There were murmurings about Javier Hernandez being a better option that day. It was the genius in Rooney which made him impervious to stuff like that. He always rose above it.
3. Rory McIlroy
It’s the stories we are always looking for – the light and shade, highs and lows – and the rollercoaster narrative is the part which makes McIlroy so irresistible. The chip from the back of the green on 16 – using its contours, judging the break – was a metaphor for all that has made him one of the our greats.
2. Lewis Hamilton
The ability to win continually and consistently puts the very good among the greatest and for me, Hamilton has not been cherished by this nation in quite the way that he might.
He’s brought F1 alive for many, with the ice-cold temperament, feather-light throttle control and brake-pedal action involved in negotiating competitors, corners and unseen forces of nature, while turbulence has played havoc. His seven world titles have matched Michael Schumacher’s record. Not bad for a mixed-race, working-class boy from a Stevenage housing estate.
1. Andy Murray
The greatest of this century not only because he bore the deadweight of expectation and history and emerged victorious at Wimbledon in a 2013 final which stands above all the sporting occasions it has been my privilege to attend. The greatest because of the humility, the perseverance, the struggle and the humour which made him the kind of champion so many of us would want to be.
I’ll never forget being there at our last interaction with him as a player, in the little mixed zone across the way from Court Philippe-Chatrier at the Paris Olympics. You had to strain to hear him speak as the rain crashed against of the roof of the building. There was an almighty thunder-clap and lightning illuminated the place just before he walked away.
Andy Murray tops Ian Herbert’s list with his 2013 Wimbledon win among his fine achievements
Jonathan McEvoy
One controversial caveat to insert at the start. Rory McIlroy, on a technicality, is not under consideration here because he competes for Ireland at the Olympics, under whose banner he also swung as a boy. Which is fine. But this is a famous five of bona-fide Brits.
Otherwise, my colleague Riath Al-Samarrai has laid down the parameters for this pub debate, as well he might, having just watched McIlroy’s latest stupendous feat of golfing glory at Augusta. He has limited us to choosing Britain’s best sports stars from only the past 26 years.
This prohibits me from anointing Sir Ian Botham, who, officially, was knighted for walking tons of miles to raise sponsorship for leukaemia sufferers. But, as Michael Atherton once noted, impressive though Botham’s charity work was, it is for his genius as an all-round cricketer that we will never forget him.
My friends Daley Thompson, never knighted and unconcerned about receiving the monarchical shoulder tap, and Lord Coe, are omitted. They would otherwise figure very high indeed on any register drawn from my lifetime, probably on the podium with Botham.
5. Wayne Rooney
At his coltish best, built like a middleweight boxer, and with similarly pugnacious instincts, was he not the best English footballer since Paul Gasscoigne? (Harry Kane? Discuss.)
Who can forget Rooney’s last-minute winner for Everton five days short of his 17th birthday? Curling, dipping from 30 yards, it had David Seaman palming air and ended Arsenal’s 30-match unbeaten run.
The late sportswriter James Lawton asked David Moyes that evening if Rooney reminded him of anyone.
‘Maradona, perhaps David?’ ventured Lawton.
4. Jonny Wilkinson
Ah, the tortured perfectionist whose dropped goal in the 2003 Rugby World Cup delivered England’s most serious team triumph on any sporting field since 1966.
Introverted, he eschewed celebrity and that made him every inch a reluctant British hero.
3. Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill
The poster-girl of London 2012, whose heptathlon victory on August 4, 2012, lit the gold rush that famous Super Saturday, along with Greg Rutherford in the long jump and Mo Farah in the 10,000metres.
Down-to-earth, Jess represented the spirit of the most memorable sports event I have attended.
2. Sir Andy Murray
His deeds are well-recorded, as they might be, a boy from Scotland ending the country’s 77-year wait since Sir Fred Perry came from the wrong side of the tramlines to claim the gentlemen’s singles.
Murray overcame the pressure of Tim Henman and the handful of nearly-men who had gone before, all the time testing us all with his grimacing agonies.
I hesitate to place him at No 1 because he was ‘only’ – ha – the fourth best player of his era, albeit in tennis’ true golden age.
1. Sir Lewis Hamilton
This ranking is under serious review. A couple of years ago, I would have said that no Briton had dominated a major sport so emphatically or for so long since the turn of the millennium.
Also his starburst arrival on the scene as a 22-year-old debutant meant that if he had never driven again, he would be the Duncan Edwards of motor racing. That was before his record of seven titles (held jointly with Michael Schumacher) and 105 wins made him a very rich man indeed.
But he has now lost to four team-mates during his career and is in danger of damaging his legacy at Ferrari, aged 41. Or can he win an eighth title and settle the debate?
With apologies to, among others: Joe Root, perhaps more than anyone; Stuart Broad, Ben Stokes, James Anderson (cricket); AP McCoy (racing); Sir Steve Redgrave (rowing); Martin Johnson, plus at least 13 of his pals (rugby); Ronnie O’Sullivan (snooker).
Lewis Hamilton is Jonathan McEvoy’s No 1 – having won seven F1 world titles during his career
