Great as he is, Tiger not in M.J.'s league

Tiger Woods won another U.S. Open golf championship Monday, so let the nonsense begin.

It isn't enough for admirers to declare Woods is the greatest golfer ever.

After that, the discussion has to go to extremes. That's what I heard when Woods was on a winning streak earlier this year and what will happen now after his 14th major title.

Especially considering how Woods won this one -- in a 19-hole playoff on a gimpy knee.

So here's the absurd theory that will follow: Tiger Woods' career is more remarkable than Michael Jordan's was.

All I can say is … please stop it!

Listen, nobody has to tell me how remarkable Woods is. But more remarkable than Jordan was? No, not even close.

First of all, it's silly to compare what a golfer does to what a basketball player does. The best golfer ever never will be more remarkable than the best basketball player ever.

Golf is difficult, if not impossible. I have been a beginning golfer for 40 years and am still struggling to keep my score under triple figures.

Jordan knows how tough golf is, considering he once aspired to play professionally before coming to his senses.

Still, comparing golf to basketball is like comparing tea to whiskey.

Basketball players don't choose which games and weeks they want to play. They don't take a break in the middle of a season to spend time with the family.

From training camp through the NBA Finals, a season is nearly nine months long with no time off for exhaustion.

Jordan did what he did with the entire NBA trying to figure out how to defend him. The Pistons concocted the Jordan Rules. Sam Smith wrote a best-selling book of the same name.

As far as I can tell, there are no Woods Rules because golfers can't play defense. All they can do is stand back, monitor Woods, and hope he beats himself.

During Monday's playoff, Rocco Mediate couldn't switch from a man-to-man to a zone and from a zone to a box-and-one.

Mediate couldn't try what the Pistons and later the Knicks tried against Jordan -- beat him by beating him up. They couldn't execute a hack-a-Tiger strategy as he went to the hole the way teams can in the NBA against a player going to the hoop.

Tournaments do make courses tougher. But do you think Jordan would have been less successful if the court stretched to 104 feet and the basket was 12 feet high?

Changing the landscape wouldn't change what Woods or Jordan was destined to become.

Woods was remarkable over the weekend, especially considering he limped around Torrey Pines, the longest major-tournament course ever, on a bad knee.

But just as basketball and baseball injuries aren't football and hockey injuries, golf and tennis injuries aren't basketball and baseball injuries.

Think of how many times Jordan kept playing after twisting this or that, suffering food poisoning, enduring other physical ailments.

Jordan's competition didn't have to keep a distance the way golfers have to with Woods.

Instead, Bill Laimbeer and Xavier McDaniel and other basketball thugs aimed elbows at every ache on Jordan's body.

Golf is a gentleman's game and basketball isn't.

What Tiger Woods does is remarkable and he is paid well for it.

What Michael Jordan did was priceless.