What's the hardest thing to do in sports?

text size

Sure, winning eight gold medals at the Olympics is tough. Or winning 18 majors on the PGA TOUR -- that's something you don't see every day. Champions Tour media official Phil Stambaugh recently asked the pros what they thought was the toughest thing to do in sports. Here's what they said:

Loren Roberts: I would say repeating at anything regardless of the sport, whether it be a World Series, Super Bowl, etc.

Bruce Fleisher: Finishing the job. In any sport, when it's your time and you have the opportunity, you've got to finish.

Gary Player: .Winning the Triple Crown in horse racing. It's got to be done in six weeks and the fact that it was last done 30 years ago tells you how hard it is. In most other sports, records are broken in a short period of time.

Jeff Sluman: Winning the U.S. Open basically on one leg.

Curtis Strange: Trying to hit a baseball against a major league pitcher.

Scott Simpson: Climbing Mt. Everest without a reserve oxygen tank.

Tim Simpson: To play totally relaxed. I've talked to Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Mike Schmidt about it. Any athlete performs at his best when the mind is the quietest. That's all sports psychology is -- trying to quiet the mind to let your body play instinctively.

John Cook: For me, I've always been amazed by pole-vaulting. How do you launch yourself vertically almost 20 feet in the air and go over a metal bar? I can't get anything about it.

Jay Haas: I think retiring is probably the hardest thing. When you compete at a high level for any length of time, it's hard to walk away from whatever sport you play.

Chip Beck: I think making a hole-in-one on a par-4. I think Andrew Magee and myself are the only two to do it in a Tour-sponsored event. That's pretty rare. More rare than when I shot the 59!