By Elias Sports Bureau, Inc.

With Tiger Woods earning his 50th TOUR victory only months after his 30th birthday, we’d like to playfully put that milestone in perspective relative to the magical numbers of other sports. We already know that Woods ranks seventh on the all-time wins list. So by determining the levels that correspond to all-time seventh-place ranks in various categories in other sports, we can estimate what Tiger’s numbers might be today if he participated in sports other than golf. So if you can let your imagination wander a little bit, here’s what we came up with:

If Tiger were a pitcher in Major League Baseball, he’d have around 350 wins right now. Consider that Roger Clemens recently earned his 343rd career victory, a week prior to his 44th birthday. Clemens ranks eighth on the all-time list, so Tiger would already be ahead of him. The career leader in wins is the immortal Cy Young, who accumulated a staggering 511 wins from 1890 through 1911. He earned his 350th win in 1902 at age 35.

If Tiger were a home run hitter, he’d have around 575 homers right now. That’s 12 more than Reggie Jackson had in his entire career. Hank Aaron, the reigning home run king, finished his career with 755 long balls. He reached the 575 mark at age 36.

What if Tiger played football? Let’s compare him with one of the most statistically significant athlete in NFL history -- Jerry Rice. Rice finished his career with 22,895 receiving yards, nearly 8,000 more than the closest challenger to his throne, Tim Brown, who finished with 14,934 receiving yards. If Tiger was a wide receiver like Rice, he’d have around 13,000 yards right now. Rice got to that plateau during the 1994 season at age 32.

How about some hoops? We wonder how Tiger’s buddy Charles Barkley would opine on this one. Regardless, here are the hard numbers. Tiger would have scored around 27,000 by now. That’s 3,000 more points than Sir Charles scored during his career and only 5,000 shy of Michael Jordan’s career tally. The career leader in points is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who finished his career with 38,387. Kareem reached the 27,000-point plateau in 1982 at age 34.

That brings us to hockey, and perhaps the most compelling comparison. Many experts have compared Tiger’s dominance on TOUR to Wayne Gretzky’s dominance in hockey. Both were childhood prodigies, followed by the press at an early age and heralded as “chosen ones” even before they played in their first pro events. Tiger won his first Major at age 21. Gretzky won the first of his record 10 scoring titles at age 20. In both cases, there was little doubt that these players would dominate the next decade in their respective sports.

Gretzky finished his career with an astounding 2,857 points, smashing Gordie Howe’s longtime mark by over 1,000 points. We surmise that if Tiger were an NHL player, he’d have 1,700 points right now -- only 150 points away from Gordie Howe. Gretzky scored his 1,700th point back in November of 1988, two months shy of his 28th birthday.

You could argue that as much Tiger has dominated golf, nobody has ever dominated a sport like the Great One. However, there’s one big difference. By age 30, Gretzky’s best days were already behind him. He did win two scoring titles after that point, but that hardly compares to the eight that he won prior to turning 30. Conversely, some argue that Tiger is just hitting his stride and that he will enjoy more success in his 30s than he did in his 20s, as do most PGA TOUR professionals.

This brings us back to the PGA TOUR. After winning his 50th TOUR event on Sunday the Buick Open, we wonder where he might finish. It’s likely that, barring the unforeseen, Tiger will pass Sam Snead’s mark of 82 career wins. In fact, if we conservatively estimate that Tiger will continue his pace of five wins a year, he will pass Snead in about six years. It’s scary to think that he could be the career leader at age 36, isn’t it? By the way, Snead didn’t win his 50th tournament until he was 37. It’s likely that Tiger will finish with at least 120 TOUR wins to his credit.

So what does this all mean? We’ve demonstrated Tiger’s dominance and compared him to the greats in some other sports. We’ve shown that no player, other than perhaps Wayne Gretzky, was able to climb the rungs of immortality in his sport faster than Tiger. But there is no question that Tiger is on the escalator to the top of the career PGA TOUR wins list. And every other golfer is taking the stairs.