Advent 7

I have allowed myself only two sporting heroes in this list - maybe a fuller collection will make a future calendar.

So it is that I have to reject my two favourite male English rugby players, Tony Neary and Richard Hill alongside the matchless Maggie Alphonsi. Instead we have the incomparable Jack Nicklaus.

Nicklaus won 18 major championships (the test by which he himself asked to be measured) between 1962 and 1986. That differentiates him from the challengers to his primacy, Hogan and Player. On top of that he has become the world's foremost modern course architect. He has done all of this while maintaining a solid marriage (cf Woods and Faldo) and deporting himself with an unaffected humility that eschews false modesty. The greatest.