Imagine Earl Woods choosing to put a baseball bat rather than a golf club into the hands of young Eldrick, his toddler son.
How different would golf be if Tiger Woods, who turns 40 on 30 December, had chosen to play something else?
As the ailing 14-time major champion struggles to swing a club again, he can celebrate this landmark birthday by reflecting that no-one has had a bigger impact on the game.
Would modern-day golf be as athletic or back in the Olympics without his influence? "I doubt it," European Ryder Cup captain Darren Clarke told the BBC.
"All sports progress, all sports move forward. Tennis has changed immensely as well over the years.
"But golf was somewhat slower to adapt to all that stuff. With all the technology we have now, fitness has become a huge part of it and I think Tiger led the way."
The 47-year-old Clarke has played most of his career with Woods as a great friend and rival.
"Because he played so well, so consistently, everybody was trying to figure out what he did. Whatever he was doing was right, so he led the way on many fronts," the 2011 Open champion added.
Another of those fronts was Woods' economic impact. In 1996, when he burst on to the scene, PGA Tour purses totalled more than $100m for the first time.
"He was more dominant over the guys he was playing against than I ever was over the ones I played against," said Jack Nicklaus
In the previous six years they had grown at a rate of 3.4%. Then Woods won the 1997 Masters by an astonishing 12 strokes.
It was the big bang moment, the first of 14 major triumphs for the then 21 year old.
The last of those came at the 2008 US Open and by then the PGA Tour schedule was worth $292m. Prize money inflation ran at 9.3% in that period.
"The results are astonishing," said American political scientist Roger Pielke Jr, who carried out extensive research into what he termed the "Tiger Woods effect".
"Tiger effectively more than doubled the prize money for every other golfer, adding billions of dollars to fellow players' pockets."
Woods' greatest rival has been five-time major champion Phil Mickelson, who fully appreciates the way this trailblazer brought so much more money to golf.
"It's unbelievable, the growth of this game - and Tiger has been the instigator," Mickelson said.
"He's brought increased ratings, increased sponsors, increased interest and we have all benefited."
The decade of domination
Players may have been richer but many were shattered by Woods' brilliance during his years of domination.
Colin Montgomerie insists one of the reasons he never won a major was that his opportunities were so limited by the prolific American. An in-form Woods only needed to turn up to win the biggest titles.
There was a sense of inevitability at the 2001 Masters when he completed a two-stroke win over David Duval to hold all four majors simultaneously.
No-one else has achieved such a feat and the run began at Pebble Beach in 2000 when Woods won his first US Open with the greatest golf ever played. He was the only man to break par on a course considered too tight for his driving game.
Woods put that erroneous notion to bed with a brilliant opening 65 before finishing 15 strokes clear of the field.
Here are some of the stellar names, with their major tallies, who finished in the top 20 in California that week: Ernie Els (4), Miguel Angel Jimenez (0), Lee Westwood (0), Padraig Harrington (3), Duval (1), Stewart Cink (1), Vijay Singh (3), Retief Goosen (2), Michael Campbell (1), Jose Maria Olazabal (2), Mickelson (5) and David Toms (1).
Woods' decade of dominance
Tournament Age Tournament Age
1997 Masters 21 2002 US Open 26
1999 US PGA 23 2005 Masters 29
2000 US Open 24 2005 Open 29
2000 Open 24 2006 Open 30
2000 US PGA 24 2006 US PGA 30
2001 Masters 25 2007 US PGA 31
2002 Masters 26 2008 US Open 32
How much higher might those figures have been had Woods not beaten these players so regularly and so convincingly? Add to the list Spain's Sergio Garcia, surely a major champion in any other era.
Following the Pebble Beach triumph, Woods claimed the Open at St Andrews by eight strokes and repelled the plucky Bob May in a play-off to land the PGA at Valhalla. He held all four majors with an average winning margin of 6.5 strokes.
The inspiration for a new generation
"He was a phenomenon," Clarke said. "He was the young kid coming out to show us what he could do.
"The interest that he brought to the game, the youngsters that he brought to the game, his level of fitness - he brought so many different facets to the game.
"I'm certainly very fortunate to have played in his era."
Rory McIlroy has referred to Tiger Woods as being on "the last few holes" of his career
Woods was golf's poster boy. He was different - a black man in an overwhelmingly white sport - and he became the inspiration for the players who populate the top of the current world rankings.
"What Tiger Woods has done for golf, I'm not sure anyone would do again," four-time major champion Rory McIlroy told the BBC.
"Not just how unbelievably talented he was, but what he stood for, where he came from. He brought a whole new demographic into golf and sort of made golf cool again for kids."
McIlroy, along with fellow top-three stars Jordan Spieth and Jason Day, are prime examples of the excellence and athleticism Woods brought to the game.
At the height of his powers Woods transcended golf and was the biggest sports star on the planet. He was capable of superhuman achievements like winning the 2008 US Open while suffering a broken leg.
Despite his rather reluctant and dour public persona, Woods seemed untouchable in every respect.
The fall from grace
Apparently happily married with two beautiful children, once his leg was fixed, he would surely go on to smash Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 major victories. He was only 32 with a long career of continued domination ahead of him.
A year later, though, he stumbled to defeat by YE Yang at the PGA at Hazeltine. Woods had never before been beaten from the front in a major and his aura was severely shaken by the unheralded Korean.
He was also hiding the secret of a string of extra-marital affairs that dramatically became public knowledge after he crashed his car on Thanksgiving night just three months later.
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