Time for a list!

I didn’t do a survey on this. This is a hunch sorta thing.

Who are the 10 best-known active American athletes in … the United Arab Emirates?

Who travels? Who rates? Who stirs interest?

Who plays a sport that a country that is mostly Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs, Filipinos and Britons (in that order) … might vaguely recognize?

Remember, all sports (like politics) are local, and even some of the American sports icons have zero name recognition in this neighborhood.(Sorry, Brett Favre.)

So, my best guess at a top 10 from, mostly, conversations and reading our sports section …

10. Umm, well … You said 10? Ten is a lot.

9. Lorena Ochoa. What? She’s from Mexico?Oh. Never mind.

8. Hmm. Give me a sec …

7.  Michael Phelps! Yeah. Michael Phelps, the funny-looking swimmer guy who won all those Olympic medals. Has he done anything lately? We’re already forgetting him because for most of us in the UAE the Olympics are the weird sports that Westerners and the Chinese like.

6. Usain Bolt. World’s Fastest Man. Sure. Wait. He’s Jamaican? Yes. But isn’t Jamaica part of the United States? I’m pretty sure it is. No? Maybe it ought to be, but it isn’t. Sorry.

5. Andy Roddick. Men’s tennis comes through Dubai every year. And tennis is played in the area. India has some competent players,  for example. Andy Roddick. Sure. He’s no Andy Murray, but …

4. Serena Williams. Women’s tennis comes through here, too. And Serena is fairly memorable in any environment.

3. Phil Mickelson. Golf! We like golf here in the UAE. The whole country is a giant sand trap. Or looks like what Palm Springs did before they put in 100 golf courses. (They’re on the way.) And Mickelson is pretty good, right? The Masters? Sure. Yes, we have heard of him.

2. LeBron James. Sorry, Kobe. It’s LeBron. I don’t know how this happened, but we know LeBron. We barely know you. Even if you sell more jerseys. People who know anything about basketball know LeBron, and after that … they get hazy really quick.

1. Tiger Woods. We know golf, remember? And we know multi-ethnic. And we know scandal. Tiger is the best-known American athlete half a world away because he’s got it all covered. For good or, lately, ill. Congrats! His remaining sponsors ought to be ecstatic.

Sometime soon, we will come back with the 10 best-known athletes here in the UAE. See if any of you back home can guess … any of them!