Has any one person ever controlled a sport's viewership like Tiger does with golf? We have legendary athletes right now (LeBron, Messi, Federer, Brady) but none of them change their sport like Tiger does.
He doesn't really have an equal in affecting viewership for a sport that otherwise goes largely unnoticed. To be fair to your other examples, it's considerably tougher to impact a team sport, though.
While I was considering possible parallels, I tried to think of seldom-watched individual sports like tennis, bowling and Olympic sports. Tennis has had some superstars, but I don't know that any of them has necessarily made someone that doesn't normally watch tennis to all of a sudden start watching it. I've tuned into watch Lance Armstrong (yeah, I know) and Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps compete when I otherwise wouldn't give their sports much notice, but Tiger still leads them all by a pretty significant amount.
Edit: I'd add that a horse threatening the Triple Crown also garners additional attention for a sport, but it's usually just for one season.