You really don't think Tiger Woods isn't the PGA Tour player of the year, do you?
Well, plenty of people may still feel that way, because he didn't win a major championship this year. But he took the BMW Championship in Lemont, Ill. Sunday by eight shots, his sixth PGA Tour win of the year.
His PGA Tour colleagues will surely award Woods player of the year honor after the season ends.
The Jack Nicklaus award that goes to the winner surely won't and shouldn't go to anybody else, even if Woods didn't win a major in a season for the first time since 2004.
All he did at the BMW was dominate the course and his fellow players in a way that was almost laughable.
"We're playing in Tiger's arena," Steve Stricker, the winner of the Deutsche Bank Championship that came before the BMW, said there. "We all know who the guy is out here."
Woods shot 62-68 on the weekend at the Cog Hill club near Chicago to finish at 19-under-par 265. He moved the ball around when he had to, hitting big hooks and slices to circumvent trouble and to reach certain pins. He was a master of improvisation, as when he slung a 110-yard shot from behind a tree on the par-five 9th to within 10 feet of the hole.
The ball took a left turn en route, and Woods made the putt. No surprise. It was a treat to watch. Woods loved bringing off the shot.
He's a player, that is, somebody who "plays" the game. So do others.
But he does it so much better than anybody else when he's on his game.
Woods at his best can't be beaten He can't be beaten when he's at his best because his best is better than any other golfer's best.
It's easy to get hyperbolic about Woods, and we in the media have been criticized plenty for supposedly doing that.
But he's that good. Woods had reconstructive knee surgery a year ago June after winning the U.S. Open, and then didn't play a tournament for eight months while he recuperated. Now he's won six times this year.
He's won 71 PGA Tour events, including 14 majors, in total.
Woods is only 33 years old. He's two wins behind Jack Nicklaus and 11 behind Sam Snead on the list of most wins by a player.
But he didn't win a major this year. That's all he cares about, right?
Right, in the sense that a win in a major matters to him far more than a win, or multiple wins, in any tournament.
Still, this year has been different because he was coming back from a serious injury. He's disappointed that he didn't win a major, but pleased at what he's done.
Woods said after his final round 68 at the BMW that it's been a long road. "But I got it back. I've been very consistent all year."
As for player of the year, can he really be that guy without winning a major? He's said many times that he judges his seasons based solely on whether he won a major.
"I've said that in the past but I didn't have ACL reconstruction, either," Woods said. "It usually takes a while for an athlete to come back, and most guys, or some of the guys who have had it in our sport have not gone on to have the years I've had this year."
A player of the year, that is.
(Contact Lorne Rubenstein at rube(at)sympatico.ca.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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