Woods' winning spin helps keep his streak alive

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Can Tiger Woods win the Grand Slam? Can Tiger Woods win 11 consecutive PGA Tour events, which would tie the record held by the great Byron Nelson? Can Tiger Woods win every tournament he plays this year? Such questions are no longer unthinkable -- not the way Woods has been playing, not the way Woods has been winning."What he's doing now, you can't even fathom it," Bart Bryant said Sunday after Woods drained a 25-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole to beat him by one stroke at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, where the world's best golfer won his fifth consecutive PGA Tour event. "You just can't explain it. It's just incredible."Just what he did today is more evidence of this weird zone he's in. And he's been in it his whole life."Maybe not his whole life.But most of it.Certainly, Woods has the talent and the drive, the swing and touch, the savvy and the smarts.But he's also got something else.He's got the balls.They're softer than most.And they spin.More than most.Which is exactly how he likes them -- because they enable him to better-control his shots."I've always told the guy at Nike: Build me a ball that spins, and it'll be my responsibility to take it off. That's my job. You just make sure the spin is on the ball and I'll take it off," Woods was saying Wednesday at the Doral Golf Resort near Miami, where he hopes to extend his winning streak with another triumph at this week's World Golf Championship event."I'll hit more club. I'll do something to take that spin off. But I want to be able to be aggressive around the greens."Especially with courses getting tougher all over the Tour.Yes, his length off the tee helps. But it's his accuracy from the fairways -- as well as his grit on the greens -- that has made him unbeatable in 2008."With them lengthening the golf courses, I can't do what I used to do," Woods said, referring to the Tour's Tiger-proofing since his amazing run from 1999 through 2001, when he won 21 times, including five major championships. "You have to change your strategy. You have to adapt."I know they've made a conscious effort to make the rough higher and narrow the fairways down, and we're hitting the ball 20 yards longer, on average, since then. So it's becoming even more difficult to put the ball in play. And then the greens have gotten faster. . . . They've made a concerted effort to make the golf courses more difficult, which means we just have to play smarter."And no one in golf thinks his way around the course better than Woods.There is no shot he can't hit.There is no challenge he can't overcome."Tiger is Tiger; he's the best in golf," said Craig Parry, who won the Ford Championship at Doral in 2004. "He's a long way in front of everyone else."And while he remains unrivaled in today's game, he's forcing everyone else to get better or get out."When Tiger came out -- '96, '97 -- look at the level that guys were playing then and look at it now," said Sean O'Hair, who played in the final pairing with Woods last Sunday. "It's night and day. He has made us step up a notch."The players out here are better because of him. I honestly believe that. He's obviously going to keep doing what he's doing. He's going to keep dominating. But we're not going to lay down and say, 'Well, that's just the way it is.' We're going to try and get better and try to compete with him."I mean, that's our jobs."None of them, though, have been able to stop Woods' assault on history.Woods' victory at Bay Hill was the 64th of his Tour career, moving him into a tie with the legendary Ben Hogan. He already had surpassed Arnold Palmer (62), Byron Nelson (52) and Billy Casper (51), who in the early 1970s became just the sixth player for reach the 50-win plateau.He needs to win only nine more tournaments to catch Jack Nicklaus and it seems inevitable that he'll eventually move past Sam Snead's 82 victories and become the Tour's all-time winningest golfer.But even now, when everyone's talking about his chances at Hogan's streak and Snead's record, Woods continues to keep his eye on a greater target: Nicklaus' 18 professional major championships.So while he said winning 11 consecutive events "would be the ultimate," he didn't really mean it."You can win every tournament for the entire year, but if you go 0-for-4 in the major championships, it's just . . . well, you don't really get remembered for number of wins in a career. It's the number of major championships."Woods is only 32, already, he has won 13 of them. And he'll be everyone's favorite heading into The Masters next month at Augusta National.But, given his past performances at this year's other major sites, you also have to like his chances at Torrey Pines (U.S. Open), Royal Birkdale (British Open) and Oakland Hills (PGA Championship)."Is he beatable? I don't think he's going to win every tournament," said Camillo Villegas, one of the Tour's rising young stars. "Yes, he has -- the last five. But if he wins every tournament this year, I guess the rest of us have got to quit."Or get some softer balls.The ones that spin.(Ray McNulty is sports columnist for Scripps Treasure Coast (Fla.) Newspapers, The Stuart News, Fort Pierce Tribune and Vero Beach Press Journal. On the Web at www.tcpalm.com.)