For those wrapped up in college basketball today... Tiger Woods just won his ninth golf tournament in ten tries, and his fifth straight in this young 2008 season. He's won every tournament he's played in since last September.
And he didn't just win. No, that's too easy.
He won in pretty spectacular fashion. Let's recap how, shall we?
Well, for starters, after the second round... he basically wasn't in contention.
Then, sometime Saturday morning, he bumped into Arnold Palmer (for whom this tournament is named). According to Tiger, Arnie was pointed in his comments: "'He told me to get off my butt and play a good round,' Woods said."
Woods responded with a 66, on a day when many on the leaderboard saw blustery conditions cause a drop in their scores, and ended up in a five-way tie for the lead.
And today, he kept things interesting... refusing to pull ahead by 5 strokes like everyone thought he would.
On the final hole, with Bart Bryant at -9 and already in the clubhouse, Tiger decided to make his move. Despite being 0-for-21 for the tournamnet on putts over 20 feet in length, Tiger drilled his birdie attempt on the 18th hole from 25 feet away for the dramatic win.
Tiger's a lot like a house cat who catches a bug.
The cat is only interested in the pursuit... in the game being interesting. Once he's caught the bug, he's bored. So he lets the bug go. He may even flick at it with his paw, scooting the bug across the floor, encouraging it to make another escape attempt... only to pounce on it once more as soon as it moves. The bug is so overmatched that the cat has to handicap itself to stay interested.
That's how it felt watching Tiger win this tournament. As though Vijay and Bart Bryant were the bugs... lulled into thinking they actually had a shot at winning. Only to have Tiger's paw come smashing down on them all with a fairy tale birdie putt on the final hole.
Oh yeah, he is now also tied with Ben Hogan at 64 career wins—third on the all-time list.
As Tiger walked off the green, cameras caught him bumping into Arnold Palmer himself, who—if my lip reading is any good—smiled broadly and said, "What else is new?" before embracing Woods.
See, even when Tiger toys with the competition and keeps it close, winning only in spectacular fashion with a final-hole monster birdie putt... it's still just business as usual. I'm really not sure if there's anything he can do to wow us anymore. He could hit the ball one time off the first tee, and in a cartoon-like way have the ball ricochet and bounce so that it goes in every hole in order, thereby finishing the course with a score of 1... and we'd still some of us yawn and say, "What's that? Tiger won again? Ho hum."
He wins so often that we forget: he is, quite simply, the most extraordinary golfer who ever lived.
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