PGA: Can Any of the Young Guns on Tour Challenge Tiger Woods?

When 22-year-old Anthony Kim lapped the field at last week’s Wachovia Championship, he became the youngest player in six years to win a PGA Tour event.

But Anthony Kim is only one of many young players who have begun to make a major impact on the PGA Tour.

The season is still in its early stages and already nine players under the age of 30 have won a tournament. That represents 45 percent of the PGA tournaments this season, including a win at the Masters by 28-year-old Trevor Immelman and after day one of the Players Championship, known as the fifth Major, 28-year-old Sergio Garcia leads the field.

Players such as Adam Scott, Sean O’Hair, Justin Rose, Trevor Immelman, Anthony Kim and Paul Casey have been making a name for themselves in recent years. But it appears that their games are finally starting to mature to the point where they are consistent enough to put together four very good rounds of golf in any given tournament.

Now, the big question on everyone’s mind is whether or not any of these young players have the talent to consistently challenge Tiger Woods.

Will any of these players be the Hogan to the Wood's Nelson?

Will any of these players be the Nicklaus to the Wood's Palmer?

Will any of these players be able to consistently duke it out with Woods on Sundays at the majors?

It is doubtful.

Tiger Woods is a player that comes along once in a lifetime; once in a generation at the very least.

Although there is a plethora of young talent on the PGA Tour right now, none of them are good enough to consistently challenge Woods week in and week out.

Challenging Tiger Woods takes more than just talent; it also requires an extremely strong mental game and not to mention nerves of steel.

Challenging Woods in a major comes at a price. It comes with unrelenting media coverage, huge galleries and everything that player does is magnified many times over when challenging Woods.

Trevor Immelman defeated Woods at the Masters, went on a whirlwind media tour,  proceeded to miss two straight cuts and had to withdraw from the Players Championship due to an illness.

Sergio Garcia has been neck-and-neck with Woods heading into the weekend at several majors and each and every time Garcia has fallen by the wayside.

Players such as Scott, Rose, Casey, Immelman, O’Hair and Kim have extremely bright futures on the PGA Tour.

They will win many tournaments and earn massive amounts of money.

These talented young players will indeed make Woods’ life more difficult as they continue to mature in the coming years.

But making Woods' life more difficult is about as much of an impact as these young players will have on Woods' career and his quest to break Nicklaus’s record of 18 majors.

They have simply added to the number of players on tour that have the ability to challenge Woods on any given week.   

As talented as many of these great young players are and as exciting as it would be to see a worthy opponent to Woods, there is little hope that any of them can consistently challenge Woods the way Hogan and Nelson or Nicklaus and Palmer used to battle it out.