Lefty, rivals may regret tugging at Tiger's tail

By JIM LITKE
AP Sports Columnist

Bookmakers the world over made Tiger Woods the odds-on favorite
to win this week’s Australian Masters.

No surprise there. As anyone who’s backed him or been lucky
enough to draw his name in the office calcutta can attest,
that’s rarely a bad bet. Yet given Woods’ form in the final
round of a few tournaments recently, the wager might seem a bit
optimistic.

Or maybe it’s based in part on who won’t be there: Phil
Mickelson.

Woods’ reputation as a closer has been dented of late, and the
left-hander has done most of the whacking. Mickelson clobbered
Woods in a head-to-head matchup last week in the final round of
the HSBC Champions in China, and came from off the pace in late
September to steal the Tour Championship in Atlanta from Woods
and final-round leader Kenny Perry.

Rather than press his luck on a third continent, though,
Mickelson opted to return home and spend most of the next three
months looking after his family. Both his wife, Amy, and mother,
Mary, underwent treatment for breast cancer during the year, and
have received favorable outlooks since.

One can only speculate what Mickelson’s year would have been
like without that hardship, but it’s worth noting he was
arguably the best player in the game both before he took time
off in June to help care for Amy, and again as the season winds
to a close.

Had the back-and-forth between Mickelson and Woods taken place
in the middle of the season, or better yet, with something on
the line in one or more of the majors, golf would have had a
version of the Palmer-Nicklaus rivalry it’s been clamoring for
the past dozen or so years. Instead, the hope becomes they’ll
pick up in 2010 where they left off.

It should surprise no one that the short stick is behind both
Mickelson’s resurgence and Woods’ late-round troubles.

A few lessons from putting guru Dave Stockton in early fall made
the left-hander rock-solid from close-in, especially down the
stretch. Clutch putting has been the bedrock of Woods’ success;
the only player who’s made as many tough putts over the course
of a career is the same one Tiger is most often compared to:
Nicklaus.

Woods certainly made his share this year; no one wins six times
on the PGA Tour and posts another 14 top-10 finishes without
doing that. It’s even more remarkable, considering he started
the year coming off reconstructive knee surgery.

Still, in the majors – the tournaments that matter most to Woods
- he was uncharacteristically shaky, and never moreso than in
the final round of the PGA Championship at Hazeltine. There,
Woods squandered a two-shot lead against unheralded Y.E. Yang,
and lost for the first time in a major when leading going into
the final round.

As much as anything, that singular defeat occasioned talk that
it was possible to tug on Superman’s cape and get away with it.
Even Nicklaus felt compelled to weigh in recently, saying that
while he expected Woods would add the five majors needed to
surpass his own record of 18 sometime over the next 2-3 years,
“he still has to do it, it isn’t a given.”

No, it’s not. But as the bookmakers can vouch from experience,
you almost never take the under on any bet that involves Woods.
For all the talk about lean times, Woods has won four of the
last 12 majors – more than Mickelson or any of his peers have
won in their careers – and finished runner-up in four others.
When he says, “The whole idea is to give yourself a chance in
each and every one,” it’s far from idle talk.

We’ll have to wait until next season for proof, of course, but
the early signs are promising. Woods has made a habit of roaring
back whenever a challenger to the throne gets hot, and he’s
always regarded Mickelson as a special case in the past. Plus,
the majors this year feature at least two venues – Pebble Beach
for the U.S. Open and St. Andrews for the British – where Woods
has played some withering golf in the past.

The best rarely lack for motivation, and Woods is no doubt
already taking names. During a break in a recent practice round,
someone suggested to Tiger that one way to measure how dominant
he’d become was that his losing the PGA Championship made more
news than Yang winning.

Woods surely understood he was being paid a compliment.
Competitor that he is, though, Woods couldn’t resist pretending
it was yet one more slight.

“So, you’re writing me off, huh?” he teased.

Just the opposite. Pencil him in for at least two majors in 2010
and take it to the bank.

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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated
Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org