Tiger Woods: PGA Championship Set to Be First Showdown with Rory McIlroy?

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Tiger Woods has won the PGA Championship four times in his career, the last of which came in 2007.

Other than his incredible triumph at the 2008 US Open on one leg, the 2007 PGA was his last major victory and it may be the scene of his major return after sitting out this year's US Open and Open Championship.

In that time span Woods has become the target of "attacks" in the golf hierarchy, many saying he'll never be the same.

Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy was brilliant through three rounds at Augusta before unraveling on Sunday, bounced back to dominate the US Open with a runaway, eight-stroke win and has since been anointed as the "next Tiger Woods" by too many people.

There may never be a "next Tiger Woods", McIlroy is now nine strokes behind the current leader at Royal St. George's and it seems more and more likely that he will come into the PGA just as hungry as Tiger.

And this now sets up an interesting showdown - potentially - between the new guy and the "older" guy if Woods is to return. According to Pro Golf Talk:

Shipnuck reports Woods is rumored to play in the Greenbrier Classic at the end of July at the classic West Virginia resort. He would join a field headlined presently by Phil Mickelson.
Shipnuck then said Woods would play his usual August two-step of the WGC Bridgestone Invitational and PGA Championship in consecutive weeks, making for a 3-week road trip for the former world No. 1.

Woods kept us in limbo about his availability for the Open Championship down to the wire, and it seems like there is enough time for him to come back and effectively compete for a win at the PGA in a few weeks time.

That means Woods will have one, maybe two, warm-up tournaments to fine tune his game before he steps into the tee box for his next major.

We don't know what Tiger we will see, and we're not sure what McIlroy we will see either, but what we do know is that the sport of golf could definitely use the boost from a Tiger-Rory battle. And for the sake of Tiger's career, this might be exactly what he needs too, someone to force him to elevate his game.

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