Tiger Woods Looks to Finish off a Dominant Season on the PGA Tour

Tiger Woods may not have won a major in 2012, which of course was and always has been his ultimate goal, but he will have the opportunity over the next five weeks to seize virtually every other notable PGA Tour award.

Woods enters the FedEx Cup playoffs with three wins and four other top-10 finishes throughout the 2012 season. He leads the money list, the FedEx Cup point standings and leads the tour in scoring average.

At this pace, Woods has a very realistic chance of capturing the Money title, the FedEx Cup title, the Player of the Year award, the Comeback Player of the Year award and the Vardon Trophy for the tour’s lowest adjusted scoring average.

If Woods were to win at least one, but likely two out of the next four events, he would almost certainly secure this small closet of 2012 awards, not to mention a $10 million pay day in late September.

This would conclude an incredibly dominant, albeit major-less season for Woods, and would essentially bring him right back to the top of the game.

It would also be very difficult to argue that a player with four or five PGA Tour wins, the FedEx Cup title, the Player of the Year award, the Comeback Player of the Year award and the Vardon Trophy is not either the best or very close to the best player in the world, no matter what the computer-generated World Golf Rankings may say.

Woods' only equal in the game at the moment would of course be young Rory McIlory, who has now won two majors in two years by a combined margin of 16 strokes. McIlory will likely be Woods’ biggest obstacle to overcome as he attempts to secure a third FedEx Cup title in six years.

The mainstream sports media tend to hone in on just four events each year, which are of course the four major championships. Therefore, while he’d never say it publicly, Woods himself is likely thinking that the 2012 season has already been a failure due to his inability to add to his major title tally.

However, true golf fans know that a golf career is a marathon and not a sprint. Jack Nicklaus won 18 majors over the course of 24 years.

If Woods were to win two out of the next four events, true golf fans would also have a difficult time arguing that Woods has not once again reclaimed his position as the best player in the world heading into the 2013 season. That is, a season in which he will almost certainly need to win at least one major if he has any aspirations of reaching the summit of Mt. Nicklaus.

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