sport

Tiger, Tiger burning bright

Tiger Woods

On Thursday the rampant World No 1, winner of the last two majors and the last three tournaments he has played in, will tee off in the R7.5 million WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.

Two weeks later he'll head over the Atlantic to Wentworth to play in his first HSBC World Match play championship since losing in the final to friend and former neighbour Mark O"Meara in 1988.

Then he'll immediately skip across the Irish Sea to join the American team in their quest to break the great American Ryder Cup drought at the Arnold Palmer course at the K Club just one week later.

Now that is not your usual Tiger Program, is it?

In the past he has tended to travel as little as possible outside of his native continent and has almost always tried to fit in biggish breaks between his biggest tournaments.

But not this time - and you know something?

In the mood he's in right now, don't be surprised if he is a winner in all three events and takes his winnings this season from it's current $6.351 million to well over $8.

This despite the fact that there's no money, or none that we know of anyway, for winning the Ryder Cup.

Tiger has invariably been at his best when the titles and the money are at their biggest as witnessed by his dominance in the last decade of both the majors and the four WGC events which you could rightly refer to as 2nd division majors if their million dollar first-place purses and elite fields mean anything.

He's now won 12 majors and 11 WGC events in less than 10 years.

In truth no man should be able to go out in the highly competitive world of 21st Century professional golf and win five events in five starts with just a week or two in between - and it's probably expecting too much even of him to succeed in such an endeavor.

But the man is producing golf of such quality right now that anything is possible.

Yes even spear-heading a Ryder Cup team that is as lopsided as the US's, packed as it is at the top with super-stars but thinning considerably to four, not very scary, untried and untested new 'caps" bringing up the rear.

And yes, doing this after what could be a hugely tiring week at Wentworth - a week his detractors are seeing as being another rash flash of selfishness that he should have avoided.

I wouldn't have dared to say this a few years ago when Tiger was making what seemed to be silly statements to the press about preferring to win solo world championships than to be part of a US team victory in the Ryder Cup.

This because I think this overtly honest young man really meant what he was saying at the time.

Since then he has mellowed, however, not so much on the course where he still comes across as a ruthless, focused antagonist who can't be too much fun to play with - after Sunday's proceeding at Medinah, luckless Luke Donald may be able to back me on that - but certainly so off the course.

Perhaps, beautiful blond Elin has had something to do with it, or maybe a caddy with the ability to persuade him to loosen up and go bungee jumping and auto racing has to be thanked, but whatever the reason, the crouching Tiger of the past has come down from his perch and is no longer the ambitious, stern-faced loner he used to be.

When he says he can't wait, in tandem with his team-mates, to get a crack at Ian Woosnam's Europeans at the K Club, I genuinely think he means it this time - and that's hardly good news for Monty and co.

But right now his sights will certainly be set on the WGC-Bridgstone Invitational and the unforgiving South Course at Ohio's Firestone Country Club, a venue that has major golf stamped all over it.

The star-studded field includes all the big tournament winners, the top 50 in the Official World Golf Rankings and all members of the most recent Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup teams.

Stewart Cink, talking to PGATour.com described The South Course, called 'The Monster' by some, as a "terrific golf course" and this week's WGC tournament as a "great event".

Phlegmatic Retief Goosen has also been sufficiently stirred so as to rate Firestone in the same league as Medinah.

"Medinah and Firestone are a lot alike", he said

A year or two ago Goosen, and, for that matter, fellow South African Ernie Els, would have been well suited to a course where, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, but they have not quite been up there this year and if the master of tough is going to have any kind of duel on his hands, it might well come from some of his Ryder Cup team-mates like Phil Mickelson, the World No 2, Jim Furyk, the No 3 or Chris di Marco, a gutsy fighter who was only held back by one stoke when Woods won this event at Firestone last year.

England's Lee Westwood has not yet qualified for the European Ryder Cup team set to be finalised in two weeks time, but, perhaps because he has everything to play for, he is being seen as one of Europe's major threats to Woods this week with Sergio Garcia and Luke Donald as other overseas-born invaders who might vie for the top spot on the Firestone leaderboard.. Donald, of course, will only come into the picture if he has managed to shrug away the psychologically gruelling final day he had at Medinah playing alongside the peerless and unsmiling Woods.

US Open Champion Geoff Olgilvy and young guns Adam Scott of Australia and Trevor Immelman of South Africa might also be worth watching - as might be Davis Love III.

The tall, lanky American's unexpected Ryder Cup snub by US captain Tom Lehman has certainly given him something to prove - and this at a time when his game is on the up and up.

But in the end they and the rest of the high-quality 80-strong field will, in all probability, have to once again play second fiddle to a defending champion in top form who has won four times at Firestone, has never finished lower than 4th and where his intimate knowledge of the course currently has him a whopping 62-under par in all his appearances there.

It's going to take a Herculean effort to stop him marching to a 4th straight win in four starts.

Make no mistake about that.

FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF EDITOR NEVILLE LECK