Tiger Goes For Six Consecutive

By Andrew Both
SportsTicker Golf Writer

MIAMI (Ticker) -- As Tiger Woods takes his six-month winning streak into this week's World Golf Championships event, his fellow professionals can only look on in awe at his accomplishments.

With six official victories - five in the United States and one on the European Tour - Woods' peers are starting to wonder if he'll ever be beaten again. They admire every facet of his game, but it's perhaps the simplest part of golf that draws the most envy. At least, that's what one player claims. "What people talk about in the locker room is how does he putt so well every week?" said Geoff Ogilvy, the 2006 U.S. Open champion. "Lots of guys can work out how to hit it well every week. "But week in and week out, he seems to make bombs all over the place, which is not easy to do. That's the bit people can't work out, how does he hole that many putts?" Of course, there's much more to Woods' repertoire than putting. But he does have an uncanny ability to coax the ball into the bottom of the cup when it really matters.

Take last Sunday for instance, when he holed a 24-footer at the final hole to win the Arnold Palmer Invitational by one stroke. Woods had not, contrary to Ogilvy's general observation, made a putt from outside 20 feet all week. But was anyone really surprised that he did so when he needed to?

Woods is making the phenomenal look merely routine. For example, he is one of just three players to have won at least five consecutive starts on the PGA Tour, and the only player to have done it more than once. He won seven starts in a row in 2006-07, won six times on the trot in 1999-2000 and has now won five consecutive appearances on tour. Jack Nicklaus, by contrast, never won more than three successive starts. In an average year, Woods posts as many victories as some very, very good players manage in their entire careers. "He has a good career every year," Ogilvy said. "Last year would have been a good career for anybody, a major and seven other tournaments. That's a career, and he does it every year. "It doesn't surprise me anymore. When he won the U.S. Open by 15 (strokes in 2000) and three weeks later won the British Open by eight, people were saying he can't get any better."

Woods has had two relatively quiet seasons, finishing fourth on the money list in both 1998 and 2004. Both times, however, he was in the midst of swing changes that ultimately would lead to total dominance again. "He has his ups and downs," Ogilvy said. "But his ups tend to last longer than most people's and his downs don't last very long, and are very good. "In the middle of last year, I wasn't really in love with (his swing), but by the Tour Championship (in September) it started looking really good."

Now Woods tries to extend his winning streak at a course he virtually owns, Doral's Blue Monster. He has won here the past three years, twice at the now defunct PGA Tour stop, while claiming the WGC CA Championship last year. The field has been set at 79 players, with reigning British Open champion Padraig Harrington the only one among the world's top 50 absent. Woods will be as motivated as ever this week to continue his winning streak in his last start before the Masters. Someone will end his latest golden run sooner or later, but don't bet too much on such a scenario unfolding this week.