TIGER WOODS again demonstrated the yawning chasm between his best golf and anyone else's when he turned the final of the $8million (£4.1m) Accenture Match Play Championship into a one-man exhibition.
With 14 birdies in 29 holes, Woods posted the largest margin of victory in the event's championship match – an 8 and 7 hammering of hapless fellow American Stewart Cink – at Dove Mountain in Arizona last night.
He was never behind as he clinched h
is 15th victory in 26 starts in the World Golf Championships series, and posted his seventh victory in his past eight official tournaments.
"I put a lot of heat on Stew and got off to a quick start and never really let him get back in the match," said Woods, who collected $1.35m (£700,000) for his efforts.
He gathered his 63rd victory on the United States PGA Tour, moving ahead of Arnold Palmer to fourth on the all-time list behind Sam Snead (82), Jack Nicklaus (73) and Ben Hogan (64). And he claimed afterwards that he was now playing the best golf of his career – quite a statement by a man who won nine times on the PGA Tour in 2000, and eight times in both 1999 and 2006.
"This is certainly the best stretch I think I've ever played," Woods said. "I just have a better understanding of how to play the game, how to fix my game, and have a lot more shots than I ever had.
"You can always be better (and] I worked on my short game pretty hard this winter. I didn't like what I was feeling at the end of last year. Even though I was winning tournaments, my short game was not very good.
"I was chipping it up there in a range I didn't think was close enough, but I was making putts, so it was misleading."
In his past eight official tournaments – seven on the PGA Tour and one on the European Tour – Woods has secured seven victories and a second place.
His six strokeplay wins have been achieved by a total of 29 strokes – an average of nearly five shots per tournament – but such are the vagaries of match play that he was nearly eliminated on two occasions at Dove Mountain.
"I played 107 holes this week," Woods said. "I could easily have played 16 and then been home. That's the fickleness of match play. If I didn't make a run at JB (Holmes, in the first round] I wouldn't be here."
But he did make a run and, once he got past Aaron Baddeley in the third round, never looked like losing in his final three matches.
The full article contains 451 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
