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Tiger Woods: dominating the WGCs

His dedication to fitness, his patience and demeanour, his respect for the game, his studying of golf's history and his tactical genius are what make him a great sportsman, not just a great golfer.

Mark Roe
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So guess who is the man to beat this week? The man who is seemingly impossible to beat right now.

Tiger Woods will defend his title at the CA Championship live on Sky Sports this week. There should be no surprises there - he has won six of these events since its inception in 1999 and has dominated the World Golf Championships in their short life.

He has won this event at Doral already and before it became the host venue for the CA, he had already won the Ford Championship on the same course twice. Not that you could say that there isn't a course in the world that doesn't suit Tiger when he is hot like this, but he seems to do pretty well on this track.

Victory on Sunday would be his eighth consecutive victory and he has won 10 out of 11 now - he finished second in the other one - and is head and shoulders above anybody else in the world of golf, in every respect.

We keep saying it but it is the truth: There can be no denying that if Tiger Woods plays his best golf, he will win.

If he doesn't play his best, there are some players that can catch him.

Challengers

Phil Mickelson has beaten him on this course, so you would have to look for him to be a challenger, and Ernie Els should be a strong contender after his recent victory in the Honda Classic.

That victory showed great strength of spirit and character after the way he had thrown away the chance to win several tournaments already this season. At Leopard Creek he shot a triple bogey eight to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on the last hole and he also had a great chance to win in Dubai, where once again he found a watery grave on the 18th.

Psychologically Woods has the edge on the rest of the field but if he doesn't play at his best, which we saw signs of on the Friday and Saturday in Dubai where he probably played his two worst rounds of the last 10 events, the door can be left ajar for someone else.

If there is a chink in his armour it is when he plays in very strong winds - not just a bit of breeze but a proper gale - and the forecast is for some rain, some thunder and the wind picking up to around 21 mph, so maybe there is some hope there for the rest of the best in the world.

Of the Europeans Padraig Harrington has been disappointing since his Open Championship victory. He is ring-rusty having taken a bit of time off and having planned his schedule for this season; he is yet to find his best form.

Paul Casey is another one having a disappointing season, languishing in 36th position in the Order of Merit, and he too is yet to find his best form.

And at the moment it seems that people are more interested in what Ian Poulter is wearing than the quality of his golf, but he is the one that maybe I would expect to lead a European challenge.

Poulter is scared of no one and has finished second in this event to Tiger Woods when it was held at The Grove in Hertfordshire a few years ago. Tiger streaked ahead that week but Poulter isn't afraid to stand toe-to-toe with anyone and he is keen to put the media intrusion into his comments in Dubai into the past. The only way to do that is to let his clubs do the talking.

Henrik Stenson is the other European name that leaps out of the field because he is an immense talent and is finding some form again this year. He played great in the Gulf Swing - he always does and has become a Middle East specialist - winning in Qatar.

He has proved that he can win at world level with his win at the Accenture two seasons ago and is a world class player. If Tiger slips, he will be one waiting to pounce.

Great

But it always comes back to Tiger and how and why he is better than everybody else. As well as being the best golfer in the world, he is the best pressure putter that the game has ever seen.

He proved that once again at Bay Hill last week, holing out from 24-foot to avoid a play-off and take a one-shot win over Bart Bryant. Most would take a two-putt and a play-off, Tiger knows he can hole it and win it outright.

He proves it every week; give him a do-or-die putt and there is something inside that says he cannot be beaten.

Tiger looks at these World Golf Championships as the next best thing to winning a major and he knows that when they look back at records in the future, these WGC wins will be increasingly important in anyone's career. He has won more WGC events, 15, than majors, 13.

History

It is sheer dominance and perhaps right now he is THE supreme sportsman in the world. You could say that Roger Federer does in tennis what Tiger does in golf but Federer has shown signs that there are chinks in his armour.

No one has ever been able to dominate golf in the way that Steve Davis, say, dominated snooker in the 1980s. Tiger is taking it to a different level. He is even money to win the Masters - no player in history has ever had such short odds at Augusta.

The debate about his greatness in the game through history will always rage on. Els and Mickelson, great players as they are, are maybe not the opponents that Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Weiskopf and Johnny Miller were to Jack Nicklaus in his era.

On their really good days, those guys were all capable beating Jack, so every now and then someone would crop up and beat him, but on Tiger's best day there isn't anyone in the world who can beat him. That is the difference.

We have had these conversations on Golf Night when we have talked about throwing Tiger back into the era of Jack, with the same equipment, and Tiger would still have all the same qualities that serve him so well now.

He would have the work ethic, the same mental strength, the same tactical genius and yes, perhaps Jack would have been the one person that was capable of challenging Tiger, but it would have meant that Jack won less majors. He wouldn't have got to 18 titles if Tiger had been playing during his reign.

Then you go back to the turn of the century when you had Harry Vardon, James Braid and JH Taylor - the great triumvirate - they again dominated their era but again Tiger would have had all the attributes to compete with those guys in the hickory era.

His dedication to fitness, his patience and demeanour, his respect for the game, his studying of golf's history and his tactical genius are what make him a great sportsman, not just a great golfer.

Everything that he had would have made him the leader in any generation. Unfortunately for those teeing it up at Doral this week, this is the era of the Tiger and he is the man to beat.