


LEMONT, Ill. -- His 60th PGA TOUR victory Sunday bore little resemblance to the manner in which he won his 59th, except for the imperturbable command and confidence he exuded. He set yet another tournament scoring record, tied his personal best for low final-round score with a spotless 63, won a fourth title at one event for the seventh time.

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This year the PGA TOUR concocted a different way to measure the year's best player, and with one week remaining, he leads that, too.
Superlatives in all the world's languages long ago were exhausted on behalf of Tiger Woods, so attempts to apply worthy adjectives to his golfing exploits seem as futile as trying to beat him. So we will put Woods in some kind of salient perspective not by actions but by inaction.
After his virtuoso victory in the BMW Championship at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club, Woods could take nearly seven years off and still find himself on pace to win more PGA TOUR titles than anyone else in history. Seven years. He could pull a Rip Van Winkle, just to add a wrinkle to this seemingly inevitable dialogue, and still come out ahead.
Talk about your leaders in the clubhouse.
Sam Snead, with 82 wins, was 38 years old when he won his 60th title. Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer are the only other players to hit the 60-win mark. Until Sunday's proceedings, Jack Nicklaus, at 36, had been the fastest to get there.
Woods is a mere 31 years old. Just 13 months ago he was acknowledging receipt of his 50th win. Light travels faster -- but not much else.
"I never ever would have dreamt that this could have happened this soon," Woods said sheepishly after his 22-under 262 total shattered his own tournament record by five strokes and dispatched his nearest challenger, Aaron Baddeley, but two. "I've been out here, what, 11 years, my 12th season, I believe. And to have this many wins ... I never could have foreseen that. I've exceeded my own expectations, and it's been a lot of fun to enjoy that whole road, that whole process to get to 60."
Yeah, it sounds as fun as, say, winning $75 million or marrying a Swedish bikini model. But, hey, no one's life is perfect. It's not like the guy has a great smile, the mind that is the envy of your average think tank or one of the fittest frames in professional athletics.
Oh, never mind.
Perfection being relative in golf, Woods, the points leader in the inaugural PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup -- despite a mere 15 starts -- put on a golfing display that qualified for fawning compliments, which his competitors were gracious enough to offer. It's all they really have to themselves. They cannot outplay him, out-think him or out-work him, but they can out-quote him.
While Steve Stricker, the feel-good upstart of this PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup, and Baddeley were peppering their scorecards with birdies, Woods was reacting with his own explosives in capturing his sixth title of 2007.
Red ink was soon splattered across the leaderboard and Woods' well never ran dry. His bogey-free 63 followed on the heels of a 65 Saturday as he shot four sub-70 rounds at Cog Hill's Dubsdread Course for the first time -- even though he owns the place with four wins and eight top-10 finishes in 10 starts.
It was the kind of scoring display that wasn't possible last month at the PGA Championship at burnt out Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, when birdies were scarcely possible, let alone achieved. But Woods finds a way no matter the conditions.
At soft and forgiving Cog Hill, he put the hammer down, yet he didn't lose control. He never suffered a three-putt, and his over-par holes numbered three - two bogeys and one double bogey. "You play 69 holes without dropping a shot, that's not too bad," he said.
Some might argue that the tide turned as soon as he teed off, but it tangibly washed over the competition at the par-3 12th hole. Woods had lost his grasp on potential birdies at the 10th and 11th, but then dropped a 50-footer on the boys at the 12th. Another birdie at 13, and he had the lead alone for good.
"You could just see him really ... when he made that putt across the par 3, suddenly you could just see he was into another gear. His focus was at a different level," said Justin Rose, who was paired with the World No. 1 on Sunday. "Obviously, he's so intense, but he's also incredibly relaxed out there. You can see he lets his round build.
"He starts off very relaxed, very calm, doesn't let anything bother him. And then as the rounds gets on and he gets more into it, obviously he gets more and more focused. That's what you can learn from the guy."
| RELATED |
• VIDEO: Round 4 highlights
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• PODCAST: Round 4 analysis
• STATS: Final BMW numbers
• FEDEXCUP: Updated standings
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"There isn't a lot you can do," allowed Stricker, second to Woods in the FedExCup points standings and third at the BMW Championship at 68-266 -- one stroke better than the previous tournament record Woods had shared with Scott Hoch. "Obviously, he didn't make very many mistakes, and when you see him ahead of us making the birdies and hearing the roars, you know that he's on a roll and not making mistakes. He put the pressure on us, really, to do that."
Woods has triumphed in 60 of his 215 career starts, a success rate of nearly 28 percent. In golf, that's domination. His top 3s number 100. Golf is a game of numbers, not inches, and Woods continually stays ahead in the count.
And with that he also stays ahead where it matters most -- in the psyche. Asked if he could play better than he did Sunday, Woods answered emphatically and with deliberate, intimidating frankness. "Yeah," he said. "If you don't think that way, just quit."
He could do that. Just quit. Take a sabbatical. Go write the great American novel, sire more offspring, stop and smell the roses, solve global warming, re-invent the wheel or simply catch up on all that sleep he famously forgoes.
He could do it all, and then come back knowing everything will be as he left it. He would still be No. 1 and still be on track to win more than anyone else in golf history.
That's a pretty good measure of excellence. It will have to do until we can invent another.