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By Dave Shedloski
PGATOUR.com Senior Correspondent

Despite continual sharpening of its pearly white teeth in the last decade, the Blue Monster at Doral Resort & Spa has been drowning in a sea of red.

PGA TOUR players have bludgeoned the once-proud Dick Wilson design in recent tournament editions. Since 2000, the winning score at the tournament begun in 1962 as the Doral CC Open Invitational has been no less than 17-under par, and Tiger Woods won the last two events (the Ford Championship at Doral) by a combined 44 under par. Last year, just one of the 72 players who made the cut failed to break par over 72 holes.

"It played almost like a long hitter's paradise last year," England's David Howell said during a teleconference. "It was, for the top players, quite a sedate test of golf."

Will Tiger Woods rule at Doral again this week? (Reuters/WireImage)

TOUR INSIDER POWER RANKINGS

2007 CA Championship

Rank Player 2006 Finish* 1 Tiger Woods WIN 2 Geoff Ogilvy DNP 3 Chad Campbell T32 4 Angel Cabrera T26 5 Ernie Els 5

*The 2006 edition of this World Golf Championship event was played at The Grove in Hertfordshire, England.

This week, as this season known as the New Era in Golf continues, Doral plays host for the first time to a World Golf Championship event. The World Golf Championships-CA Championship begins Thursday with 74 of the top players on the planet ready to pillage Doral's Blue Course.

Should they expect to slay the dragon again? Well, a weather forecast calling for thunder storms off and on all week and little wind suggests favorable conditions for scoring. But maybe the Monster will have a bit more of a snarl thanks to yet another upgrade.

The greens have been renovated with TifEagle, which should present a firmer and faster putting surface if the rains somehow hold off. Continuing a theme that has been consistent throughout the Florida swing, a healthier rough is being cultivated. The Bermuda grass should be at least 2.5 inches -- which Doral course superintendent Juan Gutierrez likens to "five inches of Bluegrass." That rough also will be present around greens and roll-off areas, making recoveries more difficult.

In short, a complete game will again be a requirement for good scoring.

Worth knowing:

Accept as a given that Tiger Woods will do well this week. He has won 12 of 23 World Golf Championship starts since the series' inception in 1999, including five CA Championships. Those titles, including the last two, have come on five different courses in Spain, Ireland, Georgia, California and England. He also has won the last two tournaments played at Doral's Blue Course, which sort of makes him the defending champ twice over.

Another reason to like Woods this week: He has successfully defended a PGA TOUR title 17 times, including last year's CA Championship at The Grove in Hertfordshire, England. In fact, four of his last seven wins -- the 2007 Buick Invitational and the '06 CA Championship, World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, and British Open -- were successful title defenses. He also won back-to-back CA Championships in '02-03.

Woods, Part III: the No. 1 player in the world is 44-under par in his last eight rounds on the Blue Monster with a 66.5 scoring average. He is the first player since Raymond Floyd to win back to back at Doral. Floyd was a cumulative 24-under par in his victories in 1980 and '81. Woods was 24-under par when he won in 2005.

The last stop in Florida has been good to Floridians. Someone with Florida ties at least part of the year has won every year at Doral since 1990 with the exception of Steve Elkington -- who grew up on courses in Australia with Bermuda grass.

Experience also counts at Doral. The average age of winners dating back to 1990 is 35 years old. Only three men in that span were over 40. Floyd is the oldest winner in the history of PGA TOUR tournaments at Doral, taking the last of his 22 career victories at age 49. The youngest winner in that span: Woods, Jim Furyk and Rocco Mediate, who all were 29.

Charl Schwartzel could have made his World Golf Championship debut at the Accenture Match Play Championship, but decided to withdraw (missing a first-round match-up with Ernie Els) so he could compete at the Telkom PGA Championship on his home circuit, the Sunshine Tour. At stake was that tour's money title, and the decision paid off when he won it for the third straight year after tying for third. The perks of the victory: a berth in this week's CA Championship, plus spots in the British Open and Memorial Tournament.

Fred Couples might miss the Masters. The 1992 winner at Augusta National Golf Club has played just two rounds of golf this year, at the FBR Open, and his chronically troublesome back flared up at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, leaving him unable to so much as practice, says his caddie Joe LaCava. Couples has never missed the cut at the Masters, and he tied for third last year.

Ernie Els, who just weeks ago switched to Callaway, already has incorporated new irons into his bag, having finished tied for 18th at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard in the first event he's used them for all four rounds.

Chad Campbell switched to a Nike Sumo2 driver for the final two rounds of the Arnold Palmer Invitational and saw immediate improvement with his driving accuracy. In the third round he hit 14 of 14 fairways and he was 12 of 14 the following day. Campbell, whose only two starts at Doral produced nothing better than a tie for 35th, had ranked 112th in driving accuracy (58.4 percent) entering the week.