No Tiger? No problem

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After winning back-to-back British Opens, Padraig Harrington capped his year with a victory at the PGA Championship.

What will you remember about the '08 season? That was the simple question we asked PGATOUR.COM staffers and freelance contributors, who responded with a series of short essays that we will post during November (click here for the archive link).

The game of golf is resilient, of that there can be little doubt.

Only a few months ago the game's pundits were suggesting that a major won during Tiger's recovery from knee surgery would need to be marked with an asterisk. However, the path to such sensationalism was obscured (twice) by a major champion that seems to possess a certain everyman quality.

Padraig Harrington's rally from three shots back of Sergio Garcia with nine holes to play in the final round of the PGA Championship was a testament to his drive and determination.

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Harrington does it on pure guts. He literally outworks the competition. On the back nine that Sunday, Harrington shot a 32, the same number he posted on the back nine during the final round at Royal Birkdale. The putts he made down the stretch -- a 12-footer for par on 16, a 10-footer for birdie and the lead on 17 and a 15-footer for par and a two-stroke win on 18 -- were nothing short of spectacular.

"I think I was willing them into the hole at that stage," Harrington said. "You have to get focused and give it a go."

If all this sounds eerily similar to the mental armor of the last man to win the Open Championship and PGA Championship in succession, Tiger Woods (who did it twice, in 2000 and 2006), then such an observation was not lost on the Irishman's fellow competitors.

"That's Tiger-like, right there," observed Ben Curtis.

As to the presumption of employing an asterisk in Woods' absence, it serves to ask why Tiger is given such deference. The answer, of course, is obvious: He wins 25 percent of the time.

The idea of an asterisk flies in the face of the game's history. Consider that after winning the Open Championship in 1926 and 1927 Bobby Jones didn't play in the 1928 or 1929 Open, both of which were won by 11-time major champion Walter Hagen.

After Bobby Jones won the Grand Slam in 1930 he promptly retired, meaning, what, that Billy Burke's 1931 U.S. Open win and Tommy Armour's Open Championship victory that same year should be marked with an asterisk?

Ben Hogan won the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship in 1948 then did not play the entire 1949 season due to his recovery from injuries caused by his car accident, so it would only seem appropriate under such logic that 1949 U.S. Open Champion Cary Middlecoff and 1949 PGA Champion Sam Snead should also expect an asterisk, too.

Hogan won the Open Championship in 1953 in his final appearance in the event, meaning, what, that Peter Thomson's three consecutive Open Championship wins the next three years should receive a similar blight in the record books?

The bottom line is that the game of golf takes care of the game of golf. Chirpings of asterisks nearly were drowned out by the cheers at this year's Open Championship at Royal Birkdale when Greg Norman sparked three rounds of nostalgia-fueled fun and when Harrington charged up the leaderboard to claim his second consecutive Claret Jug.

How could anyone diminish his triumph when he won the very same tournament one year earlier with Tiger in the field? The fact that Harrington made a similar back-nine charge to claim the PGA Championship, giving him two of this year's four major trophies and three of the last six, could hardly be called simply stepping up while Tiger was hobbled.

All in the golf world are eager for Tiger to recover and get back to tournament golf, but such a prospect is now heightened by the anticipation that a challenger has emerged that has the intestinal fortitude to go toe-to-toe with him.

Once more the game's history provides us with validation that the greatest eras of the game are always defined by rivalry; Jones against a host of challengers; Gene Sarazen and Hagen; Snead and Hogan; Hogan and Arnold Palmer; Palmer and Jack Nicklaus; Nicklaus and a host of fascinating challengers, etc.

This season may have been the year when we did not have Tiger Woods for half of the season, but it could also be the start of golf's next great era.

Matt Adams, a broadcaster for the PGA TOUR Network, insists there shouldn't be an asterisk on any of his broadcasts, either.