By Bruce Berlet
PGATOUR.com contributor

NORTON, Mass. -- Well, Tiger Woods' second 10 years on the PGA TOUR has started as the first decade ended.

And even Sir Woods concedes he might be better than in his supposedly unmatchable stretch in 1999-2000.

Woods won his fifth in a row Monday at the Deutsche Bank Championship, tracking down Vijay Singh before the final round reached the quarter pole and then taking the lead for good with an unfathomable opening seven-hole salvo in which he shot 6 under with two eagles.

No, that's not a misprint.

So much for the stress of trying to get within one of his personal-high win streak. So much for fatigue. So much for the patchwork swing of the previous two days.

A chat with swing coach Hank Haney Sunday night helped set in motion the early punch that stunned Singh, who two years earlier had started with a similar three-shot lead and gone on to win by that margin and end Woods' record 264-week run at No. 1.

But an eagle at No. 2 and birdie at No. 3 quickly erased Singh's advantage, then Woods took the lead for good with a 24-foot birdie putt at No. 5. A 3-wood from 266 yards to 11 feet set up a second eagle and Singh never got closer than two the rest of the way.

"I didn't think I would get all (three shots) back within the first three holes," Woods said. "I just had to run him down as fast as possible, try to at least get him by the front nine was over. By making eagle and basically stealing two strokes from him on his lead, I had all the momentum on my side and just tried to continue doing what I was doing."

Woods continued all the way to an 8-under-par 63, tying his low final round and the first time he shot that number in one of his 53 PGA TOUR victories, now one ahead of Byron Nelson for fifth on the career list.

Woods mustered the energy he needed after finally getting some rest following a whirlwind week that started with a playoff victory over Stewart Cink in the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational. He and his other 11 Ryder Cup teammates then got on a charter and flew to The K Club in Ireland for two days of practice and bonding in preparation for their showdown with the European side Sept. 22-24.

Woods managed to take the first-round lead with 66, salvaged a 72 in the second round, stayed close with 67 in the third and then blew away the competition again with his 20th score in the 60s in his last 23 tries.

Since missing his first cut as a pro in a major at the U.S. Open after being out two months before and after his father died May 3, Woods has tied for second in the Cialis Western Open and won the British Open, Buick Open, PGA Championship, Bridgestone Invitational and Deutsche Bank Championship. He's 97 under in that stretch, including 36 under in the majors, and is now 7-for-14 in PGA TOUR events this year. Woods, who will play in the HSBCWorld Match Play Championship at Wentworth in London in two weeks, goes for his sixth straight PGA TOUR win the week after the Ryder Cup at the World Golf Championships-American Express Championship.

"I've done it before, but it's nice when you get on a roll like this where things are just happening," Woods said. "I've got some lucky breaks, some great bounces. This isn't about hitting perfect shots and making every putt. But my mechanics, from all the work I've done with Hank, and my changes are starting to come together. And that's pretty exciting to go out there and play with this type of confidence with my mechanics becoming more and more sound."

Woods said he focused on posture and his downswing in his talk with Haney, both of which had become suspect the first few rounds because of fatigue and laziness with his swing. Woods liked what he felt on the driving range, then catapulted past the No. 4 player in the world and left the rest of the opposition in the dust. Brian Bateman birdied the 18th for 66--276 to finish a distant third but match his best PGA TOUR showing in the 2004 Honda Classic.

So how does Woods maintain his drive and avoid a sense of complacency when he seems to have everything?

"Well, I'm a competitor," he said. "I love to mix it up. I like to go toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball. That to me is fun. And I love to feel that rush of getting out there and trying to beat everybody. That to me is fun.

"And there's no better place than the back nine on Sunday at a major championship, to go get in that arena. And that's why we players practice all those hours, work out all those hours in the gym, run all those miles on the road. It's to be in that position, to feel that rush, to win."

Tiger Woods played a bogey-free round on Monday. (Rogash/WireImage)

The Deutsche Bank Championship isn't a major, though its chief beneficiary is the Tiger Woods Foundation and it will become the second of three FedExCup series playoff events leading into THE TOUR Championship next year. Woods, fellow PGA TOUR player Brad Faxon and golf course architect Gil Hanse of Philadelphia will help with renovations to all 18 holes before the 2007 tournament.

By then, Woods might have surpassed Nelson's record 11 straight wins. And he might admit even more strongly that he has equaled -- maybe surpassed -- his exploits since winning the Tiger Slam despite changing his coach, swing and physique.

"People are always asking me about comparing things (to 1999-2000), and I just think that if you're looking for blowout wins, there's only a couple tournaments that you can possibly blow out anybody in," Woods said, citing the U.S. Open. "People are always looking to compare 2000 to now, that he's winning but not winning by as big of margins. But I'm still getting W's.

"I hit it great and I putted well and I got some really lucky breaks during that stretch, and basically I'm doing that same thing now. I have more shots now just because of so many more years of experience and knowing how to get my ball around the golf course better. Then again, the competition's gotten better as well. The guys have worked out, and that wasn't as big a thing back then. Now you look at all the guys with their own trainers out here. Everybody's been hitting the ball longer, everyone's stronger.

"It's become that much more difficult to win a golf tournament, so I've kept up the pace. I've pushed myself to do the same."

So is this streak more impressive?

"In a sense," Woods said. "Just because I think everyone's improved. You can't compare the two because in a sense everyone's gotten better. I've gotten better, the rest of the guys have gotten better. Technology's gotten better. It's just evolved. And that's one of the more difficult things is to try and compare generations, and obviously even in my little section of my career to compare the two. It's not like baseball where they all got wooden bats, and it stays wooden bats. It's hard to compare the two sometimes."