By Mike Vitti
PGATOUR.com ShotLink Analyst

Tiger Woods equaled his career-best PGA TOUR victory streak over the weekend, winning his sixth consecutive event-the World Golf Championships-American Express Championship- by eight shots. It is obvious that Woods has been playing at a very high level over his last six starts, but the question is: just how good has he been and what has he improved upon to get on such a roll?

I decided to take a deeper look at this using ShotLink data to compare Woods' performance before the streak to his performance during the streak. Woods entered eight PGA TOUR stroke-play events before the streak started, including two majors, and played a total of 28 rounds. He has played in two majors and 24 total rounds during the six-event winning streak, so it made comparing the two segments pretty accurate in terms of available data. In addition to looking at Woods' performance during the streak, I also included the statistics for the PGA TOUR leaders in the different categories to give an idea of just how high a level Woods has played over his last six starts on TOUR.

Briefly summing up the findings, it appears that Woods has been more accurate off the tee, sharper on approach, awesome around the greens and more consistent on them, but the details are much more interesting.

• Woods' driving accuracy during the streak has been at 68.2 percent. While this is over 10 points lower than current TOUR leader Joe Durant, it is still about 14 points higher than his rate in his first eight stroke-play events. Meanwhile, Woods has seen a moderate increase in his average driving distance on measured holes, but his overall driving distance average on all ShotLink measured drives during his victory streak is about three yards shorter than his average in the eight events prior to the streak.

• Woods is actually hitting it left a bit more off the tee than when the streak started (15.6% during vs. 11.7 % before), but he is finding the right rough about 8 percent less frequently.

• Finding the fairway more frequently has been a huge advantage for Woods as, on average, from the fairway he is hitting his approach shots 3 feet closer to the pin. Even more impressive is the fact that during the streak he has an aggregate total of 41-under par on approaches from the fairway versus 20-under par from the same locations before the streak started.

• Successfully saving par or better on 73.4 percent of his attempts during his streak, Woods' rate around the greens is over 15 points higher than his rate before the streak and would be more than 6 points higher than current TOUR leader Corey Pavin's rate of 67.1 percent.

• Woods has also been better out of the greenside bunkers during his win streak, getting up and down over 8 percent more frequently and averaging almost 4 feet closer to the pin on his attempts from the sand.

• On the greens, Woods recorded 25 three-putts in the 28 rounds preceding the streak , but since then he has recorded less than a fourth of that total, three-putting a total of six times in 24 rounds of play.

• Woods' putting average of 1.713 during the win streak is slightly better than the 1.718 average of current PGA TOUR leader Daniel Chopra.

• Overall, Woods is saving about one stroke per round on the greens; however, the difference in putts per round during the first two rounds is much more significant. In round one and round two before the streak, Woods was averaging 29.75 and 30.25 putts per round respectively. During the streak, he has averaged 27.83 and 27.33 putts per round in the same two rounds.

• Putts measuring between 10 and 25 feet in length are where Woods has improved his performance on the greens. He has improved his percentage of made putts by at least 17 points on putts measuring between 10-15 feet and those measuring 15-20 feet. On putts between 20 and 25 feet, Woods has gone from making 6.3 percent of his attempts to an average of 28.6 percent.

• The improvement in putting during the streak has Woods making an additional 15 feet of putts per round, with his average during the streak exceeding the current TOUR leader, Richard S. Johnson, by about 5 feet.

• The scoring results of Woods' improvements in his last six events are obvious. Woods is scoring almost three shots lower during the streak than in his first eight events played, and his final round stroke average is 4.5 strokes lower in the six final rounds he has played in during the streak than in the six before it. He is also starting much stronger, averaging almost four strokes better in each of the first two rounds.

• Recording 123 total birdies during the six-event win streak versus 119 in the eight events prior, Woods has improved his birdie or better percentages on par-3s, -4s, and -5s and he has made eight eagles versus four in the respective event segments.