Tiger Woods faces battle with himself for US PGA player-of-the-year award
Tiger faces not only this season's nominees, but his past performances may stack up against him when players cast their ballots
Tiger Woods has long been measured against Jack Nicklaus and his 18 majors, and most recently Sam Snead and his 82 PGA Tour victories. Now he is being measured against himself and it is not a fair fight.
The PGA Tour has just sent out its awards ballot to players eligible to vote. The winners are to be named on Friday.
Woods should be a sure thing for player of the year, provided he is measured against the other four names on the ballot instead of the previous seasons when also he took the award.
He won five times this year, and the only tournament that could be classified as a medium-strength field was at Torrey Pines. Woods won two World Golf Championships, at Doral and Firestone.
He won The Players Championship on perhaps his least favourite course on tour. And he won Bay Hill. The world ranking points he earned from those five wins alone were more than any player has earned all year, except for Henrik Stenson. But he did not win a major, the standard by which Woods measures a great season. He already has been named player of the year 10 times. His record this year is worse than every season he won the award, except for 2003. So this has been a great season by any other comparison except with himself.
Three of the past four winners - Luke Donald (2011), Jim Furyk (2010) and Woods (2009) did not win a major.