Woods still holds strings

Of course, Tiger Woods can’t win every tournament he plays; it’s just that he’s making it look that way.

It was probably about the time his ball scooted across the 18th green at Bay Hill on Sunday, felt the tug of gravity and dived into the hole, when everyone started figuring out what’s next.

As in, what’s next after five consecutive PGA Tour victories? Well, how about six consecutive?

This is a heady time in the wildly spinning sphere of professional golf, where Woods is picking up speed as he continues one of the most dominant streaks ever.

It’s history in the making, and Woods is making it fast.

This week, Woods and those who chase him on the PGA Tour have traveled down the Florida Turnpike from the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando to the CA Championship at Doral. That’s where Woods once again puts his winning streak on the line, along with his mind-bending flair for hitting just the right dramatic high spots.

Woods is the favorite, as usual, even though the CA Championship is an $8-million World Golf Championship tournament loaded with only the top players from the world-ranking list.

There are a few reasons why he stands out. The first is that Woods has won at Doral the last three years; the second is that he dominates WGC events (winning 15 of the 26 he has played); and the third is that nobody seems to have a clue how to beat him.

Even so, it appeared that it wasn’t going to be Woods’ week at Bay Hill, at least for a while.

He caved in the face of his driver in his pro-am round Wednesday. He couldn’t get his long putts into the hole without a court order. He was seven shots behind after two rounds.

When you swing as hard as Woods does, at roughly the same speed as a turbine engine, it doesn’t leave much of a margin between finding the fairway or the rough. Getting a new driver in Woods’ hands was key. And then there is his work on the greens.

Woods hadn’t made a putt all week that measured more than 18 feet in length . . . until his last putt on the last hole of the last day of the tournament.

Woods made his 24-footer, ripped his cap from his head and hurled it onto the tightly mown grass, celebrating a one-shot victory over Bart Bryant, who was waiting in the scorer’s area. He could tell from the screams of the crowd that professional golf’s watch still ticks to Tiger Time.

Johnny Miller watched the Woods show from the NBC tower. “The guy’s not even human,” he said.

Woods said he wasn’t even aware he had performed his cap-slamming routine he was so intent on making that putt.

“I don’t know how it came off, but it came off,” he said.

Victories in his streak have come in all sizes, and Bay Hill was an intriguing one. It’s the first time Woods birdied the last hole to win a tournament since he beat Phil Mickelson, also at Bay Hill, in 2001.

Woods began the year at Torrey Pines with an eight-shot victory that set a tournament record. He won the Match Play in Arizona with the biggest last-match blowout in tournament history. Then he wins at Bay Hill with his biggest last-hole heroics in seven years.

How does this all add up? In victories, apparently. Since the 2006 British Open, Woods has won 16 of the 25 PGA Tour events he has played, or 64%.

He has won five straight on the PGA Tour, six straight if you count Dubai and seven straight if you count the unofficial Target World Challenge. With 64 victories, he’s tied with Ben Hogan for third on the PGA Tour’s all-time list, behind only Sam Snead with 82 and Jack Nicklaus with 73.

But right now, it’s all about streaks. There are only five winning streaks in PGA Tour history of at least five straight, and Woods has three of them. Byron Nelson won 11 straight in 1945, Woods won seven straight in 2006-07, Hogan won six straight in 1948, Woods won six in a row in 1999-2000 and now there’s Woods’ streak of five straight that he takes to Doral.

It should be quite a week. And what if he does win, and shows up at the Masters with a six-pack of victories?

This is the year when Woods said winning all four majors was within reason. This is also the year when Woods said winning every tournament he played was his intention.

He can’t do that, can he? Maybe not, but the way things are going for Woods, he doesn’t seem to be backing off much.

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The final-round coverage of Woods’ victory at Bay Hill on NBC earned a 4.2 overnight rating and a nine share, an increase of 68% over last year (2.5/5) and the best final-round overnight for the tournament in six years. Saturday’s third-round coverage on NBC earned a 2.3 rating. Last year it was 1.9.

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