US PGA Championship 2013: Is winning No.15 not everything for Tiger Woods?

It is a given that five years is a long wait for a Major – more so if you are Tiger Woods. And when you see him posting those staggering performances on the tour and piling up five different pieces of silverware already in the season, it’s a pardonable offence to predict him winning big on the eve of every Major tourney.

Tiger again, this time at Firestone, was playing as close as anyone could get to being impeccably consistent on a golf course. And it was furthermore startling to watch his son Charlie with him for the final day’s play; it almost made the onlookers believe it was a practice round on his own backyard.

In fact, it did look like an exhibition fest after two days of golf when all that remained for contention in the tournament was the second place. For Woods, the battle gradually converged from a lot of 100 to eventually his own set of par scores he mapped ahead of the PGA Championship.

Woods, for the large part of the past two decades, has been setting markers for the rest of the field. Yet, when someone like Keegan Bradley admits that Woods is playing a ‘tournament within a tournament’, you know the field has already given in against the dominating strides on the course from the World No. 1.

‘Winning’, as Tiger once said, would always help him keep the scores. Yet, a 7-stroke romp on the park on a Sunday evening did just enough to bring those familiar fist-pumps back on the front-covers of the newspapers.

The message is loud and clear – Tiger is bringing his untenable game to the Oak Hill centre stage.

But how good are his chances besides being the not-so-surprising-favourite of the bookies at the PGA Championship? How does he plan to beat the top 100 of the world on the Oak Hill’s ponderous set of green that has never seen him triumph?

Also, the dilemma he faces of accepting the fact that a season without a Major in his bag, even after his best season on his return, does leave a sinking feeling. He might not admit it, yet if it he was asked to trade his five PGA titles for Mickelson’s Open win, Tiger wouldn’t think twice before choosing the latter.

As this weekend remains his last hope to secure the ever-so-elusive No. 15 and reinvigorate his run-in for Nicklaus’s crown, it is undeniably inexplicable to figure Wood’s psych at this very moment.