Mike Celizic

Ho-hum. Tiger Woods won another tournament, his fifth in a row — six if you count the Dubai Classic. It looks so easy, and nothing could be further from the truth.

If there’s anything negative to say about what Woods is doing, it's this — he wins so often that it’s all but impossible to appreciate just how difficult it is to do what he’s doing.

We’ve been talking about Tiger's greatness for more than a decade, so we ought to be running out of superlatives. But if you’ve watched him over his current run that dates to September, during which he’s lost just one tournament, there is only one conclusion:

He’s never played better.

Tiger has 13 majors, and the way he’s playing, you’d be shocked if he didn’t add two this year — the Masters and the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, two of his favorite courses. You wouldn’t think it extraordinary if he got three, and if he wins all four — the first-ever modern Grand Slam — you’d be enormously impressed but not surprised.

You would think Woods couldn’t get better. We’ve seen him win four majors in a row over two years as well as strings of seven straight Tour wins, five straight and now four straight. He does it with such seeming ease, we have to remind ourselves that until Woods came along, only one other player ever had won as many as four straight tournaments more than once, and only three in the long history of the Tour had done it even once. Tiger has done it three times.

For the record, Byron Nelson holds the record with 11 straight in 1945. Nelson also once won four straight, the only other person to win that many at least twice. Ben Hogan is in third place with five straight wins. And Jack Burke Jr. is the only other golfer with four straight, a feat he accomplished in 1952.

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Among those who never have done it once are Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson, Walter Hagen, Greg Norman, Nick Faldo, Ernie Els — and every other player who ever has teed it up on the PGA Tour.

Easy? Hah!

We’ve seen Woods win nine tournaments in a season, pull on four green jackets, win the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach by 15 strokes.

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And it might be that we ain’t seen nothing yet.

It should not be possible, and for every other player on Tour, it isn’t. You can say that about every other player who ever lived.

In deference to my buddy Eastside Al, who keeps grumbling to me that Woods isn’t the best ever as long as Jack Nicklaus holds the record of 18 majors, I’ll allow that Tiger has to beat that record to be crowned the best ever. Al thinks Tiger needs four or five years to get the six majors he needs to pass Nicklaus. I think Al’s off by at least a year and probably two. Woods needs six to pass Nicklaus. He’ll do it no later than 2010.

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Woods is 32 and there are no holes in his armor, mentally or physically. He has every shot there is and is the best money putter ever. He showed that in the first round of this match-play tournament when he fell three holes behind J.B. Holmes with five holes to play. Against anyone else, all Holmes had to do was make pars on the way in to close out the match. But Woods made three straight birdies and an eagle on the next four holes to win.

“I had to go out there and earn it. These guys don’t give leads away,” Woods said after winning it all by turning second-place finisher Stewart Cink into Stewart Sunk, closing out the match on the 29th hole of a 36-hole final.

Tiger also had to go overtime against Aaron Baddeley, who had two putts to beat Woods and couldn’t put them in the hole. Aaron shouldn’t feel that Baddeley about failing to put Tiger away. No one else seems capable of hitting the shot that can beat him. It’s like a stand-up comic trying to beat Robin Williams in a contest of one-liners. You know going in the guy’s got you.

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And yet, as Woods said of match play, “Anything can happen.”

He’s absolutely right. Woods can lose, and he will lose. It’s happened before and it will again. But it will have to be when he’s a smidgen off his game and somebody else is having the week of his life.

Tiger's worst finish in the past six months is second place. His four straight Tour wins are in addition to two wins in other events, so he’s really on a run of six straight. Woods' game is so tight that anyone stepping onto the tee with him knows he has to play out of his mind to have a chance. And golf isn’t a game that responds to that kind of mental pressure.