CARLSBAD, Calif. - With every victory, the scope of Tiger Woods' legend increases that much more and so the numbers in the aftermath of his WGC Match Play Championship Sunday flow impressively.

The win was worth $1.2 million, meaning Woods has now accumulated prize earnings of $41,514,365.

It was his 40^th career victory, bringing him even with Cary Middlecoff for eighth place on the PGA Tour career list and those who rank ahead of him are truly the game’s greatest names — Sam Snead (82), Jack Nicklaus (73), Ben Hogan (64), Arnold Palmer (62), Byron Nelson (52), Billy Casper (51), and Walter Hagen (44).

To appreciate how sensational Woods’s career victory total is, consider that he did it in 149 starts. Nicklaus didn’t get his 40^th win until tournament No. 221.

Perhaps more personally satisfying than Woods' $1.2 million payday was the fact Sunday’s win was worth almost 75 points in the world rankings. The push allowed him to open a 4.45-point gap over Vijay Singh. Two weeks ago it was 2.98.

Woods has kept the world's No. 1 ranking for a record 237 straight weeks, all the way back to Aug. 15, 1999, and the top spot has been his for a total of 307 weeks.

One could crunch numbers forever to demonstrate just how incredible Woods has been in less than eight full years of PGA Tour service. But the historical perspective is for later; what’s important to Woods is the present landscape.

In that case, his victory over Love didn’t make a declarative statement.

Oh, it was a nice win and allowed him to derail Singh’s world rankings momentum, but Woods’ triumph merely reinforced what is already a given — he’s the best match-play competitor in the world. He understands the format's nuances better than anyone and does the best job of staying focused during the roller-coaster ride. The win was part guts and guile and part inability to finish from Love, particularly early in the match.

But you couldn’t come away from La Costa Resort & Spa feeling as if Woods were set to go on a 2000-like tear. On the contrary, his play left you thinking he has work to do heading into this week’s Dubai Desert Classic. Even Woods conceded that had the Accenture tournament been a stroke-play event at La Costa, “I wouldn’t have won.”

He’s right. The champion would have been Phil Mickelson, who played beautifully, or perhaps Love, who was equally impressive. Woods would have been Top 10 easy, but the series of errant drives and the places he put himself into would have cost him a bucketful of strokes opposed to just the odd hole here and there.

“It was a lot easier last year [when he won the WGC Match Play] because I was striking the ball, controlling it,” said Woods, who figures he would have won by a handful of shots at La Costa in 2003 had it been stroke play.

That’s because at the start of last year, things were going impressively for Woods with wins in three of his first four starts — the Buick Invitational, the WGC Match Play, and Bay Hill.

It always has been a good time of year for him — has there ever been a bad time? — and he has seemed to be in a good frame of mind entering a stretch of tournaments that have accounted for eight of his 40 wins: Bay Hill, where he is the four-time defending champ; the Masters; and The Players Championship.

Only unlike a year ago, you get the feeling that his game isn’t quite where he wants it to be. Certainly, he went to the range in between the two rounds with Love and figured out that his alignment was off, but the driver has hampered him thus far in ’04. In 12 stroke-play events, he has broken 70 five times, but he’s yet to do it in an opening 18. He put himself in a hole at the Mercedes, the Buick, and the Nissan Open.

Ranked 148^th in driving accuracy, one would assume that this is his biggest problem. But remember that except for his extraordinary stretch of golf — 1999–2000, when he ranked 49^th and 54^th — Woods has always been positioned between 107^th and 145^th in this category. It’s just that a few other factors have settled into the equation.

For one, his distance control with the irons — an Achilles' heel that he worked hard to improve upon — hasn’t been as sharp as in seasons past.

For another, there’s no longer the association with Butch Harmon; Woods knows his swing well enough to fix things himself when need be. He may be right (who are we to doubt him?), but it’s understandable to be curious about how this will effect him.

Then there’s the intimidation factor.

It still works in his favor when the format is match play (Sunday’s finale at La Costa was a perfect example), but in recent years — perhaps thanks to Rich Beem’s win at the 2002 PGA or Ben Curtis’s triumph at last summer’s British, or the sequence of premier tournaments Singh threw down from late 2003 to early 2004 — it seems as if players are heading into events that include Woods with more confidence than they would have had in a similar situation two and three years ago.

Real? Or imagined? It’s hard to say, but it just feels different when you watch him play these days.

No denying he’s still the game's superior player and most guys on tour would say that if Woods plays his best, then everyone else plays for second. But he’s at his very best less and less consistently, it seems. Maybe that’s because we hold him to an impossible standard based upon his 1999-2000 golf (41 tournaments, 17 wins, four of them majors). Maybe it’s because great technology has helped a wide range of players keep up with the distance game that Woods always trumped them with. Maybe it’s because he truly has found harmony in his life, thanks to Elin Nordegren, and doesn’t let less-than-perfect golf bother him as much anymore.

Who knows?

It’s just that as he comes off of a second straight win in the WGC Match Play Championship and sets his sights on an unprecedented fifth consecutive win at the Bay Hill Invitational (March 18-21), Woods seems less dominating and at times more frustrated with his game than in years past.

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