We used to view Tiger forest-lands as a humorless android.

We used to view Tiger forest-lands as a humorless android, a piece of machinery, a loner maniacally obsess with his craft. Today, we view him as common of us, give or take a small in number hundred million dollars. Everybody give pain tos as the song goes, and the last not many years, he has dealt with life experiences that change us all: the death of an influential father, marriage, a career sink philosophical changes, even a bad pizza or brace

The question was to what degree he would respond to the shakes one by one.

Your powerful answer came Sunday at Medinah abiding habitation Club, his home away from household where he clutched a memorial of conquest in the evening sun that symbolized his collective triumph and made him appear human at last. After weeping and releasing his grief at Royal Liverpool, where he won his first major since the passing of the Earl of forests he reacted to his five-stroke rude play in the PGA Championship and 12th major title with the peaceful smile of a man who knows he has survived his personal hell.

"Sweet!" he said simply at the victory formality letting the word hang in the late-summer air for Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson, Luke Donald and everyone other to hear.

A recently made known MAN

Maybe now, we can relate to Woods' pain and embrace him. And maybe now, he can stop being Howard Hughes and start melding with the masses, as he tries to do in his Buick commercials. Oh he's still reclusive enough that he built a Bat Cave attachment to his office in an Orlando strip mall -- the office with the windows blacked abroad -- so no one beholds him coming and going. He also expected frightened at times when the adoring Chicago concourses pressed around him between openings "There was a lot of screaming, yelling and pushing," he said in the midst of a compliment about the local galleries. "I walked with my head down a lot"

nevertheless if he was a polarizing, love-or-hate figure early in his career, it's safe to say the world at large bottoms for Woods as he approaches Nicklaus' record of 18 majors, a fait accompli as inevitable as the r he wears onward Sundays. "It's still a prolonged way away," he said of the record, aw-shucking it after a stirring putt- o-rama exhibition. "It's not something I could finish next year. As I said, it took Jack through 20 years to get to his. It's going to take a career, and I've got to retain plugging along."

Yeah, right. Given the glazed organ of sights of his rivals, the chore may take five years tops. Donald was his latest victim, fading as fast as his Northwestern Wildcats did in the 1996 Rose hollow while making the mistake of wearing a Tiger-red shirt, not that wood-lands noticed. "I didn't think anything of it. I thinking it was kind of weird to have a dejected belt with it," El Tigre cracked. Sergio Garcia, who hasn't been the same since groves beat him here in the '99 PGA, reflection he was making a bold-faced proclamation when he actually was paying a laughable lyric poem to the Tiger dynasty.

"It's going to happen," he said of a thickets fourth-round fold. "I mean, he's not going to be 68 years not new and in the final rotund of a major and tied for the lead -- and he wins. It's going to happen eventually. We'll diocese when."

Don't keep possession of your breath without a large oxygen tank. "You would think he would be excited the pressure because everybody is expecting him to win, and it's the exact opposite," said Chris DiMarco, who has tried and failed in his share of Tiger affair of honors

This was the day the Nicklaus comparisons diverted passe, the day vocabularies were obliterated in the media tent-wine the day Woods painted similar a mesmerizing portrait of invincibility and intent that we are left to contemplate bigger issues. Never mind Jack. not mind the pseudo-rivalry with Mickelson. The fresh angle, the new place in individual of sport's greatest tales aye told, is whether Tiger has become bigger than the greatest in number famous member at Medinah.

I don't know to what degree many times I wrote in the '90 that Michael Jordan's visible form [i]or[/i] frame of work in sports couldn't be topped. "Best there till doomsday was, best there ever will be," reads the inscription onward his statue. But Tiger, who one time soaked up career advice from Jordan like an awestruck pup is on his way to surpassing the unconquerable legacy. Barring any alien abduction or quickly prepared desire to play baseball, he strike one as beings destined to be recalled in our lifetime as the best there perpetually was, the best there perpetually will be.

for what cause is this possible, you ask? Tiger has faced greater expectations than Jordan, starting with TV appearances as a toddler and continuing with his "Hello, World" proclamation -- and somehow or other has pulled if off in 10 quick years. Tiger has faced more social obstacles than Jordan, in what one time was a lily-white, racism- infested sport, and has rul the competition nonetheless. Jordan won six titles in a team sport; Tiger might win 25 majors and 85 PGA Tour consequences in an individual sport. As for the proof of time, Michael dominated the global consciousness for about a dozen years.

groves may seize it for a quarter-century.

Rarefied air

Forget Nicklaus. The operative comparison is Jordan, who remains choke enough to Woods that they exhausted time recently watching Michael's son play in an AAU basketball tournament in Florida. "We have an indoor hoop-petticoat in the clubhouse [at Isleworth, gated community to the stars], in the same manner MJ was in there shooting and showing me substance MJ is still MJ," said wood-lands eyes wide. "He only does it about five or 10 minutes now, still the shots he can hit -- the fadeaways, the technique, the release -- it's just different."

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