The Majors: There can only be a max of four big winners in any year. Philip Reid explains why

Some keep them in their heads; others write them down on a piece of paper and slip them neatly into a file; and there are those who tap them into a laptop computer.

They are a player's targets for the season, but, for the world's very top players, they all revolve around one thing: The Majors.

These are the four tournaments that have history and tradition, the honour and the glory. They're the championships - the US Masters, the US Open, the British Open and the US PGA - around which the golfing world revolves.

As ever, the one man who doesn't need to write down any targets is Tiger Woods, the world's number one. Everyone knows he wants to win, to surpass Jack Nicklaus's haul of 18 professional majors; and then to go on some.

This past season, Woods added another two to his personal total - the US Masters and the US Open - and now has eight majors of his own. Time, too, is on his side. He turns 27 years of age in December. It's a matter of when he breaks the record, and how many majors he accumulates.

For Woods, and the rest of golf's superstars, the major season started in its traditional home, Augusta National. It was back in 1996 that Nicklaus, the man Woods has in his sights, made a prediction.

He had just played a practice round with Woods, then an amateur, and Arnold Palmer. "Arnie and I agree," said Nicklaus, "that Tiger is going to win as many Masters as the two of us did together." That number is 10, and at the time it seemed a ludicrous suggestion.

Not any longer. On a course tweaked and pulled to its longest ever yardage, and in weather that had no hint of southern hospitality, Woods won out. They say that truly great champions have a way of deciding their own destiny.

"Destino," Seve Ballesteros called it, and Ben Hogan talked of "outworking, outthinking and intimidating challengers," and, in many ways, that is what Woods did as he strode to his third Masters title.

His play on that final Sunday was not spectacular. It didn't need to be. On a day when the tees were pushed back to let the weather-beaten course play to its limit, Woods - who had started out in a share of the lead with Retief Goosen - was aided and abetted in his successful quest to become just the third player to win back-to-back Masters titles by a litany of errors from those cast in the role of challengers.

One by one, they exited; and, in the end, Woods' round of 71 for a 12-under-par 276 left him three shots clear of Goosen.

"As a kid," he said, "you hit balls and dream of coming down the stretch to win a title. I've been fortunate enough to live out my dreams. It would be nice to win as many majors as Jack (Nicklaus) did. But if that doesn't happen, it doesn't happen.

"The thing I keep saying to myself every year is that I want to become a better player at the end of the year than I was at the beginning of the year. If I can keep doing that, year after year, I'll have a pretty good year."

Woods walked away from Augusta National with his seventh major, but, for Padraig Harrington, there was also some satisfaction.

The Irishman's ambitions of winning a green jacket were effectively terminated at the end of Saturday's third round when he suffered a double-bogey six on the last hole.

However, it was a tribute to his evolving status that, while others withered under pressure in the final round, he held firm and he finished six strokes behind Woods, in tied-fifth position. "I'm still on a learning curve," said Harrington.

By the time the next major of the season took place at Bethpage State Park on New York's Long Island, that curve seemed to be quite steep.

Harrington's new status as a genuine major contender was emphasised in Friday's second round as he played through the worst of the weather to reach the midway point of the championship in second place, four shots clear of those in third. Harrington's weekend - and particularly Sunday - proved to be a disappointment.

In fact, he had battled to stay in a top-five position until the 72nd hole, when a double-bogey six, after he required two shots to extricate himself from the greenside rough, dropped him down to tied-eighth place. It was a good showing, but no cigar, as they say.

For Woods, it was another impressive performance; and another title. The win gave him his eighth major - seven from the last 11 - and put him halfway towards the calendar year Grand Slam.

He was a wire-to-wire winner. "It was brutal how hard the course played," remarked Woods, but more comments about his own destiny. "I'm only 26, it is not like my career is finished. There's a long way to go. In that span of time, I am trying to get better and better. This is what we all play for, major championships and the opportunity to win on a Sunday.

His second US Open title was achieved like all of his other major wins. As a front-runner.

He manoeuvred his way into pole position on the first day, and never relinquished it. In the final round, Woods, who had started the day four shots clear of Sergio Garcia, suffered a number of glitches before an electrical storm halted play for 50 minutes.

When he returned, the glitches were gone - and, by the end, he was the only player in the field under par, just as he had been at Pebble Beach two years previously.

If there was a sense that Woods was controlling his own destiny, it was to be proven incorrect at Muirfield where the Scottish weather on a Saturday afternoon literally blew Woods away.

Woods had been mauled by the freakishness of the meteorological conditions in that third round. An 81, the worst round of his professional career, ruined his chances of adding the British Open to the US Masters and US Open he had already collected this season.

Although his domination of the majors had been halted, even if it is only temporarily, Woods insisted that, by year's end, he would reflect on "a great season".

He explained: "Everybody tends to lose perspective on how difficult it is to win a major championship. Anytime you win one major in a year, it is going to be a successful year."

No longer a factor, it was left to others to fight it out. Yet again, Harrington was in the thick of the action - but his chance for a first major went when he drove into a fairway bunker on the 72nd hole and could only play out sideways.

He finished with a bogey, his only one of the day, and was one shot outside a play-off won by Ernie Els.

Els beat Stuart Appleby, Steve Elkington and Thomas Levet in the play-off for the title and remarked, "I guess I just grinded it out. I came here with not a lot of confidence and I'm leaving as the Open champion. I think I've shown that I can still play like a man who has a lot of talent."

Woods was back in the thick of the action for the final major of the season, the US PGA at Hazeltine - but he had to play second fiddle to an unlikely champion.

Rich Beem didn't just win the US PGA, the 12th champion of the last 15 to claim his first major in this event, he beat Woods; and he gave hope to every journeyman professional with hunger in his heart.

For someone who used to be a mobile phone salesman, and who couldn't make it as a club professional, the American player had completed an almost fairytale transformation.

In claiming just his third career title, and coming two weeks after his win in the International Open, Beem - who finished with a 68 for 10-under-par 278, a shot ahead of Tiger Woods - underwent a remarkable metamorphosis, from a player who didn't feel he belonged in majors into a major champion.

"The way Rich played the last two rounds, nobody was going to beat him," said Justin Leonard, who had held a three-shot lead going into Sunday's final round.

"He played better than anyone over the weekend and that's when you win a major championship."