Tiger Woods takes his six-month winning streak into this week's World Golf Championships event at Doral with fellow professionals wondering how they will beat the world number one.
With six official victories on the trot — five in the United States and one on the European Tour — his peers can only marvel at his talent.
"What people talk about in the locker room is how does he putt so well every week?" said Geoff Ogilvy, the 2006 US Open champion ahead of the WGC-CA Championship.
"Lots of guys can work out how to hit it well every week but week in and week out; he seems to make bombs all over the place, which is not easy to do. That's the bit people can't work out, how does he hole that many putts?"
There is much more to Woods' repertoire than putting but he does have an uncanny ability to hole out when most needed.
On Sunday he sank a 24-foot putt at the final hole to win the Arnold Palmer Invitational by one stroke in Orlando. Prior to that he had not made one from outside 20 feet all tournament.
In an average year, Woods posts as many victories as some very good players manage in a lifetime. He may have had two relatively quiet seasons, finishing fourth on the money list in both 1998 and 2004.
Both times, however, he was in the midst of swing changes that ultimately would lead to total dominance again.
"He has his ups and downs but his ups tend to last longer than most people's and his downs don't last very long, and are very good," Ogilvy added. "In the middle of last year I wasn't really in love [with his swing], but by the Tour Championship (in September) it started looking really good."
Woods will try to extend his winning streak at a course he virtually owns, Doral's Blue Monster. He has won here the past three years, twice at the now defunct PGA Tour stop, while last year claiming the WGC CA Championship.
The field has been set at 79 players, with Open champion Padraig Harrington the only one among the world's top 50 absent. The Dubliner decided to take the week off before his Masters build-up, leaving Graeme McDowell as the only Irish player in a stellar field.
