By: Mike Anthony

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

Much was made about Tiger Woods’ win at The Masters in April, and for good reason.

Not only did Woods win his 15th major championship, thus stoking the fire on questions about whether he can reach Jack Nicklaus’ all-time record of 18, but he did so after a long and improbable comeback.

Just over a year ago, Woods was barely able to swing a golf club, much less stare down the best players in the world in the game’s most famous tournament.

Before his back issues, there were also well-documented personal setbacks for Woods, leading many to say that the living legend was simply beating himself.

The funny thing is that beating himself – or, rather, a handful of golfers modeling themselves in his image – is exactly what Tiger had to do to claim another major.

When Woods burst onto the pro golf scene in 1996, his approach to the game was different than anything that had been seen before.

Instead of hitting the steakhouse after a round, Tiger spent hours on the range and putting green obsessing over the things that would benefit him the next day.

Instead of palling around with other golfers for a few drinks late at night, Tiger was early to bed and early to rise, putting in running and workouts before a round to help build the overwhelming power that made some traditional course layouts obsolete.

Time is undefeated and untied. No one ever thought that Woods would be hitting 330-yard drives and playing the same number of tournaments at this point of his career. And that wouldn’t be much of a problem if he was still battling the same fields of the 90s and early 00s.

But a very significant byproduct of Woods’ rise to prominence was the impact he had on the generations of golf that came after him. He not only inspired kids to play the game – he inspired them to play HIS game.

So, when Tiger got sidetracked by some bad personal choices and then had his body start to fail him, he wasn’t left with the task of getting back to the point of competing with the likes of the turn-of-the-millennium forty-somethings that he had become accustomed to beating.

Instead, the standard that Woods had to build back up to was that of guys like Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Jason Day and Brooks Koepka.

Not only is the top competition for Tiger now young enough to be one of his kids, it’s also had an entire lifetime’s worth of training and attacking the game in the mold set by Tiger more than two decades ago.

And where Woods may have had to search far and wide for a good gym or an indoor hitting bay to get in his extra work 20 years ago, today’s stars have had advances in technology and the added money and interest (thanks to the notoriety brought to the game by Tiger) fueling their training.

So, when Tiger made his Sunday charge at Augusta – and when he tees it up this week at Bethpage Black – he is still battling himself. Everywhere he looks, he’ll be surrounded by teens and twenty somethings who can hit it a mile, have tons of strength and stamina due to exercise and nutrition, and who take preparation and course management far more seriously than the generations of players before it.

Tiger dominated so thoroughly, and for so long, that there was almost no bar left to clear. His influence inadvertently gave him his toughest challenge yet and he was able to conquer that as well.

There’s no telling if Woods can repeat that greatness in a major. Especially since the competition is only getting better while he is only getting older.

But for at least the next week, Tiger Woods is still on top of the golf world, and there is still the prospect for golf fans of seeing a larger-than-life legend do his thing once again.