Ten Golf Honors in last Decade

Tiger Woods has dominated golf, as we know. We will enter a new decade and look back on the past one, woods is dominating golf. Who will be the one to challenge Woods in future?

 

Look back to last decade, we can find the biggest storylines in golf. Tiger Woods is on the top.

 

1. The Tiger Slam. It started in June at the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, where Tiger Woods tied or set nine U.S. Open records on his way to a 15-stroke victory. It ended the following April with Woods winning the Masters to become the first player in the modern era to hold all four major championship trophies at once. In between, Woods set a record for the lowest score in relation to par at a major with a 19-under total at the Open Championship at St. Andrews before a dramatic playoff victory over Bob May at the PGA Championship at Valhalla. And that was just at the majors. In all, Woods set or tied 27 TOUR records and won nine times on TOUR in 2000, including at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, where he rallied from seven strokes back in the final round.

 

2. Tiger's 2008 U.S. Open win. It was arguably the greatest victory in the history of golf, Woods winning at Torrey Pines on practically one leg. What no one outside of the Woods camp knew was that he was playing with a completely torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. What also made Woods' 14th career major championship memorable, of course, was the mano-a-mano tone it took down the stretch and into an 18-hole Monday playoff and then sudden death against Rocco Mediate. It was a classic David vs. Goliath match-up with Goliath winning thanks to Woods making every shot he had to make when he had to make it. The other significance of it was that it would be the last time we would see Woods in 2008 before he underwent season-ending surgery. How he would recover from that was answered rather resoundingly in the form of six victories and another FedExCup title in 2009 to close out the decade.

 

3. David Duval's decline. One of only two players to be ranked No. 1 in the world in the Tiger era (See No. 4 for the other), Duval's decline was almost as precipitous as his rise. Five years after reaching the top spot in the Official World Golf Ranking and three years after winning the 2001 British Open, Duval dropped to 520th -- from 15th just two years earlier. As the missed cuts continued to pile up, Duval fell all the way to 882nd before coming out of nowhere to finish second at the 2009 U.S. Open, where he was a sectional qualifier and subsequently climbed more than 700 spots in the OWGR to 142nd. As we turn to a new decade, however, Duval is without a TOUR card after finishing outside the top 125 on the 2009 money list.

 

4. Vijay Singh shows there is life after 40. So often it's been wondered how many major championships others would have if not for Tiger Woods. Ernie Els immediately comes to mind, in part, because of his three runners-up in 2000, but it's Vijay Singh who ranks second on TOUR in victories and top-10s over the last decade with 26 and 118, respectively. Singh is also the other player to be ranked No. 1 during the Woods era. Els? He had nearly one-third fewer wins with nine during that same period. What makes Singh's run in the aughts so amazing is that 22 of those victories came on the other side of the age of 40, which Singh turned in 2003. That's five more than legend Sam Snead, who ranks second on that list. Singh's work ethic is beyond legendary and the fruits of his labor paid off better than nearly anyone's over the last decade.

 

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