Florida Swing Special Report Monday 11 March - WGC-Cadillac Championship review

“I guess it's Hello World”. Again.

With a Sunday 71 Tiger Woods became the first multiple winner of the 2013 season, won a 17^th World Golf Championship and claimed his 89^th worldwide career official win by 2 shots from Steve Stricker. 100 putts for 72 holes is a career low for the World Number Two and it was very much the definitive characteristic shown by Woods throughout the week, making it very difficult for the chasing pack to make up much ground on the final day as he put together a front nine 34 to stamp his authority on a championship he has now won a sensational seven times. His game was controlled and calm, much like the US Open at Oakmont as I referenced earlier in the week and he made very few mistakes all week, allied to an incredible 27 birdies, the last of which came at the 10^th hole on Sunday. “I played well” Woods said at the presentation, he thanked Steve Stricker for the “putting lesson” prior to the start of the tournament on Thursday, the pupil clearly took notice of what the instructor said and preceded to put on a clinic on greens which will be dug up next week as the renovation of the Blue Monster begins.

This was as dominant as Tiger has been in any tournament since 2009 winning wire-to-wire and having the least putts and most birdies, an almost unbeatable combination in one of the world's premier championships with every great player on the planet present. The wins at Bay Hill, Muirfield and Congressional were good, but this was very good bordering on great as far as a performance in a massive event goes, but even though he was utterly dominant it was oh so nearly very different. He bogeyed the 16^th and then after laying up on the 18^th his approach narrowly avoided going into the water, if it had have done he could quite easily have ended up getting into a fine mess and falling into a play-off with Stricker. It is this tendency to take the foot off the gas, like he did at Torrey Pines, that makes me believe that Tiger shouldn't be the overwhelming favourite at Augusta. Yes at Bay Hill, he was won there seven times and the field is not close to the strength of the WGC-Cadillac Championship, but not at Augusta where he hasn't won since 2005 and in a Major Championship when he hasn't won one since 2008.

The challenge of the chasing pack never got close enough to really put Woods under any sort of pressure on Sunday as the best round of the players within the chasing four players at the start of the day was 68, a score that always relied on Woods shooting 74 or worse for them to overtake him.

Two players however did go low on Sunday. The lowest round of the week came from Adam Scott, the former Players Champion made 8 birdies and 10 pars in an 8-under-par 64 to finish in a tie for third place on 14-under for the week, 5 adrift of Woods and 4 ahead of the World Number One Rory McIlroy. McIlroy produced by some distance his best performance of 2013 with 7 birdies and 11 pars in an impressive 65 to move into 8^th place, a position which seemed most unlikely coming into the weekend. On Friday I said that I believed McIlroy was indeed in a crisis following a first round where he hit only 21% of the fairways, following the debacle at the Honda and the poor results and performances at the Abu Dhabi and WGC-Accenture Match Play Championships. He was in my opinion and the opinion of many others in the toughest period of his career. But it is a mistake to question the heart, dedication and determination within Rory McIlroy, he has worked tirelessly over the last week since pulling out at PGA National to correct the swing faults which he has been open about and there was clear progress over Friday and Saturday, leading to Sunday.

On Sunday McIlroy hit 71% of the fairways, 83% of the greens and took 28 putts to put together by far his best round of the tournament and year so far to complete a weekend run that saw him go from +1 at the start of the back nine on Saturday to -10 at the end of the tournament, 11-under-par for 27 holes in arguably harder conditions than greeted the players on Thursday and Friday. McIlroy later confirmed he wouldn't be adding any tournaments to his schedule and the next event he will play is the Shell Houston Open, that is sure to enrage Arnold Palmer once more but no player should be dictated to by a tournament host, whether he is a legend of the game or not. It seems that the more McIlroy practices the more engrained the swing will become and the more repeatable it will be on the course when he does play. Of course this could be just a good day, but judging by the gradual improvement each day at Doral I tend to believe the next time we see Rory he will be contending for the title at Redstone. He could though enter that tournament as the World Number Two, if Tiger claims an eighth win at Bay Hill he will complete a near three year journey back to the top spot in the world rankings, a journey many doubted he would complete. This would set up the heart of the season perfectly, with a rejuvenated McIlroy chasing a record-chasing Tiger Woods for the biggest prizes in the game.

Be sure to catch the next edition of the Florida Swing Special Report on Tuesday, where I will be looking at the future of the Florida Swing and the positioning of The Players Championship on the PGA Tour schedule.