Pga Championship Golf Tournament

It's four days of mayhem at Medinah Country Club, where the 88th PGA Championship begins today, with Tiger Woods once again in his role as prohibitive favorite. That would be the long and short of it ... if there actually was anything short about this place, which there isn't. At 7,561 yards, the No. 3 course at Medinah is the longest major championship venue in golf history. .

Corey Pavin packed his slingshot Monday and headed off to Chicago to do battle. That's where the David of pro golf will be taking on several Goliaths this week. The first monster who can mash him is the Medinah Country Club's Course No. 3, where the PGA Championship will be contested over 7,561 yards, the longest track ever in a major tournament. Then, there will be more than a hundred of the human kind, all routinely bashing the golf ball more than 300 yards.

After Darren Clarke withdrew from the PGA Championship because of the death of his wife, Heather, from breast cancer, Paul McGinley also pulled out. But Padraig Harrington decided he'd play. "Obviously, Darren made it quite clear that the players should go and play," he said. "It's what Heather would have wanted." Harrington said he would donate his prize money this week to cancer research. "For me, it feels like I'm doing something practical this week.

Excuse me, but haven't we seen all this before? It doesn't seem to matter much where Tiger Woods plays his major golf championships, whether it's Pebble Peach or St. Andrews or even a grassy trampoline out here in rural Kentucky, where the PGA threw open its doors and watched Woods push his way inside first. It's sort of monotonous the way things are going. You put on a nice little major and Woods turns it into a personal outing. Pretty soon, he's going to start collecting greens fees.

What does this all mean? The first round of the PGA Championship is sunny and the course is dry and Tiger Woods shoots a 66. The second round is mostly overcast and the course is soft and Woods shoots a 67. Well, if it snows today, Woods is liable to do something really crazy, like putt with a ski pole, birdie every other hole, make root beer floats at the turn and slalom across the finish line with the trophy in one hand. Hey, don't think he couldn't.

Just guessing, but there is a Tiger in this place that probably could outrun all those thoroughbreds in the shadow of those twin steeples at Churchill Downs. In golf, the race belongs to the swiftest . . . also to the strongest, the most skilled and the best young player the game has ever seen. On Sunday at Valhalla Golf Club, we identified that person once again as Tiger Woods, who won the 82nd PGA Championship with equal parts tenacity, nerve and flair, the same way he won the U.S.

History isn't always only about the winner. Sometimes it is about the guy who took the punch. Sometimes it is about the guy who hits the ground five hours after everyone thought he would, the guy with the wobbly knees and dazed eyes and fairway-sized heart. Sometimes history is about the guy who celebrates life by not dying until the one making that history has fallen atop him, exhausted. Sometimes history is not about Tiger Woods, it is about Bob May.