Tiger to come out of his lair

David Toms defended the Michelob Championship last week, becoming the second player in as many weeks to win a tour event for the second straight year. That was the Louisiana native's third win of the year and pushed him to third on the money list and eighth on the World Golf Ranking.

The talk has quietly begun that Toms is in the thick of the race for the Player of the Year honour now, right behind some guy named Tiger Woods, who hasn't played for more than a month.

That Woods is still the leading candidate for the award, after such a long break, speaks volumes about the kind of year he has had. Toms' three wins, including a major, is good enough to make him the Player of the Year most other years, and it should be so. But not this year, not when the world's No. 1 has captured five of the toughest tournaments on the Tour, including the Masters.

Woods is the only golfer who can go hibernate for a month and draw more attention than others who play every week. It's not as though he's got a lot to play for this year, either -although motivation has never been a problem for him-and the terrorist attacks have raised some serious security issues for him.

The last time Woods was seen on the Tour circuit was at the Bell Canadian Open in early September, the weekend before the attacks. He was to play the following weekend at the World Golf Championships-American Express Championship, which was subsequently cancelled. Woods was also committed to Trophée Lancôme at Paris, but didn't make the trip to France for security concerns. Woods has seemed to enjoy playing overseas, and he has won on European soil at least once in each of the last four years.

Then the Ryder Cup was postponed for a year. Suddenly, Woods' itinerary was altered significantly. He doesn't play tournaments immediately before and after majors, Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups, so Marconi Pennsylvania Classic and Texas Open were already out of the equation. He could have entered last week's Michelob Championship or even this week's Invensys Classic at Las Vegas, the site of his first career PGA Tour victory. But the guy stayed home, preparing for the next week's National Car Rental Golf Classic at Disney, which he won in 1999, and the season finale, the Tour Championship.

The good news is Woods won't have to travel too far for the Disney, to be held in his home state of Florida. Another exciting news, at least for the television executives, is that Tiger couldn't possibly come back to the scene sooner. What with NFL games and baseball's stretch drive, golf has suffered some drops in the TV ratings. The absence of Woods didn't help, either.

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