Tiger Woods captures golf crown
(AFP)Updated: 2006-12-18 15:20 Tiger Woods fired a six-under par 66 final round here to win the 5.75 million-dollar Target World Challenge, defeating US Open champion Geoff Ogilvy of Australia by four strokes.
 U.S. golfer Tiger Woods poses with the trophy after winning the Target World Challenge golf tournament in Thousand Oaks, California December 17, 2006. [Reuters]  |
Two weeks shy of his 31st birthday, Woods won for the third time at the annual event he hosts at Sherwood Country Club, giving him eight triumphs and three runner-up finishes in stroke-play events over the latter half of 2006.
Woods' father Earl died in May but after missing the cut in June's US Open, Woods has played some of his greatest golf, including the British Open and PGA Championship.
"Hey, life is full of mysteries and you've got to deal with things as they come," Woods said. "Who's to know that if Dad didn't struggle and end up passing that I wouldn't have played that well in the summer. Who knows?"
Woods, who also won the Challenge in 2001 and 2004, captured the 1.35 million-dollar top prize and donated the money to the Southern California learning center for children that bears his name.
"It has been a year of two halves really," Woods said. "On the golf course, it has been something else to have things come together, especially to win two majors this year."
Ogilvy fired a final-round 71 to finish second on 276, one stroke ahead of US veteran Chris DiMarco, who led Woods by a stroke when the day began. DiMarco won 570,000 dollars while Ogilvy took home 840,000 dollars.
"I hit a few bad shots but at least I finished the round under par," Ogilvy said. "I would have had to shoot something pretty special to beat him today.
"In my mind I knew I was going to have to shoot 5- or 6-under to win. In hindsight I would have had 5-under for a playoff. I knew I had to.
"It's just harder to do that, especially when you're not in your best frame of mind after bogeying a par-5 on the second hole. It's a frustrating way to start."
Sweden's Henrik Stenson was fourth on 279, one stroke ahead of England's Paul Casey and Scotland's Colin Montgomerie.
Woods began with birdies on two of the first three holes, including a key chip-in from the edge of the rough and just off the green at the par-3 third hole. He answered a bogey at the 15th with a birdie at 16 and held on to win.
"Once you get the lead out here, if the guys behind me get aggressive, they can make mistakes," Woods said. "The idea is to make them come get me."
Woods concluded 2006 with 54 career titles, including 12 major crowns, and a PGA Tour record 65.71 million dollars in career earnings. He won his first and last events in 2006.
"It's always nice to get Ws for bookends," Woods said. "But the middle part for me, my year golf-wise, was pretty good this year. Overall I'm very pleased with the progress I've made.
"It was nice to actually put a lot of the pieces together and just go out there and play. Obviously to win as many tournaments as I did from summer until now was an awful lot of fun."
After capturing the British Open and PGA Championship this year, Woods could achieve another "Tiger Slam" by winning the Masters and US Open in 2007. But US tour schedule changes will force him to switch some tuneup events for those touranments.
"My schedule is going to be a little bit different," Woods said. "I'm still going to have to peak at the right times."
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