Don't expect anybody to beat Tiger the next three days. Jamie Squire/Getty Images
	POLL Do you think Tiger Woods wrapped up the British Open on Thursday? Yes, he's in control No, but he'll still win No, someone will beat him  View Results

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland -- Game over.

Go ahead and put all of your newly printed commemorative Jack Nicklaus five-pound notes on it -- Tiger Woods is your next champion golfer of the year. That is, he'll leave St. Andrews once again in possession of the British Open's Claret Jug.

Sure, it seems ridiculous to declare a winner after a tournament's first round. A lot can happen. (I called Retief Goosen the winner at the U.S. Open after the first round, a call that looked good until Sunday afternoon when it went terribly wrong for the Goose.)

But this is Tiger Woods. More importantly, this is the Tiger Woods who's looking more and more like the Tiger Woods of 2000 every day. He may not go unchallenged this week, or win in a rout the way he did when he made the Old Course look like the Royal & Ancient Miniature Golf Course five years ago, but he's going to win.

You need the reasons why? Let us count the ways.

• One, there's the opening 66 Woods dropped on the field Thursday morning on an overcast, relatively calm day. That's one shot lower than his opening-round score in 2000, when he broke Nick Faldo's Open scoring record (finishing at 19-under par) and finished eight shots clear of the field.

Back then, you could almost hear the opposition looked at Tiger's name on the leaderboard, spotting that 67, and going, "Uh-oh." Ernie Els, even though he'd posted 66 the same day, more or less said that later. Woods was in full flight then and everyone knew it.

He's close to that level again -- since missing the cut at the Byron Nelson, he has been second, second and third in his last three starts, including the U.S. Open -- but until now, we hadn't realized how close.

• Two, there is the way Woods took apart the Old Course on Thursday. With a light breeze from the southwest, St. Andrews' outward holes -- most of the front nine -- played more difficult than the incoming holes.

All Woods did was rack up seven birdies in the opening 12 holes. In other words, he ate up the toughest part of the course. He stumbled with a pair of bogeys coming in due to a monumental event -- he finally hit into a bunker, three times, in fact, something he didn't do throughout 72 holes in 2000.

If he pars the 13th and 16th and birdies the par-5 14th, which he failed to do, he's at 9-under 63 and sparking an avalanche of stories about how the Old Course is too short and almost obsolete.

• Three, there's his putting. He finished second at Pinehurst despite not putting very well (he ranked 80th in the putting stats). Now, as Woods likes to say, he's "rolling his rock." When his stroke is on, he's as good on the greens as anyone in golf.

Well, his stroke is on. He made a 20-footer at the fourth for birdie. He two-putted from 90 feet for birdie at the ninth, the first of four straight birdies. He holed putts from 8, 15 and 8 feet on the next three holes.

Perhaps more impressive was his putt at the 16th, where he hit a 5-iron shot into the front bunker. Unable to play out toward the pin, he blasted to the left and faced some 50 feet for par. The ball narrowly missed going in and stopped barely a foot from the cup.

Lag putting is an unappreciated, and underrated, skill at the Old Course. Woods did it well Thursday. In fact, he chose to use his putter at the 18th hole when he bashed a drive pin-high, just left of the green on the 357-yard par 4.

"Inside left," Woods called the read for the putt. "Inside the left part of the Valley of Sin," he said, adding his own punchline.

It was a dicey little shot but Woods, who said he'd practiced the putt because he kept hitting his tee shot to the same place during the practice rounds, deftly stroked the shot to four feet below the hole, then made the birdie putt.