I'm not yet ready to call 2006 the Year of the Tiger

	Tiger Woods is showing signs of a huge year, having won two of his four U.S. starts. Doug Benc/Getty Images
	MAILBAG Submit a comment or question for Chris. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

ORLANDO -- OK, I'll admit it. I'm starting to get a little impatient. The 2006 PGA Tour season is now more than 10 weeks old, but no clear theme has emerged. If I were controlling this season from my laptop, I'd reboot and start all over again.

True, Tiger Woods is showing signs of a big year. He's won two of his four U.S. starts (the Buick Invitational in San Diego and the Ford Championship at Doral) and his only tournament overseas (the Dubai Desert Classic).

Still, those victories had a certain ho-hum feeling about them. Over the last four years, Tiger's winning percentage in San Diego is .750. He's won Doral two years straight, a number that would be higher had he shown up the two years preceding '05. With Tiger involved, those two tournaments are about as suspenseful as professional wrestling -- you pretty much know who's going to win before the opening bell.

If Woods had strung together a bunch of such victories -- let's say, worked in another Match Play triumph or posted his first-ever win at Riviera instead of being felled by the flu -- then we'd have a different kind of season on our hands. We'd already know we were in a Rampant Tiger kind of year. Indeed, a number of scribes are already hard-selling that theme. But it will take one more pre-Masters Tiger victory, at this week's Bay Hill Invitational or next week's Players Championship, to convince me.

In the meantime, I'll insist that it's at least possible for these two weeks to change everything and alter the trajectory of the year. Not that Tiger's going anywhere -- he's Topic A for the foreseeable future. But as we approach the Masters, the question is who, if anyone, will join him in the heart-of-the-season headlines.

The nominees are:

• The Baby Bashers. Long-hitting youngsters J.B. Holmes, Bubba Watson and Camillo Villegas are supposed to be the Future of Golf. Even Tiger and Phil say so. But here, too, I'll buck the conventional wisdom. Let's not forget that they, as a group, have yet to complete that short ferry ride from Potential to Proof. So far there has only been one win among them (Holmes at the FBR Open). And when it comes to trends, there are scientific rules. To wit: One is an accident. Two's a coincidence. It takes three to make a trend. Call me when we get to three.

• David Toms. Next to Tiger, he's the guy with the best '06 résumé. He has one win (Sony Open in Hawaii) and two near misses (T2 at Doral; T3 at Honda). He leads the Tour in scoring average and owns its best all-around ranking (a meta-stat that combines all other stats). His downside is his length, and he knows it -- that's why he doesn't play at venues like Torrey Pines or Bay Hill. Course length at Augusta and Winged Foot will make it difficult for him to make a major impact. But don't be surprised if he wins the Players Championship.

• Vijay Singh. Anecdotal evidence still suggests that Vijay's putting poorly, yet the stats rank him 27th on Tour. Singh says the problem is ballstriking, but while he's 133rd in total driving, he's seventh in GIR. The truth is in there somewhere. One concrete reality: The plane of longtime Europe-based coach Farid ("Freddie") Guedra just touched down on Monday. We'll see if that helps.

• Phil Mickelson. Lefty's been mostly silent in '06. But over the past couple of years, Mickelson has been like one of those Ambien-popping sleep-eaters we've been reading about: For a while he's dead to the world, then suddenly he awakens and starts gorging on trophies. That's how it was at the beginning of '05, as well as the end of the year, when he rebounded from a slow summer to win the PGA. It may happen this season, too, but we probably won't see it coming.

• David Duval. No, not that David Duval. I mean a conceptual David Duval -- an arriviste who's been on the brink for a while, then runs the table for a couple of months, bum-rushing the top five like Double D did in late '97 and early '98. At this point, this is a long-shot category with very few breakout candidates in sight. Geoff Ogilvy would have to be one. Another possibility: Sweden's Henrik Stenson, whose so-so showings in California were the product of his first-ever encounters with poa annua putting surfaces.

• Ernie Els. A good start at Bay Hill is nice. More important, however, is that he'll arrive at Augusta having taken an almost unprecedented two of four weeks off. It will probably be the most rested he's been in a decade. The bigger issue is his ability to stare Tiger down in the stretch. Els' snap-hook on their first playoff hole in Dubai did not bode well. This may be a problem only Dr. Melfi can solve.

Of course, there's always Choice G: none of the above. Tiger might just win Bay Hill (another of his optimum performance venues -- he won here four consecutive times from '00 to '04) and roll out of Augusta with his near-record fifth green jacket, 11th major and landmark 50th Tour win. (For those of you scoring at home, or even on the road, Jack Nicklaus had six, 18 and 73.)

It would be even more impressive if, after winning Bay Hill, Tiger made the Players his 50th, because the TPC, unlike Augusta, doesn't have the kind of length that prematurely eliminates all but 10 players.

Truth is, any two Tiger wins in the next three weeks would smash the other potential storylines to smithereens and land us in familiar territory, with Woods head and shoulders above his supporting cast. It wouldn't be the most novel season-theme we've ever seen. But at least we'd know where we stand.