Woods won't fake it just to claim more hardware

	Tiger Woods isn't worried about qualifying for the Vardon Trophy this season, and it's hard to blame him. Ian Walton/Getty Images

Just so you know, the Vardon Trophy was apparently still important in 2003. That's the year Tiger Woods lost the money title for the first time in five years but earned Player of the Year and claimed the Vardon Trophy, awarded by the PGA of America to the player with the lowest scoring average. The Vardon was a bigger source of pride, Woods said then, because scoring average was a better measure of good play than the money title, which Vijay Singh won mainly because he played in nine more events than Woods. In '04, Vijay played 10 more tournaments than Tiger.

It was simple, really: The awards you win are always bigger than the awards you aren't going to win. Call it justifiable vanity.

In 2006, Harry Vardon is in a slump. The Vardon Trophy is now so unimportant that Woods can't be bothered to play even one more round of golf than he has to. After he plays in the no-cut Tour Championship next month, Woods will finish the season with a bulging lead in scoring average this year (his 68.11 average is the second lowest of his career) and a lock on his seventh Vardon ... except that he will finish with 59 rounds of golf, one short of the minimum required to win. Woods is skipping this week's tour stop at Disney World, minutes away from his house, for only the second time in his career and is expected to take a Pasadena on next week's tournament in Tampa, where he has never played. If he entered either event, played one round and shot just about anything, he'd score another Vardon. Instead, he'll apparently cede the award to Jim Furyk.

Some golf observers seem surprised, not to mention appalled. They shouldn't be. The Vardon is a nice little perk, nothing more. It's the equivalent of winning a batting title in baseball. It looks good on the résumé, but it doesn't compare to being named league MVP or playing for a World Series winner. There isn't a golfer alive who wouldn't trade half a dozen Vardon Trophies for, say, one green jacket, one old claret jug or any other major championship.

Here are three more reasons why Woods' stiff-arming the Vardon Trophy is defendable.

• Tiger needs another Vardon Trophy like Meryl Streep needs another Oscar nomination. He's already got six of them (Vardons, that is, not Oscars). Lee Trevino and Billy Casper were the only players to snag as many as five Vardons. Tiger already holds the record with six. That's not quite in the records-that-will-never-be-broken category, but it's one that won't easily be topped. What's one more? When he's 50 and looking down at the world as he flies cross-country in his personal jet-pack, I guarantee Tiger isn't going to look back and say, "Gee, I wish I'd won another Vardon Trophy." Scoring average is a mere stat. Tiger, to quote him, is all about the "W's." He means wins, not George Bushes. At least, I'm pretty sure.

I have this mental image of Tiger's house (call it a fantasy, really) in which every room in Stately Woods Manor is cluttered with his golf awards. He's using one Vardon Trophy as a doorstep in a guest bedroom. Two more are in his office, on the floor, with a piece of wood across them to create a shelf where he stores his PlayStation games. His claret jug replica for winning the British Open is a creamer next to the coffeemaker in the foyer. Various U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open trophy replicas are scattered around the house, filled with Halloween-colored M&Ms, cashews, fun-size Snickers. And there's a metal knight-in-armor statue in his game room that's dressed up with ... a green jacket. I'm sure my fantasy is way off-base, but the point is, another Vardon Trophy for a man with 12 major titles and 54 victories is just one more knick-knack.