Sports

Woods favorite for Player of the Year

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Now that the four major championships have been played and won by four different players, who is your Player of the Year on the PGA Tour?

Tiger Woods, with his five wins (but no major championship)?

Phil Mickelson, with his British Open title added to his win in Phoenix in February? Adam Scott, with his Masters victory to go along with the fact he has been in contention in virtually every other big tournament he’s entered?

Jason Dufner, with his impressive PGA Championship triumph at Oak Hill, where he beat 99 of the top 100 players in the world?

Or will the Player of the Year be a surprise winner, someone who dominates the four-tournament FedEx Cup playoff series that begins with the Barclays Championship at Liberty National?

Barring a miracle closing run by someone in the playoffs, the Player of the Year will be one of the four major winners this year or it will be Woods.

The smart money should be on Woods despite the fact none of his five wins is a major and despite the fact that among those five wins, his victories at Torrey Pines (eight career wins), Doral (four), Bay Hill (eight) and Firestone (eight) came at places where he has won more often than most players win in their careers.

“It’s tough,’’ Pat Perez said yesterday at Liberty National, where he was about to tee it up for a practice round. “Tiger has won five times, but where it gets skewed a little bit is that Tiger just cares about majors. Majors are the bar he set for himself. Majors are also what usually determines who is Player of the Year.

“This one is a little different, though, because you’ve got Adam Scott, who’s played awesome for awhile now. You’ve got Phil, who everyone wanted to see win the British and who played arguably the best round of year by far. Phil has two wins with a major and Tiger has five with the Players Championship, which consider definitely a major because it has the best field in the game and Tiger beat everyone.

“Then you look at the PGA, where ‘Duf’ beat the best players in the world, and he beat them all handily in my opinion,’’ Perez went on. “I’m going to get the [voting] sheet here in a couple months, but I don’t know who I’d put as Player of the Year right now.’’

Perez said he does not buy into is the argument that Woods’ wins should be discounted because they were at courses on which he has had perennial success.

“Who cares?’’ Perez said. “He’s still winning tournaments. Winning is winning. I don’t give a damn about how much a guy likes a course. He’s still got to play 72 holes and win. I’ve played all those courses just as many times as [Woods] has and I don’t have eight wins at any of them.’’

Carl Pettersson, warming up in the Liberty practice green, said his Player of the Year “has got to be Tiger with five wins.’’

“If anyone else would have done that it would have been considered unbelievable,’’ Pettersson said. “But because it’s Tiger everyone is like, ‘Well, he didn’t win a major.’ He’s won five times. I mean, I’ve won five times in my career. He’s done it in one season. If somebody else had done it everyone would be raving about it.’’

Aaron Baddeley, about to get some work on the driving range, is another player to point to Woods’ five wins and insist this should not be taken for granted.

“Phil has won twice on the PGA Tour and one of those was the British Open, but Tiger has won five times in one year,’’ Baddeley said. “How many people have done that? Tiger has done it, what, 10 times in his career? So if you have to pick Player of the Year now, even with Phil’s British Open, I’d still go with Tiger.

“If Phil won here [the FedEx Cup] I’d switch over to Phil. But Tiger has won five out of eight events outside of the majors. That’s ridiculous.’’