Golf Central

OK, we're beating a dead horse here. We know you're really upset about not being able to spend your Sunday watching Rod Pampling and Shingo Katayama battle it out in what would have been a gripping contest. But that's what they say about these "fickle" match-play tournaments: you're never guaranteed to get what you want. And yes, we were just kidding ...

Instead, we saw Tiger Woods put on one of the most dominating performances in recent golf history, destroying Stewart Cink in the final and moving past Arnold Palmer on the all-time PGA Tour victories list with 63, right behind Ben Hogan. That's good company. But let's put this thing in perspective ...

Breaking down the tournament:

• Tiger has now won four straight events on the PGA Tour, and six of his last seven. In the only tournament he lost, he lost by two shots to Phil Mickelson, the world No. 2.
• There have been 26 World Golf Championships events, featuring the world's best players, contested since 1999. Tiger Woods has won 15 of those now. Only Darren Clarke has more than one victory in WGC events.
• Tiger is the only player to hold all three WGC titles concurrently.
• He now owns a 31-6 record in the WGC Match Play.
• Woods' 8 & 7 victory over Cink was the largest margin in tournament history.
• Woods played 117 holes from Wednesday to Sunday. He made 45 birdies and two eagles.

Breaking down the IGWT selections:

All in all, we have to pat ourselves on the backs for a successful week. After a 2-for-2 performance on Sunday, IGWT correctly picked 34 out of the 62 matches contested. (This was after our Black Thursday wipeout in which losses by the likes of Padraig Harrington, Adam Scott, and Lee Westwood threatened to destroy our carefully constructed bracket).

So, if you had followed our predictions day-by-day and bet a fiver on each match on the money list, you'd have a decent little chunk of change right now. That is, unless you took our jokey suggestion that Shingo Katayama would be the match-play king of the world as writ, in which case you are an idiot and should not be allowed within 50 feet of a betting shop.

Fun stuff, all in all, and we won't be doing any more match-by-match predictions until the Ryder Cup, in which case all jokes are off ...  'Til tomorrow, when we've got 10 Things We've Learned About Golf this week, more fabulous galleries and our response to a particularly huffy letter from Phil Mickelson, who has had too much time this weekend to admire Tiger Woods' sand art ...