Time warp

There he was again, wearing that strutting come-at-me-bro red shirt, and this time it was not just some quaint nod to olden times. This time it was an actual portal to those times, and for one golden afternoon we all lived there.

For one afternoon, George W. Bush was still in the White House, chained to a bloody slog in Iraq that made a mockery of his "Mission Accomplished" braggadocio. LeBron James was still a kid phenom in Cleveland. The Red Sox still hadn't won a World Series since Model Ts were the rage, and Peyton-vs.-Tom was still the NFL's best rivalry, and Tiger Woods ...

Well. Tiger Woods was still the greatest golfer on the planet, sending everyone else into cringe mode every time he teed it up.

The kids today don't do that anymore, but they got a taste of what it was like this weekend. They got to see vintage Tiger, circa 2003 or 2004. They got to see a man step into the Wayback Machine and bring back the game he used to have, a game so impeccable in judgment and execution it looked like a different game altogether from the game everyone else was playing.

Against the most gifted crop of golfers in four decades, a 42-year-old man with a surgical back and knees and ankles took a five-stroke lead into Sunday, and somehow that meant exactly what it meant a decade-and-a-half ago: That all y'all are playin' for second. He wound up winning by two strokes -- no one even seriously challenged him, same as the old days -- and if Justin Rose hadn't dunked a birdie putt on 18, he'd have won more than a golf tournament for the first time in five years.

He'd have won the FedEx Cup, too, emblematic of the Tour championship.

Think about that for a second. He came within a roll or two of a golf ball of beating a whole pile golfers younger, fitter and decidedly un-blinded by his aura, after essentially being off the Tour for two years. And after all manner of eulogies had been written for his career.

Which means this is the part where the Blob admits it was wrong, wrong, wrong. ("Like that's news," you're saying.) The Blob, after all, has been shoveling dirt on Tiger's grave for a long time. It has said Tiger Woods' career was on a long quiet slide to oblivion, that he likely would never won another golf tournament, let alone a major. It has said that we were witnessing the inevitable lingering sunset that comes with age and injury. It has said he had become an irrelevant back marker, and that it was amazing that even as such he continued to be the sort of rock star golf very rarely sees.

And then this weekend happened. And he was a rock star in full flower again.

Hyperbole in all matters is such a thing now you hesitate to say what Woods has done this summer is one of the more remarkable athletic feats of its time, but it is. Because golf is such a ridiculously difficult game to play well consistently, let alone play transcendently, very few golfers with Tiger Woods' history of injury and absence ever revisit whatever peak they once commanded. They may reach back for a round or two here or there, but it never lasts. And it certainly never lasts most a summer.

That's what Woods has managed to do, and because of it we must all now reconsider the parameters of what is possible in this game. When Jack Nicklaus won the Masters at 46, it was regarded as perhaps the most amazing achievement in history; what Tiger Woods has done, challenging week after week after such an extended absence, is like Nicklaus winning the Grand Slam at 46.

So how long does it last?

Hard to say. The Blob is not fond of being burned twice, so it's not prepared to say anything is impossible at this point. If Woods stays healthy, this weekend showed he can still dominate even this landmark generation of golfers. Which means he could definitely win another major or two.

Whether or not he catches Nicklaus, however, remains problematical. In three months, after all, he'll be 43. The landmark generation of golfers isn't going anywhere, and more are coming. And the human back, once damaged, remains a fragile instrument, particularly for a golfer.

And now comes a sound, from somewhere in the vicinity of the next tee box.

It is Tiger Woods. He is laughing.