Gotta be sorely impressed by Pitt's prideful Panthers, winning four in a row in Manhattan for the Big East Conference championship. Four in a row? I'm impressed when Pitt hits four free throws in a row.

Gotta be sorely impressed when Georgia's gorgeous Bulldogs do Pitt one better, winning four times in three days for the Southeastern Conference title in tornado-ravaged Atlanta, winning as many times in little more than 30 desperate hours as they had won in the conference all winter.

Gotta be sorely impressed when the Houston Rockets win 22 consecutive NBA frays including a victory Sunday against the L.A. Kobes, 10 of those since Ming went "Yow!" in the echo of his broken ankle.

Gotta be sorely impressed, undoubtedly, but it's not like any or all of that should be compared to the Furthering Adventures of Eldrick Woods, whose virtual destruction of an entire sport's competitive foundation merely accelerated over the weekend.

If you've been too hung-up on bracketology and Rockets science to have noticed, Tiger's perfect flight through 2008 reached a new cruising altitude Sunday, when he rolled a 25-footer down a sloping 18th green at Bay Hill, crouched suggestively as it broke right, then whirled and threw his hat in triumph as it disappeared for a one-stroke victory against Bart Bryant in the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Crouching Tiger Hat's a Flyin'.

So here's the accounting. He has won all three PGA events he has entered in '08, five in a row counting his final two events of 2007, six in a row if you count the Dubai Desert Classic, seven of his past eight, eight of his previous nine if you count the unofficial, limited-field Target World Challenge, and 16 of his past 25 tournaments, not that anyone's accounting.

There's a word for this, the same word Arnold Palmer let slip from the margins of that same 18th green Sunday, from the wise and soulful center of the tournament named in his honor:

"Unbelievable."

Woods has won 64 PGA tournaments, or as many by age 32 as Ben Hogan won by age 46. Only Jack Nicklaus (73) and Sam Snead (82) have won more, and those numbers ought to be eclipsed by, what, Halloween?

"What he's doing right now, I mean, you can't even hardly fathom it," Bryant said after becoming the closest human to Woods in stroke-play this year. "You can't explain it. It's just incredible. I think true golf fans who understand the game, understand the magnitude of it. I think the golf public in general doesn't get it, to be honest."

I appreciate that honesty, but as neither a true golf fan nor part of the golf public in general, and in fact someone who would be more closely described as part of the non-golf public or even a false golf fan, I still think I get it. I think the people who make the needle jump on ratings every time he enters a tournament and every time he haunts another Sunday get it.

What Woods is doing is harder, competitively, than what Pitt is doing or what the Rockets are doing or even what the New England Patriots were doing for ¹⁸/₁₉ths of a football season. Say what you want about the Patriots, who've gotten all credit and discredit due them for going 18-0 until their Giant disappointment, but the Patriots got to play the Dolphins, Bills and Jets six times.

Woods competes against the game's elite players on the world's most difficult courses without the benefit of any physical or emotional momentum. He goes away for three, four, five weeks at a time, reappears and dominates. All of which says nothing of the incalculable random forces of a golf ball in flight.

"The wind had totally shifted," Woods said after the round Sunday. "It was in off the left on 17, and in off the right [on 18]."

How often does it shift between takeoff and landing? How often does the landing affect the roll, the grass affect the spin, the humidity affect the lift, the dew point affect the dimples, the greens curdle the scoring, and on and on and on? But for all the forced complexity of the question, there remains one simple answer:

Not enough to keep Woods from winning.

Not for the moment anyway, and this long, brilliant, incredible moment continues this week at Doral, where Woods has won three years running.

Byron Nelson won 11 consecutive PGA events in 1945, just in case you wanted to remember that while it's still relevant.