It’s Official: He’s So Good It’s Scary

Bill Lyon in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Tiger Woods has become the instant oatmeal of sports. Heat. Pour. Serve. You’re out the door.

“The most feared athlete in all of sports isn’t some slobbering middle linebacker or brutalizing heavyweight, or a power forward with jackhammer elbows and no compassion. It’s Tiger Woods, pitching wedge in hand, stalking the lead.

“He has reached the rare plateau where all the others fear him. Even if they won’t admit it, they jump at his approaching shadow.

“He has become inevitable, the way Wayne Gretzky used to be with the puck, the way Michael Jordan was with the ball and the clock blinking to all zeros.”

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More Tiger: His remarkable comeback at Pebble Beach was not seen in some parts of the country, prompting some howls of outrage.

“ ‘Heidi’ lives,” wrote Hubert Mizell in the St. Petersburg Times. “Because some electronic wizard decided we should be served something called Real TV, you and I were bilked out of an opportunity to see Woods coming like a heroic bullet train.”

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FYI: London bookmaker William Hill has cut the odds on Woods winning the four major championships this year from 200-1 to 80-1.

Wood is a 5-2 favorite to win the Masters, 3-1 to win the U.S. Open, 3-1 to win the British Open and 3-1 to win the PGA championship. No player has won the professional Grand Slam in a calendar year.

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Trivia time: Who holds the LPGA record for victories in a season?

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It might work: John McGrath of the Tacoma News-Tribune on how to inject some intensity into the Pro Bowl in Honolulu: “Losers swim home.”

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Yachting crisis: Tony Kornheiser in the Washington Post: “How did we lose a boat race to Italy? We have the Sixth Fleet, and they’ve got gondolas in Venice. Obviously we’re losing our yachting edge.

“We need to get more funding for kids to get into yachting. I’m going to propose a nationwide campaign called ‘Yacht-It-Up’ where kids can get incentives to take up yachting--like free blue blazers with gold buttons, and quality stemware for apres-race champagne toasts.”

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Loaded: New York Knick Coach Jeff Van Gundy refers to the Portland Trail Blazers as a “Noah’s Ark team, because they have two of everything.”

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It has come to this: Bill Reynolds in the Providence Journal: “Two of the three best-selling books in the country are so-called memoirs of professional wrestlers, just in case you thought you were living in a sophisticated culture.”

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Trivia answer: Mickey Wright, 13, in 1963.

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And finally: Boston Coach Rick Pitino on his Celtics losing to the New Jersey Nets, 131-113, on Tuesday:

“Tonight we played defensively like the Washington Generals trying out for a Harlem Globetrotters movie and they were fighting for who would get the lead role.”