The Weekly Top 5

This week’s category: The strangest non-golf events involving Tiger Woods in the last 12 months:

1) A 31-year-old, red-haired man in Sacramento discovers Woods’ Social Security number, gets a driver’s license as Eldrick T. Woods, gets charge cards, runs up more than $17,000 in bills and his arrest causes Woods to testify at trial of the identity bandit.

2) Private jet carrying Woods is forced to make an emergency landing after taking off from Bangkok because the landing gear won’t retract. Woods’ reaction: “Better than not being able to get the landing gear down.”

3) Woods joins Monica Seles, Andre Agassi and Wayne Gretzky in suing bankrupt Planet Hollywood International, which operated the All-Star Cafe, for breach of contract . . . i.e., not paying.

4) Woods and Condoleezza Rice, the former Stanford provost and President-elect George W. Bush’s choice for national security advisor, sit courtside at Duke-Stanford basketball game in Oakland. Photo of Woods is circulated worldwide by the Associated Press. Rice is largely ignored.

5) The week after completing career Grand Slam by winning the British Open, Woods is aced off the cover of Sports Illustrated by William “Refrigerator” Perry. The week after he accepts the Democratic nomination for president, Al Gore gets aced off the cover of Time by Woods.