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Tiger Woods is the gold standard against whom any form of modern golf domination is measured.

We do it far too often to the world's top players, noting how guys like Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy and Jason Day miss more cuts than Woods ever did or that they don't win as often as Woods did in his prime. It's quite unfair to compare careers to Woods considering, for the decade in which he was in his healthy prime, he was unfathomably dominant and consistent.

Woods is the bar and it's rare that anyone reaches him, much less surpasses him, even when looking at the domination of a single event. Woods' performances at the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and 2000 Open Championship at St. Andrews are two of the most dominant single tournament performances we've ever seen in golf, and were often thought to never be matched.

The numbers say that what Henrik Stenson did at the 145th Open Championship this week equaled or surpassed Woods' performances.

Stenson's 20-under 264 broke Woods' Open Championship scoring record to par of 19 under, set at St. Andrews in 2000, and broke Greg Norman's aggregate scoring record of 267. Stenson also equaled the major championship single round record of 63 on Sunday, which will go down as one of the all-time great final round performances.

Woods' U.S. Open performance, when he finished at 12 under and 15 strokes ahead of second-place is lauded as the most dominant showing ever. The field average that year was 17 over, meaning he beat that by 29 strokes. Stenson at this year's Open shot 20-under with a field average of 9 over -- 29 strokes.


Is Stenson going to go on a 2000 Tiger Woods-like run? No -- well, probably not. Is Stenson as good as Tiger Woods? No, that's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is, for four days in Scotland, Henrik Stenson put together one of -- if not the -- greatest major championship performances. That deserves to be recognized and saluted.