Provoke a Tiger and history shows you'll get bit

Parnevik paused. Annihilate him? "Of course," the Swede laughed. "I try to be as nice to him (Woods) as I possibly can."

That might be the more life-affirming tack, since poking Woods in the nose has been fraught with peril for those who have been brazen enough to try. Pop psychologists would insist that by verbally taking Woods down a peg, it makes him less lethal in the minds of some players. That might be true if Woods wasn't made aware of the more inane comments uttered over the past two seasons and quickly proved them wrong.

"Maybe it's something in their makeup," said veteran Bart Bryant, who finished second to Woods at Bay Hill in March. "'I put it out there, and it's going to force me to live up to it, respond to it. If I'm going to talk the talk, I better walk the walk.' So they are putting themselves out there. You will probably never see me doing that."

Same for most decidedly sane types. As Jim Croce once crooned, you don't tug on Superman's cape.

"Tiger doesn't need anyone to fire him up," said Mark Calcavecchia, another of Woods' longtime friends. "He is just in a different place than everybody else. I don't think he really pays much attention to it."

Well, like Parnevik said, he does and he doesn't. The next time Woods stands up publicly and rubs another player's nose in their own mortality will be a first. But there are signs that his eyes and ears work just fine as it relates to some of the disparaging remarks of late.

No player has been more thoroughly chastened than Sabbatini, who 10 months ago noted that Woods appeared more "beatable than ever." At the time, the fact that Sabbatini was spot-on in his assessment didn't seem to matter. He had not earned the right to offer the opinion, some felt.

Last August, the two were paired on Sunday at the Bridgestone Invitational, where Sabbo began the final round with a one-stroke lead over Woods. Two hours into the round, by which time Woods had already left the brash South African in the dust, he walked over to a TV commentator and said of Sabbatini, "Think that'll shut him up?"

Woods won by eight shots. Yet Sabbatini has paid the price in more ways than one. He' ha been heckled at times and had one fan removed from the grounds at a tournament last summer. Whether folks agreed with Sabbatini's thesis that Woods was beatable wasn't the point -- until he personally accomplishes said feat, he has no right to pop off.

Last year, Sabbatini didn't finish ahead of Woods in any of the events in which they both played. So, for Woods fans, it was tantamount to a career finger-painter critiquing Michelangelo's body of work. Same for the artiste in question, apparently.

Last May at the Players Championship, Woods crawled farther out on the verbal limb than ever when he was asked about Sabbatini's assertion that his game was in disrepair. Said Woods: "Well, if I remember the quote correctly, he said he likes the new Tiger. I figure I've won nine out of 12 and I've won three times this year, the same amount he's won in his career. So I like the new Tiger as well."

Sabbatini, honest to a fault when asked for an opinion, has also praised Woods, but that part tends to be forgotten. Last fall, a week after he had been taunted by a fan in New York, he finally gushed in frustration, "Apparently he's a celestial being that you can't touch."

Not without going through Hades. Woody Austin created a stir in August when he reasoned at the PGA Championship that he had outplayed Woods in the second round. Never mind that Woods had tied the major-championship record with a 63 and Austin had signed for a 70.

"It depends on the way you listen to what somebody says," Austin said this spring. "I understand your job as a journalist or as a media guy is to make things sensational or to make them more than average so that people will pick up the paper and go, 'Oohh, that sounds interesting.' But just because his name is brought up, or just because you mention his name is not calling him out. It's not challenging him.

"I was told that I called him out at the PGA. All I talked about was the way my Round 2 and his Round 2 were perceived; never talked about him as far as what he was doing. I only talked about why I was upset with my round, and it came out as I challenged him, because I said I played better than him.

"I was talking about my round of golf -- I wasn't talking about him. But just by mentioning his name and his round of golf, it now becomes this whirlwind. And like I said, that's the problem you have, and it makes it hard for guys to even talk about that."

Hard, but not impossible. Over the winter break, a 20-year-old rookie from Australia who was promoted from the Nationwide Tour, Jason Day, created a sensation Down Under when he said, among other things, that he wanted to unseat Woods. He hasn't backed off much, either.

"I want to take down Tiger," Day said on the West Coast Swing. "He's the No. 1 guy in the world. But like I said, if it takes me five years or 20 years, I've got goals that I want to achieve. Who doesn't want to become the No. 1 golfer in the world? Some guys might be out here just to make some money, but I've always dreamed and it's always been my goal since I was a little kid."

Good luck, mate. The latest casualty is Poulter, who two months ago told a British publication that if he ever plays to his potential, Woods and he will someday rank 1-2 in the rankings. Poulter was still explaining himself last month during the Florida Swing.

"The Golf Channel slams me up there as Poulter-Tiger, Poulter-Tiger," he said. "Look, 'He's won nothing and he's won 84 tournaments.' Hey, what I said was as long as Tiger Woods is holding a golf club he's going to be world's No. 1. That's fairly complimentary to Tiger Woods.

"I probably could have done a lot better in phrasing it. I'm talking about that No. 2 spot, and if people work hard, fulfill their potential and play good on a two-year basis, they can get to their dream -- and their dream will be to sit there behind Tiger Woods."

Stark reality continues to intrude the fantasy of Poulter, now No. 24 in the rankings. In PGA Tour events in which both were entered, Woods has finished ahead of Poulter in 60 of their 64 common career starts, with one tie.

Rest assured, players hear everything. The acknowledged king of his day, Jack Nicklaus, whose records are under outright assault from Woods, occasionally got wind of chirping from players when he dominated the game three decades ago.

"A guy doesn't miss it," Nicklaus said last fall, specifically addressing the Sabbatini scenario. "You don't miss that comment. It doesn't pass by the way.

"I think when you get that kind of a thing, a guy says, 'I think I want to take care of that situation.' And I think Tiger probably said he wanted to take care of that situation."