Tiger looks to stay hot, end major drought in smoldering Oklahoma

"Last year, all the success I had on the golf course, it still felt like a failure of a year because of what happened off the golf course," Woods said in Ohio. "This year, what's happening off the golf course has made this year a huge success.

"It's a polar 180. No matter what I did on the golf course last year it just never felt right. This year, no matter what I do on the golf course, it just feels right."

That was surely the case over the weekend at Firestone, when Woods began the final round one shot off the lead and had essentially put the field away before the front nine was in the books. It marked only the fifth time in his 11-year career that he elected to play the week before a major, so the positivity was well-timed and sorely needed.

Woods led the field in driving distance and greens found in regulation and even managed to play out of the fairway more often than not. His driver will be a key this week at Southern Hills, which features tight fairways and what designers like to euphemistically call "movement." That is, 10 of the holes could be classified as doglegs, where precision is paramount, which hasn't exactly been Woods' bailiwick over the past few seasons.

The Woods camp has grown a bit defensive about it, too. Three weeks ago, swing coach Hank Haney gave a brief tongue-lashing to a Dallas Morning News writer over a short item about Woods' driving issues that had appeared in the paper. As Woods teed off on Carnoustie's first hole, Haney, a Dallas resident, walked away from the author and said, sarcastically, "Keep up the good work."

Indeed, on bigger and muscular tracks like Medinah, where Woods won last year's PGA title, Woods is unrivaled. But on smaller, cozier tracks like Southern Hills, it has often been a scuffle. At 7,131 yards and playing as a par-70, Southern Hills is smallish by contemporary standards. Mind you, Woods has won exactly one major on a par-70 course, in 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black, which played longer than its posted 7,214 yards.

His spotty pedigree at Southern Hills creates plenty of room for discussion about what fate awaits. He first played the course at the Tour Championship in 1996, when his father was suffering from heart troubles and was hospitalized. Woods finished 8 over in a tie for 21st in the limited-field event, 20 shots out of first.

In 2001, at the U.S. Open, Woods walked onto the Southern Hills first tee as the simultaneous owner of all four majors, having just completed the so-called Tiger Slam at Augusta National two months earlier. But his game was definitely amiss -- he opened with a 74 and finished in a tie for 12th at 4 over, seven shots out of a playoff. Woods was so off his game that, in one particularly telling moment, he took a beaver pelt-sized divot in a tee box with an embarrassing 3-wood shot.

"I can't really count '96 because, off the golf course, I wasn't really there,"' he said. "As far as '01, I didn't really hit the ball good and I wasn't hitting the ball well going into it. For some reason, I don't know why, I won the Masters that year, but after that, post-Masters, I didn't really hit the ball very good."

He bashed it around it just fine last week, winning the Bridgestone title for an astounding sixth time. His closing 65 at Firestone matched the low round of the week and included zero bogeys.

"I just got in my own little world, like I tend to do every now and then," he said.

Translation: Like he tends to do more often than not. Except this year at the majors.

So far.