Lee Westwood is a good guy and a terrific player who is No. 1 in the World Golf Rankings for now, but he never will grab the attention of fans, tournament directors and the media the way Tiger Woods does.
While Westwood was opening his season last week in Abu Dhabi, when Woods officially announced that he would kick off the 2011 season this week in the Farmers Insurance Open, everyone in golf took notice.
Within minutes, it was the top story on virtually every golf news website on the Internet.
Golf Channel led Golf Central with the story and began airing spots trumpeting Tiger's season debut at Torrey Pines alongside his longtime dance partner, Phil Mickelson, calling it "the first must-see event of the season."
Woods' announcement made headlines in newspapers across the country the next day.
"I've been working hard on my game, it's game time hooah!!" Woods, who has slipped to No. 3 in the World Golf Rankings behind Westwood and Martin Kaymer, told his followers on Twitter.
A day later, in a story at tigerwoods.com, Woods wrote: "I'm really looking forward to competing. I've been working hard on my game, and I'm excited about 2011. I feel a lot more comfortable about the changes we have made. Hopefully my good play at the end of last year will carry over."
Mark Steinberg, Woods' agent at IMG, told reporters last month that his client was expecting to open the season in the San Diego-area event, so it didn't come as a surprise.
Tom Wilson, the Farmers Insurance Open tournament director, had heard personally from Steinberg that Woods was planning to play in the event he has won six times, but Wilson acted as if he had won the lottery when the official word came.
"Everybody seems to think Tiger Woods committing to a PGA Tour event is the biggest thing in the world, and it is," Wilson said. "It was nice to have it official. I'm sure ecstatic.
"It's a huge deal for any tournament that's fortunate enough to have Tiger play. It means a lot for ticket sales and hospitality sales and TV ratings for the title sponsor and TV ratings for the tour. It's credibility as far as the field of players is concerned."
Woods has hogged golf's spotlight almost from the time he uttered the words, "Hello, world," when he left Stanford and turned professional in 1996, capturing the Las Vegas Invitational in his third event as a pro.
That was true even last year, when he did not play until the Masters while suffering through self-inflicted tabloid hell after evidence of his serial marital infidelity was revealed.
Not only did it cost him his marriage to Elin Nordegren; he was winless all year for the first time in his career, broke up with instructor Hank Haney and tried to put his game back together with the help of new coach Sean Foley.
The 35-year-old Woods finished in the top 10 in his last three tournaments of 2010, and now everyone wants to read the next chapter to see if he can again become perhaps the most dominant player the game has ever seen.
"I think he'll get it back," Champions Tour star Bernhard Langer said last week. "From what I've heard from John Cook and Mark O'Meara, who are friends of his, he's hitting the ball as well as he's ever hit it. Striping it.
"At his best, he was the best I've ever seen."
If Woods was looking for an ideal spot to start his season, he couldn't have picked a better one that Torrey Pines, but this has been his usual starting point in recent years when healthy, physically and mentally.
He missed the tournament two years ago following left knee surgery, and at the time of the event last year it was widely reported that he was in rehab in Mississippi for sexual addiction. But he has won the last five times he has played Torrey Pines, including the 2008 U.S. Open.
That was when he claimed his 14th major championship by beating Rocco Mediate in a 19-hole playoff for the ages while limping around the famed South Course on one leg, before missing the rest of the season following knee surgery.
Woods had better bring his "A" game because, while the USGA didn't do the course setup, the magnificent municipal course on the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean promises to be a challenge.
"(The course) looks terrific," Wilson said. "The rough is going to be really tough. We're hoping we'll have some dry days and some higher temperatures to firm up the greens a little more."
Woods has captured the tournament, which started out in 1952 as the San Diego Open, the last four times he has played it and six times in all, never finishing out of the top 10 in 11 appearances.
Not only that, he won six titles in the Junior World Championships in San Diego, although only one of those came at Torrey Pines.
Whether he wins this week, misses the cut or something in between, it will be big news because he still is, after all, Tiger Woods.
