Tiger Woods Sportswriter Bill Lyon of Knight Ridder asked in a column, "Isn't Tiger Woods actually bad for golf?" (though Lyon ultimately concluded that he was not). At first, some pundits feared that Woods would drive the spirit of competition out of the game of golf by making existing courses obsolete and relegating opponents to simply competing for second place each week. A related effect was measured by University of California economist Jennifer Brown, who found that other golfers scored higher when competing against Woods than when he was not in the tournament. The scores of highly skilled (exempt) golfers are nearly
Tiger Woods was ranked by Golf Digest magazine as the twelfth-best golfer of all time. When Woods won the 2001 Masters, he became the only player to win four consecutive major professional golf titles, although not in the same calendar year. Following a stellar 2001 and 2002 in which Woods continued to dominate the tour, Woods' career hit a slump. He did not win a major in 2003 or 2004. In September 2004, Vijay Singh overtook Woods in the Official World Golf Rankings, ending Woods' record streak of 264 weeks at #1. Woods rebounded in 2005, winning six official PGA Tour money