Andy Capostagno GOLF This has been an Oedipal year for professional golf. Before the new millennium was ushered in we knew Tiger Woods was good, but we didn’t know how good. Now Ernie Els has summed up the talent of the man by admitting that every other pro golfer on the planet is living in the wrong era, playing a different tour to the one that Tiger is on. It is fitting that Tiger ends the year’s majors with the United States PGA because the venue, in the town of Louisville, Kentucky, is called Valhalla, and this year Woods has come as close to becoming a God as a sportsman should ever be allowed. He’s won two majors (the British and US Opens) and become the youngest man ever to collect the full set of four. He’s the defending PGA champion to boot, having won at Medinah last year. Many other venues would be overwhelmed by Woods’s mere presence, but Louisville has seen it all before. For it was here that Cassius Clay, who became Muhammad Ali, first saw the light of day. And it was into the river that runs through the centre of town that the man who became known as “The Louisville Lip”, threw the gold medal he won at the Rome Olympics, in frustration at the uselessness of strength and fame against the racial segregation of the southern US. Ali was a beacon of hope for the civil rights movement in the 1960s and he became the most famous person on the planet. There are a few contenders for that title today, but Woods must figure pretty close to the top of any list. And as a person who takes history seriously he will be well aware of the irony that confronts him as he starts the USPGA as favourite, a man of colour at a country club in the town that turned Big Bad Bill into Sweet William. So can he win again? Of course he can. Despite the fact that he played so badly that he actually finished outside the top 10 in last week’s Buick Open, Woods has already reached the zone in a sportsman’s life where it’s only the big challenges that really matter. He will bring his A game, or something very close to it, to Valhalla and that should mean that everyone else is playing for second place. If Els were to claim that runner-up slot he will lay claim to the least-wanted achievement in golfing history: runner-up in all four major championships in the same year. With Woods out of contention, a cold putter ended the South African’s hopes in the US Masters, won by Vijay Singh. In the next two he finished so far behind Woods that second must have felt like 10th. But there are times when you just have to keep plugging away, and Woods can’t keep rewriting the record books week in and week out. So Els has a chance, so do Phil Mickelson, Hal Sutton, Davis Love and a plethora of others. But it will take something special to beat Woods and maybe at Valhalla we need to look at someone with a Viking background. Go out and put a lazy R100 on Jesper Parnevik; he’s due.