Dominance: The best of Tiger Woods
By Bill Felber
6. 2000 WGC NEC
Dominance: 3.04
The event now known as the WGC FedEx St. Jude began life as the WGC NEC in 1999. Naturally Woods won, building a seven-stroke lead through three rounds and then hanging on Sunday to outlast Phil Mickelson by one.
As the defending champion, Woods came to the NEC at the absolute peak of his dominance, having one week earlier defeated Bob May in a playoff at the PGA to take his third straight major title and seventh win of the season.
This win, too, appeared to be effortless. At Firestone, Woods shot a first-day 64, then backed it up Friday with a 61. He came to the first tee Saturday leading Phil Mickelson by seven strokes; in fact only four other competitors stood within 10 strokes of Woods by that point.
His 67 was actually only the fifth best score of Saturday, but it was still good enough to lead by nine over Mickelson, Hal Sutton and Phil Price. His Sunday 67 was easily good enough to make anybody’s vision of a rally unrealizable.
Woods final total of 259 set him apart by 11 strokes over Mickelson and Justin Leonard, and 3.04 standard deviations better than the 278.36 field average.