World awaits Tiger Woods' hundredth title

Iconic batsman Sachin Tendulkar completed his 100 international century last month and now its time for legendary golfer Tiger Woods to fill his cabinet with his hundredth title as he tees off at the Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club here.

There is probably not a soul in India, who is not aware of Tendulkar's celebrated 100 hundreds, and now on the eve of the 76th Masters at the other end of the globe, the golfing fraternity begins to await Tiger's century.

Indians know all about the crawl and the 370 days it took Tendulkar to move from 99 to 100. Impeccable as he is, Tendulkar had no problems on the personal front, but on the cricket field a century seemed to elude him.

He came close on many times, but was thwarted when in sight of it more than a few times over a period of a little more than a year.

Well it's not been easy for Tiger either. In the golf world, where tournaments are held every week, Tiger, who won almost as a matter of right, too, has had his crawl.

His title No. 97 came in November 2009 and then title No. 98 came in December 2011. Win no. 99 happened last week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay hill and on Thursday he will tee off for the first time in his quest for Title No. 100.

Tiger's last win in a Major came in the 2008 US Open and his last win on the World Golf Championships came in 2009 at WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.

When he reached No. 97 at JBWere Masters in Australia in November, a century seemed to be only a formality.

Alas, sport is not so simple. Tiger was winless in 2010 and it was almost at the fag end of 2011 that he achieved his win No. 99 at the Chevron Challenge, an event that is not part of any of the official Tours. The gap between his 97th and 98th career wins was more than two years.

Four months later Tiger moved to 99 with his most emphatic and confident win by five shots, since the four-shot win at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in August 2009.

Tiger now has a total of 72 PGA Tour wins and these include all Majors, World Golf Championships and 30 of his 38 European Tour wins.

There are also eight other European tour wins, two in Japan, one on Asian Tour and 16 other wins, all of which came in United States, but none of which were part of the PGA Tour and nor did the money count for Merit purposes.