Singh, Garcia, Goosen, Olazabal, Montgomerie, Campbell, Faxon – eight major championship wins and a combined 159 tournament victories around the world. Surely one, at least, would make life difficult for Tiger.

Not even close.

Rather than the gripping finale we had all hoped for and which the third-round leaderboard suggested we might get, the 134th Open Championship at St. Andrews turned into the sort of Tiger Woods procession we got used to seeing at the start of the century.

He may not have won by eight strokes as he did in 2000, and by finishing at 14 under par was five short of his 72-hole record total of that year, but this year’s victory was every bit as convincing.

His closing 70 would have been considerably better – and the winning margin of five even greater – had he made the birdie at the 6th that his approach shot deserved (the ball hit the pin and ricocheted 30 feet away), holed a straight uphill six-footer for birdie at the seventh, and made an even shorter putt for a two at the eighth. But 70 was all he needed, as the seven world-class players within spitting distance at the start of the round averaged a harmless 73.29 between them.

Woods has now gone first, second, and first in the majors this year and, it seems, is once again making his nearest pursuers believe second is the best they can hope for.

A number of players closed the gap between themselves and Tiger during Tiger’s lean spell in 2003 and 2004, but now he is distancing himself from the pack once again and the competition is running scared.

“Everybody is trying to beat Tiger,” Goosen confirmed after the third round. “You feel like if you finish ahead of him, you’re going to win the tournament.”

Australia’s Mark Hensby, who turned in yet another impressive major performance with a tie for 15th, seemed to think he was alone in that assessment.

“People are scared to say it, but it’s true: If he’s playing well, we’re all playing for second,” he said.

“Obviously, the whole tournament depends on Tiger,” were Darren Clarke’s words.

The only thing that might have derailed Woods was the typically grim Scottish weather that never showed up. Dry, virtually windless days have coincided with the championship’s last two visits to the Home of Golf, in fact, and Tiger has taken full advantage. Ernie Els hoped Woods might come back to the field on Saturday if Mother Nature whipped up some trouble in the form of 50-mph winds and sideways rain, but the best she could manage was a rather feeble 20-mph puff that did little to affect the eventual winners’ progress.

Woods did find the gorse a couple of times and made a total hash of the 16th during that third round, but the wayward shots weren’t necessarily the result of poor swings; instead, they were rather minor miscalculations due to the strength of the wind and fairways that Nick Faldo described as ice rinks. Even on the rare occasion his lead dropped to a single stroke, one got the impression that Woods wasn’t even remotely flustered.

Six pars, two birdies (12th and 18th), and one solitary bogey (at the 16th) over the back nine saw him get through a potentially dangerous stretch of holes largely unscathed, laying to rest any niggling doubts over the efficacy of his new and much talked-about swing.

Late bogies at the Masters and U.S. Open had some asking if Tiger’s flatter and visibly less natural action operated as it should under the most intense pressure. But his rhythm never faltered at the Old Course, and his ball-striking during opening rounds of 66 and 67 and weekend rounds of 71 and 70 was near flawless.

Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major trophies, a record that most would have bet the house on never being broken, now appears in serious jeopardy. Woods is only 29, two years younger than Nicklaus was when he won the career grand slam (all four major titles) for the second time. And it took Woods two fewer majors to get there (35 to 37). He still has a long way to go, of course, but he is clearly comfortable with the swing Hank Haney helped him build over that last 15 months and which, Haney believes, will eventually make him a better player than he was in 2000.

The nature of Woods’s victory at St. Andrews and the way in which some of his contemporaries are speaking about him suggest he already is a better player. And there is no doubting the superiority he once wielded has now been fully restored.

As Woods himself said after hoisting the Claret Jug yesterday, a golfer’s golden years are typically in his 30s. If that is, in fact, the case for this particular golfer, then no record in golf is safe for the foreseeable future.