It's been awhile, but Tiger Woods returns to Bay Hill this week in a familiar position.
For the first time since 2009, Woods arrives at the Arnold Palmer Invitational as defending champion, the odds-on favorite and playing the best golf on the planet.
The talk this week will not center on injuries, scandal, slumps or swing changes ? the topics du jour during recent visits to Bay Hill.
It will be all about golf. Finally. Just the way Woods likes it.
Woods' wire-to-wire win at Doral is his second victory in three stroke-play events in 2013. A win at Bay Hill would position him to have one of those monster seasons he used to reel off with machine-like regularity before his personal life and golf game came unglued.
Surely, no one would bet against Woods to win this week.
Arnie's place has been Tiger's playground ? site of seven of his 76 career wins on the PGA Tour, including 2012 when Woods captured his first official victory in 30 months.
"It's hard to believe," Orlando's Charles Howell III said of Woods' track record at Bay Hill. "I haven't even won that many times in my career.
"I think a lot of Tiger's achievements are underrated and underappreciated, and that's certainly one of them."
Howell, Woods' friend, has $25 million in career earnings, name recognition and a textbook golf swing. Now into his 14th season, the 33-year-old Howell also has two wins in 372 events, or five fewer victories than Woods has in 16 starts at Bay Hill.
Even Woods' contemporaries enshrined in the Hall of Fame have been helpless to watch Woods tee it up in a parallel universe much of his 17-year career.
"Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els are his closest rivals," said former Tour pro Notah Begay III, a college teammate with Woods at Stanford. "They're 10 majors behind him."
But the last time Woods came to Bay Hill, those days of dominance were behind him and Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 majors seemed safe.
At times, some observers openly wondered if Woods was finished.
One of them, Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee, said recently, "Since Tiger came back in 2010, none of us has a handle on him."
Now, Tiger looks like Tiger again. And Jack's record is firmly back in play for the 37-year-old Woods, who has been stuck on 14 majors since he won the 2008 U.S. Open.
Playing that week with a ruptured ACL in his left knee, Woods was invincible back then. He had talent, resolve and a flair for the dramatic unlike any golfer in history.
And Bay Hill would serve as the backdrop for some of Tiger's seminal moments.
Woods won four years in a row (2000-03) by a combined 20 strokes, a four-year stretch that featured 24 overall victories for Woods, including six major championships.
"We may never see that again," Begay said. "He was so dominant and had such a presence out here that I think players pretty had resigned themselves to the fact that, 'I have to play my best in order to beat him and he has to be a little off.'"
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