Feb1 Tigernostreak
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A victory at the Dubai Desert Classic won’t count toward Tiger Woods’ streak of seven straight wins on the U.S. PGA Tour.
That doesn’t mean Woods came halfway around the world to finish second.
“It’s very simple,” he said Wednesday. “Whatever tournament I enter I’m going to try and win it, plain and simple.”
The Dubai tournament, which starts on Thursday with a field that includes Ernie Els, Retief Goosen and Paul Casey, won’t affect the streak because it’s a PGA European Tour event.
Woods needs five more U.S. tour wins to beat Byron Nelson’s record of 11 straight. “I feel good about where I’m headed, the understanding I have of my game and my swing,” Woods said, three days after winning the Buick Invitational. “It’s always good to get another ‘W’ under the belt.”
Despite the tough competition in Dubai, Woods said he worries only about his own game.
The Dubai Desert Classic is the last of three straight tournaments in the Gulf region, after the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship and the Qatar Masters. Goosen won in Qatar last week and Casey took the title in Abu Dhabi.
Dubai is considered the world’s fastest growing city. When Els first won the 1993 Classic, the Emirates Golf Club sat alongside a two-lane road that drifted off into the empty desert dunes.
Now the course is surrounded by million-dollar mansions and shimmering skyscrapers. The sound of jackhammers drifts across the course, as does the roar of trucks on the road, now 12-lanes wide.
“It’s looking like the New York skyline a bit now,” Woods said of the row of half-built skyscrapers rising behind the eighth hole.
