Commentary: Tiger's Slam Is Grand

April 9 -- Tiger Woods had the right idea.

When looking for a point of comparison for his feat of winning his fourth straight major, he stayed within the realm of his own brief, if brilliant, career.

"To win four consecutive majors, if you look at my career, I don't think I have ever accomplished anything this great," Woods said Sunday after finishing the Masters at 16-under-par 272. That put him two strokes ahead of David Duval and three strokes ahead of Phil Mickelson, for his 27th PGA Tour victory.

"I think it's a slam," PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem said Sunday, warding off any dispute about whether what Woods has done deserves the highest praise. "It's a different kind of slam than we grew up with, but different is OK."

Sportswriters have tried to come up with other words for it — a Tiger Slam, a Straight Slam. Forget it.

Arguments about whether what Woods has done is a true Grand Slam — something no one in golf has achieved, with the possible exception of Bobby Jones, who won the four biggest tournaments of his era in 1931 — are beside the point.

After becoming the youngest man to win the Masters, the British Open, the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship in his career, Woods has become the first to hold all four titles simultaneously.

At Least Equal to the Best

It may not yet be time to talk about Woods' place in sports history — he's still carving that out. But it's not too soon to drop the slam semantics and say that what Woods has done over the last year is one of the greatest feats in all of sports.

He has won the four greatest tournaments in the game back-to-back-to-back-to-back, and he has done it against strong opponents playing at the top of their game.

"To me it's certain that Tiger's accomplishment is equal to the best of earlier years. It's at least equal, if not superior," said Curt Sampson, a golf historian whose most recent book is The Eternal Summer: Palmer, Nicklaus, Hogan in 1960. "I really am a bit stuck in the dust of the past, but I have to grudgingly admit that Tiger is right there with them."