The Golden Bear was my man when I was a kid. He was my early golf hero. I'm just old enough to have caught the tail-end of Jack's career. I was just into my teens when Nicklaus had his last great year, two majors in 1980. I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried watching Jack win the 1986 Masters.

OK, I am ashamed to admit it. But I'm admitting it anyway, by way of illustrating this: It was hard for me to let go of the idea that Nicklaus was the greatest of all-time. But let go of it I did, somewhere around the time that Tiger Woods reached 40-plus wins and 10 majors.

A couple of statistical notes from the Buick Invitational illustrate how staggering is Tiger Woods' greatness.

First, he won for the fourth straight year. The PGA Tour record for most consecutive wins in one tournament is four. Before Tiger came along, three golfers had done that. They did it in, respectively, the 1870s, the 1920s and the 1930s. Then Tiger did it at the Arnold Palmer Invitational (Bay Hill), and now he's done it at the Buick Invitational. And he'll have two more opportunities this year to do it again, because he's won the WGC CA Championship and WGC Bridgestone three times consecutively each.

Second, he's tied Arnold Palmer on the career victories list with 62. It took Palmer 473 tournaments to get 62 wins. It's taken Tiger 232 tournaments.

Tiger Woods has as many wins as Arnold Palmer in less than half the starts.

Woods is the greatest of all-time, surely everyone recognizes that by now. And nobody in the history of the game - not Nicklaus, not Hogan - is even close.