Tiger’s charity tournament a couple of weeks ago gave people a look at another side of the world’s number one golfer. His Tiger Woods Learning Center in Anaheim is just the first of what he hopes will be a worldwide network. Here’s an outstanding article on his efforts. In this season of giving, it’s good to read about someone giving so much.

I know its the silly season, but having just finished watching Tiger win convincingly at his Target Invitational, I can’t help but be impressed with the state of his game. In fact, the entire second half of this last season, he was darn near flawless.

And I predict that he wins the Grand Slam next year.

When I was in journalism school, we were told that one of the most important tasks of a journalist was to distinguish between what is, and is not, news. The acid test was that “Dog Bites Man” is not news; “Man Bites Dog” is.

The PGA Tour’s announcement that Tiger Woods has won the Player of the Year Award falls squarely in the “Dog Bites Man” category. Of COURSE Woods is the player of the year. He has won that award with such stunning regularity (eight of the last ten years) that I think it’s time he retired his name from consideration and gave someone else a chance.

That’s not to take away from the year that Woods just had. In fact, Bobby Jones aside, Tiger may have just had the best year in the history of golf.

Consider: In fifteen PGA Tour start, Tiger won eight times, taking home nearly $10 million dollars. He finished in the top ten in eleven of those.

And his record is actually better than that. In one of those starts, he had to withdraw because of illness; at the US Open, he was still reeling from the death of his father. I give him a bye on that last one.

So by the Golf Blogger count, he won eight of thirteen “real” starts on the Tour.

It’s all, I think, bad news for the rest of the players on Tour. When Tiger is in the field, everyone is playing for second place.

For his first golf course design, Tiger Woods has decided to build a course near the Irvine, California headquarters of the Tiger Woods Foundation.

Woods said that in designing the course, he hopes to offer a championship level experience to golfers of all skill levels. Harkening back to his youth, when he learned the game on California’s public courses, Tiger also said that his first effort would be a public course.

Just kidding.

He building it in Dubai, where it will be accessible only to the jet set and rich oil shieks. And he’s building it in a country that has been condemned by Human Rights Watch for its “exploitation of migrant construction workers,” who no doubt will be building the course complex.

On Tuesday Nov. 7, following the announcement of the new Ryder Cup selection process, your friendly neighborhood Golfblogger wrote:

I like the idea—especially in doubling the number of Captain’s picks. In fact, I think that ALL of the picks should be Captain’s picks.

Two days later, having apparently read the post, Tiger Woods offered a resounding second to the motion. In a Nov. 9 interview in China, Woods said:

“In an ideal world, if you want your best team you have 12 picks ... The more picks you can get, the better it is.”

The GolfBlogger is happy to have Woods endorse his concept and welcomes the World’s Greatest Player as a reader to the blog.