ESPN Golf

In an announcement that featured less surprise than the Britney/K-Fed breakup, Tiger Woods was named the 2006 PGA Tour Player of the Year on Tuesday. That's right: The seasons change, the Earth continues spinning on its axis and Tiger Woods earns a postseason award. All is right with the world once again.

Those holding their breath may now confidently exhale. The rest of us will continue debating the merits of Woods' season as compared with the greatest in PGA Tour history. After all, we live in a world of rankings and lists, where players' feats are consistently measured against their own previous bests, against those of their peers, against legendary all-time marks, and it's fitting that Tiger's latest journey sparks similar cogitation.

First things first: On the surface, Woods' season isn't in the same class as Bobby Jones' in 1930. That year, the career amateur won the U.S. and British Opens, added the U.S. and British Amateurs, and claimed what many still consider the only true single-year Grand Slam in golf's history. It certainly pales in comparison to that of Byron Nelson in 1945, when Lord Byron won 18 events and a record 11 in a row. It probably falls somewhere behind Ben Hogan's 13-win season the next year and 10-win season in 1948. And it's not even Tiger's most fruitful campaign, that benchmark coming in 2000, when he earned nine victories and nearly swept the majors, winning three of four.

After that, well, things tend to get a bit fuzzy. Statistically speaking, was Woods' 2006 season better than Sam Snead's 1950 campaign, in which he won 11 tournaments but no majors? Maybe. Did it top Arnold Palmer's nearly identical eight-win, two-major years of 1960 and '62? Perhaps. Surpass Vijay Singh's nine-victory 2004 season? Quite possibly.

The numbers speak for themselves: Woods secured eight overall victories this season, including his last six starts in a row; two major championship titles; and $9,941,563 in official earnings. They speak volumes when compared to the greatest marks in PGA Tour history: The eight wins tied Tiger for the eighth-most prolific season ever, and were six more than any other player earned in '06; the six consecutive victories are tied for the second-highest streak on tour; the two majors give him 12 career professional major wins, second all-time to Jack Nicklaus' mark of 18; and the near-$10 million payout is the third-richest individual season ever recorded.

Whew. It's quite a mouthful, and we have yet to even mention the most astounding fact, that Woods received the tour's Jack Nicklaus Trophy as its top player for a record eighth time in his 10-year career.

Of course, numbers don't tell the entire story. Woods will tell anyone willing to listen that 2006 was the most trying season of his career. His father, Earl, the man he called his "best friend" and who taught him the game from a young age, died on May 3. The on-course repercussions were almost immediate. After taking a nine-week break from competitive golf, Tiger returned for the U.S. Open, where he promptly shot two consecutive rounds of 76, missing the cut at a major for the first time as a professional.

"I knew I had to go through, like anyone, the grieving process, and I had never done anything like that before," Woods said in a Tuesday conference call. "The hardest thing for me to do with as play golf. ... That's dad, he introduced me to the game of golf. He taught me a lot of life lessons on the golf course."

To borrow a phrase from Jones' cinematic image, what followed was a stroke of genius. A victory at the British Open, during which Tiger plied driver from the bag only once, methodically dismantling both the Royal Liverpool course and his competition with the mien of a surgeon. Another at the PGA Championship, transforming a Sunday morning co-lead into a Sunday afternoon coronation. And wins at every PGA Tour event he entered from late July until season's end.

All of it came with a heavy heart, which tells us this much about what Woods accomplished in 2006: The real brilliance of his season cannot be recalled in numbers or visual highlights. It had to be lived, witnessed. Like a stargazer catching Halley's Comet for its one shining moment in 76 years, simple hearsay and photos will never give the firsthand accounts a run for their money.

No, Tiger's season will leave more indelible images on our memory compartments than the record books. Not that it doesn't have its peers on the scale of sorrow. Paper and ink might recall that Nicklaus' 1970 season was hardly a climactic peak, but the record books don't recall that Jack's father, Charlie, died earlier that year and, like Woods, he fought back to claim a victory at the British Open. Go one step further, and Hogan's one-win campaign in 1950 seems lackluster by the numbers, but altogether incredible when knowing the story of how his U.S. Open victory came just 16 months after a nearly fatal car accident.

There was even a movie based on Hogan's epic comeback, entitled "Follow the Sun." Perhaps someday the narrative of Woods' struggles and success this season will reach the silver screen, too. The title, of course: "Follow the Son."

Jason Sobel is ESPN.com's golf editor. He can be reached at Jason.Sobel@espn3.com