Tiger Woods drives it down the fairway. Photo courtesy of TigerWoods.com

Bear with me, loyal readers, as this column will be casting a wide net. Speaking of bears, let's begin with Tiger's chase of the Golden Bear.

On the morning of the final round of the PGA Championship, there was an especially interesting discussion on "The Sports Reporters," a weekly show on ESPN. Mike Lupica – who was in the Hamptons this week for the annual Artists and Writers Softball Game – argued that the greatest individual achievement in sports was Hank Aaron's record of hitting 755 home runs, but now with the steroids controversy involving Barry Bonds, that record has been devalued. In baseball, anyway, Lupica said that Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak was now the greatest achievement in the "modern era," which sort of allowed the reporters to leave out the 511 victories by Cy Young.

It is worthwhile to ponder where Jack Nicklaus's 18 major wins stands as far as great individual records, and thus where that will put Tiger Woods when he breaks that record. Few athletes excel over the course of 24 years, which is what Nicklaus did from winning his first major, the U.S. Open in a playoff with Arnold Palmer, in 1962 to his last major, the Masters, in 1986. During that time there may have been the best competition ever and Nicklaus, in those 18 majors, had to fend off Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Raymond Floyd, and Tom Watson among other proven champions.

Jack Nicklaus digs it out of the sand in Ireland.

No matter how many yards a quarterback passes for, his career rarely lasts more than 15 years and a big factor is the quality of his receiving corps. Alex Rodriguez might surpass Bonds, but he will have to be bashing 40 or more homers a year until he's 40, or older, and anything can happen. Michael Jordan might have been the best basketball player ever but it is a little shaky to think of his accomplishments as individual records. So there are arguments to be made that Nicklaus holds the greatest individual record. It was just him and his caddie out there, and unlike the Sancho Panza that Steve Williams plays to Tiger's Don Quixote, Nicklaus had numerous caddies.

Tiger's victory at the PGA Championship gave him 13 majors. At age 31, he could easily have 20 majors to his credit by age 40. Even if he doesn't, thanks to his conditioning Tiger at 40 will be playing like a man at least five years younger. So, 20 (or more) majors in a career could well be the greatest individual achievement in sports. And unlike A-Rod being in Bonds's rear-view mirror, there is absolutely no one who is going to come near Woods. Forget Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, and Phil Mickelson, they are done as challengers to Tiger, and none of the new guys have the gonads to close the deal in a major on Sunday when up against Tiger. How many majors did Trevino and Watson snatch away from Nicklaus? The record that Woods will set in about 2015 will last forever.

There are folks who will argue that the 18 majors is not even the greatest record in golf. Instead, they cite the Grand Slam by Bobby Jones in 1930. To me, it's fourth place. A tremendous achievement, yes, but two of the tourneys he won were amateur contests and as an amateur he couldn't play in the PGA Championship, so he didn't face the kind of pro competition that a player would today.

Bobby Jones let's it rip.

In third place are the three majors in a row that Ben Hogan won in 1953 – Masters, U.S. Open, and British Open. This was only four years after the horrific car versus bus crash that almost killed him. In fact, he could have gone for the modern Grand Slam but his legs would not have lasted through the 36-hole match-play rounds of the PGA Championship at that time. In second place is the "Tiger Slam," Woods' winning of four in a row – U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship in 2000, and the 2001 Masters. No player is ever going to do that again . . . except, possibly, Tiger.

Before I forget, officials at the Golf Hall of Fame have announced that Charles Blair Macdonald will be inducted in November. He was a pretty good player who morphed into something of a mad genius as a course designer. The peak of his achievements is National Golf Links in Southampton. Macdonald is buried in the Catholic cemetery in Southampton, opposite Seth Raynor, the engineer who built National. Raynor's great accomplishment as a designer is the Fishers Island Club, which unfortunately he didn't live to see fully completed.

Speaking of Ben Hogan, I want to put a plug in for an entertaining novel that is just published, "The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan." Golf fiction is rather rare even though there was the success of "The Legend of Bagger Vance" and "The Greatest Player Who Never Lived." John Coyne, who lives in Pelham, New York, is the author of "The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan," and he has written quite a bit of golf fiction and nonfiction before.

This book has a bit of "Bagger Vance" to it as it is about a man recalling events and a special person of when he was a youngster. Jack Handley caddied for Hogan in the last Chicago Open, but the novel is about a lot more than that single tournament. Hogan had a tough personality and was a man of integrity, and both aspects come through in this novel.

Ben Hogan in 1950 with a powerful drive.

The results of the PGA Championship mean that the top 10 spots of the U.S. team in the Presidents Cup are set. Because of his second-place finish in Tulsa, Woody Austin makes the team. The team captain, Jack Nicklaus, selects the final two players, and as captain in previous Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup events he has usually picked those with the next highest in points.

Once the American team and the International squad (captained by Gary Player) are finalized and in anticipation of the competition set for the end of September in Canada, I'll write about it. But for now, I wouldn't want to be in Nicklaus's spikes. Once you get past Woods and Jim Furyk, the team is kind of weak. Mickelson is in an extended funk. Zach Johnson had a great spring that included winning the Masters but he has faded since. John Rollins, Lucas Glover, and Steve Stricker are not going to intimidate Els, Singh, Retief Goosen, and U.S. Open winner Angel Cabrera.

If Nicklaus is lucky, a couple of players on the Presidents Cup list get hot, and with a rejuvenated Woods the U.S. squad heads north with momentum. Otherwise, the Americans are in trouble because the International team is stronger than last year's European team that thrashed the U.S. in the Ryder Cup.