IT'S BEEN A GREAT DECADE FOR WOODS.

Byline: DAVE SHELBURNE Golf

Tiger Woods got an early birthday/milestone present Tuesday, when he was named Player of the Year for the seventh time in his first decade on the PGA Tour.

Woods, who will turn 30 on Dec. 30, completes his 10th professional season Sunday at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, where he either will accept his third Tiger trophy in the Target World Challenge or present it - as tournament host of the annual 16-player invitational event.

The fact Woods won another Player of the Year award - after a six-win tour season in which he won two majors and seriously challenged for two others - seems easier to accept than his 10-year milestone.

Wasn't he just carrying his bag for 36 holes as a Stanford sophomore in the 1996 Pac-10 championship at Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach, shooting a tournament-record 61, then a 65 to win the conference title and going on to a sweep of that year's NCAA championship and U.S. Amateur?

Has it really been that long since the former Southern California junior golf legend said ``Hello, World'' in his tour debut at the '96 Greater Milwaukee Open?

Time marches on, but Woods - who had no expectations of the enormous success he would achieve in those nine full seasons and bar-raising seven-event first season - remembers clearly what was most important to him at the start of his pro career:

``I was praying not to go to Q School, just praying,'' he recalled of that late-season run of sponsor exemptions - which he punctuated impressively both early and late.

He had his first tour hole-in-one before the final round of his opening tournament, then he won two of those seven starts and wound up playing in the Tour Championship - something Woods still regards as one of the three biggest achievements of his golf career.

Looking back, he remembers his biggest goal in that abbreviated season was so much less ambitions:

``I wanted to get my (PGA Tour) card,'' said Woods, who did so with a win in the Las Vegas Invitational to dodge the unpredictability of Q School, then added another win at the Disney World/Oldsmobile Classic to put a hammerlock on Rookie of the Year honors.

Six months later, he was wrestling with tour immortality, winning the Masters by a record 12 strokes en route being named Player of the Year in his first full season. The rest of the tour has been chasing him most of the time since - despite Woods going through two major swing changes in pursuit of consistency and a better chance of avoiding injury.

He completed his 10th tour season with 46 victories in 185 tour starts, including at least two wins in all four majors. He has won six scoring titles, six money titles and maybe even earned some consideration for the Comeback Player of the Year award in 1999. Woods won eight tour events that year after winning just once on tour the previous season - the second season of his first swing change.

Turned out, Woods was just warming up in `99, as he demonstrated during a nine-win tour season in 2000, when he won the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship to set up a two-year Tiger Slam majors sweep he completed by winning the Masters in 2001.

It was more of the same kind of comeback-after-swing-change this year. Woods - who had one tour win in 2004 - won the Masters and British Open and was in Sunday title contention at the U.S. Open and PGA Championship during a six-win 2005 tour season he regards as a better year than his three-major season of 2000.

``I put myself there four times and won two,'' he reasoned in judging his 2005 performance in this year's majors.

Woods' emphasis on putting himself in position to win in big events dates back to a pre-tour golf career in which he won three consecutive U.S. Junior Amateurs, then three consecutive U.S. Amateurs the next three years.

Chasing victories, however, is not the same as expecting them. And in that regard Woods shares some head-shaking with the galleries that routinely swell when he plays and the television viewers who have helped boost the golf ratings that have helped boost prize money dramatically during his first decade on tour.

``In my wildest dreams, I could never imagine winning this many times and winning this many majors in my 20s,'' he said. ``Yeah, you have wild expectations and hopefully they come true, but when you exceed your own expectations, it's very special.''

It's been all of that, and if it seems hard to accept he's been at it 10 years on tour, it's easier to think Woods' next decade might be more than special.

With everything else he has working for him, it seems he also has history on his side.

``If you look at most of the guys' careers,'' he said, ``it looks like their peak years are in their 30s. Hopefully, that will be the case for me. That would be pretty neat.''

--Names in the game: Jason Gore of Valencia, one of Woods' regular rivals during their days in Southern California junior golf, was named Nationwide Tour Player of the Year on Tuesday. Gore, the third-round co-leader in the U.S. Open as a qualifier, won three consecutive Nationwide events to earn a ``Battlefield Promotion'' to the PGA Tour, then won that tour's 84 Lumber Classic to secure a two-year exemption.

Dana Quigley, who won twice on the Champion's Tour, was named Player of the Year on that tour for players age 50 and over.

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ON THE GREEN

BY DAVE SHELBURNE