The verdict is officially in; if there ever was a "slump," it is over.

For those who said the two years of swing-doctoring and -tinkering were akin to updating the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with a nice coat of flat, eggshell white? Don't give up your day jobs. Memo to Phil, Sergio, Retief and all the other guys who were closing in on the smell of blood in the water: beat it.

The Golfinator, aka Eldrick Woods, aka Tiger, is back, and he is badder than ever.

It took Tiger all of one hole to separate himself from Luke Donald, with whom he began the day tied, in Sunday's final round of the PGA Championship. It took him all of five holes to stretch that distance to three strokes.

You had to feel bad for Donald, a young Brit who played golf for Northwestern and still has a home in Chicago. He was as close to a local-kid-made-good as there was playing at Medinah this weekend; calls of "Luuuuuuuke!" chased his drives down the fairways and galleries followed him around the course for the better part of Saturday and Sunday. His smile came easy on the first tee as he and Tiger prepared to go at it, and each other, for the next 18 holes. The sky was blue, the birds were chirping and he had a share of the lead for the last Major of the year. Donald was a dead man walking and he didn't even know it.

By the time the ninth hole was done the distance between the two had blossomed to five strokes. Between one and nine, Tiger made four birdies and five pars; Donald made eight pars and one bogie. Every time Donald made a good shot, Tiger made a better one. Every time Donald made a mistake, Tiger didn't. Donald's first bogie in 40 holes at Medinah took place on the fourth hole Sunday, and you'd be nuts to think having Tiger playing next to him had nothing to do with it. At the sixth hole, both Tiger and Donald were looking at near identical 40-foot putts. Donald, playing away, watched the ball race off his putter, dead-eyed at the hole until, at literally the last moment, the golf gods seemed to reach down and flick the ball minutely off-course, just enough for it roll tantalizingly around the \ edge of the cup before coming to rest, mockingly, mere centimeters away. After letting Donald tap in for par, Tiger stepped up and calmly drained his own 40-footer for birdie.

Two holes later, again with near identical, long-distance birdie-putts, Tiger managed to tear out yet another chunk of Donald's heart in eerily similar fashion.

Some people will point out that Tiger doesn't blow the rest of the competition out of the water like he used to, a point nobody in their right mind would dispute. What those people don't seem to realize, though, or what they simply refuse to accept, is that this is a situation of Tiger's own creation. By so routinely demolishing the rest of the competition at such an early age, Tiger forced the rest of the PGA to raise its own collective level. Would Phil have really elevated his game to where he has if Tiger weren't so regularly making him look like nothing more than the Pillsbury doughboy wearing a BearingPoint cap?

On Saturday, there were 22 players within two strokes of the lead. One Sunday, it was one, and that for only the most fleeting moment. Tiger is back and, in many ways, he's even scarier than he was before.

He doesn't smile as much; he seems more reserved. Sure, the old fist pump will make an appearance every once in a while, but for the most part Tiger just focuses on the task at hand, namely tearing out your heart and crushing your soul beneath his pristine black Nikes. Lord help you if you see that familiar red shirt marching your way come Sunday.

Cuda24@yahoo.com