Tiger Woods At Bay Hill

Tiger Woods has more wins at three courses than every other active player besides Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh has total wins.

Tiger has 24 wins -- the same number Gary Player had for his entire career -- at Torrey Pines, Firestone, and Bay Hill.

Woods will go for No. 9 on the latter of those three courses this week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational where, for the eighth time, he'll be defending a title.

Side note: Woods has won five of the seven times he's defended here -- that's as many wins as Bubba Watson, Justin Rose, Hunter Mahan, Bill Haas, and Luke Donald have total in their careers.

Let's get in the way back machine and take a look at all eight of Woods' Ws

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2000 -- Tiger beat Davis Love III by four and Skip Kendall for the 18th win of his career. Tiger was 24 that year so that would be like Rory McIlroy having 12 more wins than he has. That's pretty wild.

2001 -- Woods held off Phil Mickelson by one in the middle of their great early 2000s duels. Woods made a birdie at the last after his wayward tee shot was headed out of bounds before hitting a fan. About the ending Woods said:

"I got an 'Arnold Palmer' break. I was able to get some wonderful breaks down the stretch. It was not a pretty round of golf but I got the ball in the hole. It's always nice to win."

2002 -- In his third straight at this course Woods beat Michael Campbell by four. That led to this incredible photo:

2003 -- This one was a joke. Woods shot 70-65-66-68 to beat Brad Faxon, Stewart Cink, Kenny Perry, and Kirk Triplett by 11 (not a typo) strokes. 11!

2008 -- Woods beat Bart Bryant (??) by one with this 24-foot bomb at the last. It would be his first of two straight lengthy putts at the last hole to win this tournament (he would do it again in 2009 -- see below).

Great call by Dan Hicks, too: "Hello, Ben Hogan!" Woods played six tournaments that year, here's how he finished in those: 1, 1, 1, T5, 2, 1

2009 -- This one was a gem. Woods beat Sean O'Hair by one (Woods shot a 67 to O'Hair's 73 in the final round) with this birdie at the last:

2012 -- Woods used a second-round 65 to beat Graeme McDowell by five and Ian Poulter by seven. It wasn't even that close. This was Woods' first win since the 2009 fire hydrant incident.

2013 -- Woods held off Rickie Fowler's late-tournament surge and cruised to win No. 3 of the season as everybody tabbed him the heavy (heavy!) favorite for Augusta. He made you remember what automatic was like.