The way the golf year ended tends to obscure how it began: with a feverish buzz and absurd expectations. It started in early January with a column on tigerwoods.com in which Tiger Woods said winning the Grand Slam was “entirely within reason.

The phrase “entirely within reason” became the focus of 2008. Could Woods add to his lengthy list of firsts by winning the Masters, the United States Open, the British Open and the PGA Championship in one year? Well, no. He missed six months while rehabilitating his surgically repaired knee. What he did to show how much he matters was something else, though, something that defied reason.

Only Woods and his inner circle knew he began 2008 on one good leg. He had ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in July 2007 while running. Going into this year, the plan was to have the knee repaired after the PGA. With a swing change he and Hank Haney installed to take pressure off the knee, Woods won his first four events. Grand Slam? People wondered if he might run the table.

The outlandish notion was fueled by numbers dating to August 2007: nine victories in 10 starts with one runner-up; a stroke average of 67.7, two clear of the world. His Masters tune-up would be the WGC-CA Championship at Doral, an event he had won six times. Tigermania was back. Television ratings soared.

It changed quickly. The unbeaten string ended at Doral; the Grand Slam died at Augusta in a futile second-place finish in the Masters. Arthroscopic surgery two days after the Masters kept him out two months, and in June, he was at the United States Open at Torrey Pines with no tournament tune-ups since the Masters.

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