Let's get one thing clear from the start. Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer who ever played the game. His passion, work ethic, natural talent, athleticism and drive are unmatched. He seems to have something other than blood running through his veins. Let's call it ice water. And Tiger Woods just played in arguably the most entertaining U.S. Open in the history of golf.

Note, I said the most entertaining. Not the greatest round. Not the most odds overcome. Not the most flawless game. Not with the most on the line.

Woods was also one putt away from losing the U.S. Open to a 45 year-old not ranked in the top 100 in golf. Read that statement again. By definition, it would be almost impossible to argue that Woods just played his greatest round ever. It took him 91 holes to beat a man who has one top 5 finish in more than 40 major starts. It may have been entertaining, but it wasn't the greatest round.

Of course, watching television and reading the papers on Tuesday morning you'd never know it. They drank the Tiger Kool-Aid from the beginning. He'd been hurt. He was playing against doctors' orders. He hadn't played in two months. But he persevered and charged back to beat Mediate, making his win the greatest of his career and one of the greatest in golf history. 

Excuse me if I don't fall over myself congratulating the man who chose to have elective surgery, who by several accounts (that obviously weren't reported on NBC, the network that stood the most to make from an epic Tiger story) was hitting lasers on the practice range over the weekend with no noticeable sign of injury.

But Tiger knows how to mold his own legend. He is a master of public appearances. Just take his own words following the tournament. "This is my greatest tournament ever," he said after dispatching of the gutsy Mediate. 

Really? The greatest victory you, the man who has been #1 in the world golf rankings for a decade, have ever had it beating a journeyman whom most people had not heard of? The terrible thing about Woods proclamation is that it immediately makes people believe that if the greatest player in history felt it was his best Open that it must be the "best Open of all time." And that discredits decades of history. History Tiger knows well.

Does Tiger not believe that Jack Fleck, a nobody who had been playing full-time professional golf for less than a year, beating his idol the great Ben Hogan in an 18-hole playoff in 1955 was not more remarkable than his victory? What about Francis Ouimet, who as an 18 year-old amateur, beat the legendary Harry Vardon in an 18-hole playoff in 1913? 

Ben Hogan didn't have elective knee surgery in 1949. He almost died in a car accident that shattered his pelvis, broke his ribs, ankle and collarbone. The next year, in 1950, he won the U.S. Open. More recently, in 1964, Ken Venturi won the Open just a few years after his game had abandoned him. Struggling thru heat exhaustion that threatened to kill him, Venturi somehow overcame the physical odds and the personal struggled he had been enduring, to win the Open title.

Those examples of history are truly overcoming the odds. And if Tiger, who loves to place himself in the context of history, wants some personal benchmark, he need look no further than the 1997 Masters or either the British or U.S. Opens in 2000 as examples of majors where his excellence and outstanding play were in their rarest of forms.

But, NBC, like any media outlet, likes a good story. It keeps people engaged. It drives ratings. It sells ads and it promotes the PGA's bread and butter product. What is more, Tiger likes to help stoke his own legacy and people love good drama. It's a perfect storm that results in over-hyped coverage and hyperbole of what was surely one of the most exciting U.S. Open's in history, but it wasn't the greatest, and it was the greatest performance, regardless of how history remembers it.