When the 83rd edition of the PGA Championship tees off this week at the Atlanta Athletic Club, the first question that begs an answer is: Can Tiger Woods become the first player since Walter Hagen in the 1920s to win three straight PGAs?

Maybe a better question would be: Can Woods salvage one successful defense of his three majors from last season in a year in which he has come up surprisingly short in his first two attempts?

The world's No. 1 player is without a doubt in the midst of a strange season. His wins at Bay Hill, the Players Championship and the Memorial would be a career for most players, and a terrific one at that. Add to the mix a second green jacket for his triumph at the Masters -- a victory that saw him become the first player to hold all four professional major titles at the same time -- and he has forever cemented his place in the sport's history.

But coming off the complete domination that was his 2000 campaign, Woods' current season has been a bit of a head-scratcher. Since he captured his third consecutive Memorial title in early June, the 25-year-old golfing wunderkind has finished out of the top-10 in four straight tournaments for the first time since late 1997.

Woods' slide started with a tie for 12th in the U.S. Open at Southern Hills. His performance there was shockingly ordinary in contrast to his record- breaking 15-shot cakewalk at Pebble Beach the year before. Woods tied for 16th a week later at the Buick Classic, then finished joint 20th at the Western Open, an event he had won twice before.

Despite a second-round 68 that left him just four shots off the lead at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, Woods posted 73-71 over the last two days to tie for 25th in defense of his British Open title. It was his worst showing in a major since he finished knotted in 29th at the 1997 PGA Championship.

Woods' showdown with the unheralded Bob May in the final round of last year's PGA at Valhalla harkened back to the event's match-play roots. When Woods survived the newly instituted three-hole playoff with May, he became the first player to win back-to-back PGAs since the championship adopted the stroke-play format in 1958.

In fact, Denny Shute was the last to repeat as champion when he won in 1936 and '37. Hagen, who captured his first PGA Championship in 1921, reeled off four straight wins from 1924-27, an incredible feat when taken into account he had to make it through 36 holes of qualifying before playing five 36-hole matches en route to the title each year.

It seems like a lifetime ago, Woods-wise, anyway, that the upstart Sergio Garcia burst onto the scene at the 1999 PGA Championship at Medinah. The then 19-year-old Spaniard was the youngest player in the stroke-play era to lead the tournament when he opened with a 66. He managed to hang around the top of the leaderboard the next three days before attempting to steal the show with a no-look recovery shot from the base of a tree on the 70th hole.

Garcia finished one shot behind Woods, whose exhausted fist-pump at the final hole that day told the tale of a player who was put through the ringer. Woods notched his second major victory, but Garcia served notice that he would be a contender for a long time to come.

Now, at the ripe old age of 21, Garcia is a two-time PGA Tour winner. He broke through with the help of a final-round 63 at the Colonial in May and just over a month later won the Buick Classic. Although his tie for ninth at the British Open last month was only his second top-10 in a major, Garcia has to be considered a favorite to shake the major monkey off his back before it becomes a gorilla.

David Duval did just that at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, with a rock-solid four days that included a third-round 65 and an unflappable five-birdie, one-bogey effort over the final 18 that proved he has the mettle to cope on the big stage.

He will look forward to competing at the PGA, since a bad back forced him to miss last year's event. It was the first major Duval missed since his rookie year of 1995.

A four-time All-American while at Georgia Tech, Duval has some familiarity with the Atlanta Athletic Club's Highlands Course. But the big thing the 29- year-old has going for him is his recent success, and the feeling of accomplishment that comes with it could make him a formidable foe in his old stomping grounds.

Phil Mickelson, now 0-37 in majors after finishing 11 shots behind Duval at the British Open, will have to shoulder the burden of being the best player without a major title.

The super-talented, but sometimes erratic lefthander collected his 18th PGA Tour victory in improbable fashion early in the season, defeating Frank Lickliter with a double-bogey on the third playoff hole to win the Buick Invitational. He had eight other top-10s in the first six months of 2001, including a heartbreaking tie for third place at the Masters and a tie for seventh at the U.S. Open.

Mickelson captured the Greater Hartford Open in his next start after Southern Hills, but finished T42, T30 and 71st over the following three events. He cracked the top-10 this past week at the Buick Open, closing with a bogey-free 64 that featured back-to-back eagles on the inward nine.

With any luck that final round will be a portent of things to come for Mickelson, who leads the PGA Tour in birdies and eagles this year but whose scorecards have also been littered with bogeys, doubles and worse.

Woods, Garcia, Duval, Mickelson -- even May and Lickliter -- are just six of a record 94 top-100 players from the world rankings in the field this week.

Vijay Singh, the last man other than Woods to win a PGA Championship, has posted six top-three finishes among his 12 top-10s this season, but is still searching for his first victory since grabbing his second major title at the 2000 Masters.

Singh, the champion of the '98 PGA at Sahalee, missed the cut at Valhalla last year.

Georgia native Davis Love III, the '97 PGA Championship winner at Winged Foot, ended a three-year victory drought at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February. Slowed by injuries for a good part of this season, he has still been able to finish in the top-10 eight times in just 14 starts.

South Africa's Ernie Els has tallied five third-place finishes in 2001, with ties for third in his last two events, the British Open and the International. His fellow countryman, reigning U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen, joined the PGA Tour this past week at the Buick Open but failed to hang around for the weekend.

Goosen has had about the same luck in his four PGA Championship appearances, with a tie for 61st in '97 followed three straight missed cuts.

Other international players to keep an eye on include Sweden's Jesper Parnevik, Germany's Bernhard Langer, Darren Clarke of Northern Ireland and Scotland's Colin Montgomerie, who had the British Open in his sights through two rounds but tumbled out of contention over the final 36 holes.

Montgomerie has been close in other majors, most notably the 1995 PGA at Riviera, where he lost in a playoff to Steve Elkington after the two set the tournament record of 267 in regulation.

Although two majors have previously been held at the Atlanta Athletic Club -- the 1976 U.S. Open won by Jerry Pate, and the 1981 PGA Championship won by Larry Nelson -- the club's Highlands Course will bear only a superficial resemblance to the layout that hosted the PGA 20 years ago.

The course, co-designed by Robert Trent Jones, Sr. in 1967, was completely overhauled by his son, Rees Jones, in 1994-95. The younger Jones rebuilt tees, greens and bunkers, and in the process extended the course to its present length of 7,213 yards.

A par-72 for the members, the Highlands Course will play as a par-70 for the 2001 tournament. Eleven of the 12 par-fours stretch over 400 yards, with the 490-yard 18th measuring in as the longest closing hole in PGA Championship history.

That means that Pate, whose famous 190-yard five-iron shot from the rough to three feet at 18 locked up the '76 Open, may not have enough club to reach the putting surface from a bad lie this time around. The shape of the hole will dictate a right-to-left drive, but a tee shot that is overcooked could very well find the water that borders the left side of the fairway.

The water at the 18th continues up the fairway and wraps around the front and right of the green, so that a drive that is short or in the rough may have to be followed by a lay-up shot.

Of the eight holes affected by water, four are par-threes, three of which measure over 200 yards. All fairways and greens along water are faced with pretty stone that clearly demonstrate to a player where dry land begins and ends.

This being an odd-numbered year, Ryder Cup points are on the line for players on both sides of the Atlantic. The situation is more dire for the American hopefuls, however, as the PGA Championship marks the end of the nearly two- year points-earning period for the late September matches at The Belfry in England.

Jim Furyk, with a tie for second at the Buick Open, vaulted from 11th to eighth on the standings. While he would certainly love to earn his first major title this week, a top-10 finish to seal his place on the American team would be a fine consolation prize.

Same goes for Chris DiMarco, the up-and-coming star with the unorthodox putting grip. The man who led this year's Masters after two rounds has been on fire with a trio of top-three showings in his last four starts. Currently 11th on the U.S. Ryder Cup list, DiMarco needs to move up at least one more spot to automatically qualify for captain Curtis Strange's squad.

Tom Lehman, who missed the cut in his last two events, was pushed to 10th to accommodate Furyk and could use a strong PGA performance to stay on the good side of the bubble. Joe Durant, whose back-to-back wins early in the season appeared to make him a cinch for the Ryder Cup team, has missed the cut in seven of his last eight starts and was knocked from 10th to 12th this week.

Also on the outside looking in are Brad Faxon, David Toms, Lickliter, Rocco Mediate and Scott Verplank, each of whom will tee it up at the AAC.

The European side's main concern is that two of their top players -- Garcia and Parnevik -- remain well outside the top-10 spots that automatically earn places on the team. Because the European standings are based on money won in European Tour events, U.S. PGA Tour-based golfers like Garcia and Parnevik are at a disadvantage.

European skipper Sam Torrance will have a few more weeks to mull over his player plight. The final event in which European Tour players can earn Ryder Cup points will be the BMW International Open, August 30 to September 2 in Munich, Germany.

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