Well, there's one thing we learned from all this. No, not that Elin Nordegren is going back to Sweden. Rather that golfers indeed are athletes.

Otherwise why would Ms. Nordegren's soon-to-be-ex, be voted Associated Press Athlete of the Decade?

The individual in question is one Eldrick Woods, who the past few weeks has received an overwhelming amount of attention for exploits that in some circles could be considered athletic, or maybe merely recreational.

Tiger, finally getting some good news for the first time in three weeks, received 56 of the 142 votes cast by editors of AP member papers.

Lance Armstrong, who only won the world's most difficult and famous bike race, the Tour de France, six straight times from 2000 through 2005 and adding 1999. seven overall , was second with 33 votes.

Roger Federer, with a record 15 Grand Slam tennis championships, came in third with 33 votes and Olympic champ swimmer Michael Phelps was fourth with 13.

Not until Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback, fifth with six votes, was there someone from a team sport, a debatable issue in these types of selections.

How do you elevate one man out of a franchise? How do you compare a football player with a swimmer? Or a cyclist? Or a golfer?

The argument whether golfers are athletes is unending. They don't run, punch or dunk. And as Phil Mickelson verified when he holed that winning putt on 18 in the 2004 Masters, neither do they jump.

They are coordinated. But so are ballerinas (who can jump). They have wonderful hand-eye coordination, but so do magicians.

Hale Irwin played defensive back at the University of Colorado and then - and still - played pro golf, winning three U.S. Opens and eventually establishing money winning records among the seniors on what is known as the Champions Tour.

Golfers, Irwin would insist to anyone brave enough to ask, are very much athletes, so let's drop the subject. Or do you want to walk 36 holes in 90-degree weather before the critics say you don't need to be in shape?

The kind of shape golf is in remains anyone's guess. In an interesting bit of timing, coming 24 hours after the AP award announcement, the PGA Tour commissioner, Tim Finchem, on Thursday gave his state of the disunion address.

He approached the subject of Tiger, his ladies, his temporary absence, and the acknowledged bad publicity golf has received of late, as carefully as someone trying to hole a five-footer to win the Masters.

When someone wondered if Tiger's failure to show his face, or even his feet, since the infamous Thanksgiving night accident, had a "deleterious effect'' on the Tour, Finchem was, shall we say diplomatic - which is kinder than describing him as evasive.

"Everybody has a view on this stuff,'' conceded Finchem. "I don't know if you do it any different it changes much to be honest with you . . . if he's going to re-emerge as a PGA Tour player, he'll be out in public, and one of the things he's got to sort out is how he's going to handle that.

"But I'm not going to try to pick apart how this was handled day-to-day because candidly I don't think it gets us anywhere.''

In a way, the Athlete of the Decade Award, certainly not undeserved for someone who since 2000 won 64 tournaments around he world, 12 of those majors, is at the moment both the best thing and the worst to happen to El Tigre.

He is being recognized for his 10 years of play instead of his months of playing around. Yet, now there's a new reason to keep Tiger in the headlines and the one-liners when he'd just as soon we move on to something not quite as personal.

Wednesday night, Tiger got zinged by Letterman, O'Brien, Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, a new version of golf's Grand Slam.

The Golf Writers Association of America voted Tiger its Player of the Year for 2009, when he won six tournaments. It was the 10th time in 13 years that Woods was chosen but the first time since a car wreck turned his life into a train wreck.

Tiger Woods changed the game. He used to say he took pride in making golf "cool.'' Now he's silent and in hiding.

You can only wonder what he's thinking, in surely what has been the worst time of his life selected for the many honors.

What the AP editors were thinking is Tiger Woods was so good at his sport he should be the Athlete of the Decade and everything else is inconsequential. Fore!