Tiger Woods continues to be the best in the world of golf in spite of loss in form, after being voted as the 2006 PGA Tour Player of the Year by his colleagues for the eighth time in the past 10 years.

Tiger Woods continues to be the best in the world of golf in spite of loss in form, after being voted as the 2006 PGA Tour Player of the Year by his colleagues for the eighth time in the past 10 years.

This is year has been a mixed one for Woods. Having stormed back to the world number one spot, winning eight events, including the British Open and USPGA, Woods had to face tragedy on personal front, when his father Earl Woods died due to cancer.

Woods said that during that period, the hardest thing that he found was to play golf.  "I knew I had to go through, like anyone, the grieving process, and I had never done anything like that before. The hardest thing for me to do was play golf. Usually, people go to work to get away from a loss like that. But that's when I thought of my dad. He introduced me to the game of golf. He taught me a lot of life lessons on the golf course", he said.

However he bounced back and consistently showed excellent form to win his third Open title. He now has won 12 majors, just 6 short of Jack Nicklaus' record of 18. Accepting the award, Woods thanked his peers saying, "It's always an honour to get the respect of your peers, this year has been interesting to say the least, on and off the golf course."

"I played as bad as I did at the US Open and to get it going after that was nice, because I was playing well early in the year and then in the springtime got a little bit more. I went back to the same things I was working on at the beginning of the year and they started clicking in and I won a few tournaments."

Woods also won the Byron Nelson Trophy for his lowest scoring average at 68.11 and has collected nearly $10 million as prize money. Says PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, "He has raised his game to the highest level and sustained that excellence. Winning the Jack Nicklaus Trophy again is testimony to his greatness."