Weekly 18: It's not you, it's them By Jason Sobel Jan 30, 2012 10:00 AM ET Tiger Woods is no paper champion. How do we know? Paper always beats Rock. But Woods could not beat Robert Rock on Sunday. (As an aside, Rock always beats Scissors. If you're seen his hair, you know that's true.) There will be plenty of conjecture and hypotheses following Woods?share of third place at the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship, but this week's edition of the Weekly 18 begins with a theory that's less about him and more about everybody else. All about the other guys. I never bought into the notion that entire fields of competitors were intimidated by Tiger Woods, but in the final group of the final round, I will concede that his mere presence across the tee box resulted in more than a few buckled knees. I also never bought into the idea that Woods I comparatively poor performances over the past two seasons meant he was "Done,"that he would never return to anything resembling the player he was since first turning professional in 1996. So what should we take from his latest result, in which Tiger parlayed a share of the 54-hole lead into a two-stroke deficit on Sunday afternoon? Maybe it says nothing about him. Maybe it says everything about the other guys. For years, it's been assumed that fellow players wilted under the pressure of playing with Woods ?even in situations where they clearly didn't, such as Bob May at the 2000 PGA Championship or Chris DiMarco at the 2005 Masters. In more recent times, though, we're seen Y.E. Yang and Robert Rock stand toe-to-toe with Tiger in the final round, getting the better of him in the end. One inevitable conclusion is that the gap between Woods and other competitors has narrowed. That's true, but it't not because he has gotten worse. It's because the other players are getting better. As I'v written before in this space, we could be on the verge of a golden age in the game over the next half-decade. Woods appears to be rounding into his previous form, but unlike the first dozen years of his career, it seems there are more and more players who can challenge him on a week-in, week-out basis. It's not just players in the top 10, either. It's guys like Rock, who entered the week at 117th on the Official World Golf Ranking (he's now 55th). Many observers will look at Woods?failure to finish as a negative aspect to his progress. That can be debated, but the fact that other players are now capable of beating him down the stretch should be viewed as a positive for the game as a whole.