With next week's Open Championship comes another chance to wonder aloud if Tiger Woods will win his coveted 15th major championship, a question now five years in the making. According to one of the game's greats, while Woods appears likely to win again at some point in one of golf's four biggest events, garnering enough majors to pass Jack Nicklaus' career mark may be a more difficult task.
"Can he? Yes," said Arnold Palmer of Woods' ability to pass Nicklaus by winning 19 career major titles in an interview with Yahoo! Sports. "But will he? That is ... very questionable."
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While Woods' last trip to Muirfield came with an eye on the single-season grand slam, having won both the Masters and the U.S. Open in 2002, he will tee it up next week instead with a focus on ending a major title drought that stretches back to the 2008 U.S. Open. In the eyes of Palmer, himself a winner of seven majors, the battle that the 37-year-old faces is largely a mental one in his quest to surpass Nicklaus for arguably the game's most recognizable record.
"The psychology of getting in position and then being able to carry it forward (to a win) ... when he was younger, that was pretty easy to do," added Palmer. "Now that he's older, it will be more difficult. He'll have to really struggle. I think he'll find it, I think he's still about as good as you can get, but it'll be difficult."