ORLANDO, Fla. --- At some point you expected him to smile. There's no way Tiger Woods could keep a straight face. It's simply too preposterous.

But Woods just stood there at the podium with all the seriousness of a pallbearer. He didn't even chuckle at the thought.

Do you think it's possible to win every tournament that you play in?

"Well, that's the intent," said Woods, opting against scolding his inquisitor with a direct don't-you-know-who-I-am rebuke. "That's the way I've always played. You don't play to finish top-10s or make cuts. You play to win. If you are entered into a field, I don't understand why you would ever think any other way."

Surely this isn't possible in the 21st century. Just because Woods hasn't lost any tournament he's entered since last August -- winning six consecutive tournaments around the world and eight of his past nine -- doesn't mean he can keep this up.

Then you look at his presumed event calender and realize he once won four in a row at Bay Hill, has won the past three years at Doral, owns four green jackets, is defending champ in Charlotte, inserted the 2001 Players into his Tiger Slam, once three-peated at the Memorial and plays the U.S. Open on a Torrey Pines course where he's won four consecutive years.

Sweep through that stretch and you tie Byron Nelson's untouchable PGA Tour win streak of 11 with two bonus wins in his Target World Challenge and Dubai tacked on for emphasis.

"It's magical," said tour veteran Billy Andrade. "It's impossible. It's ridiculous. But even the caddies are talking about it."

Woods passed Bay Hill host Arnold Palmer in the all-time victory list with his 63rd in the WGC Match Play, and Palmer is marveling at Woods' current unbeatable form.

"I think that right now, he has got (the game) by the neck and he's choking it," Palmer said. "When you play that well, as he has, his game is obviously responding to his commands."

If you're looking for possible resistance to that command, Bay Hill might be the place. The recently salvaged greens didn't impress Woods during Wednesday's pro-am (he shot 4-under despite a double bogey on 17). Does it present the biggest challenge for him in the next two months?

"Definitely," he said. "Especially with what we have to putt on this week. It will be quite a test."

Since Woods went on his four-win dominance of Bay Hill from 2000-03, Palmer has effectively Tiger-proofed the place. The thick-rough, brick-green setup has foiled Woods the past four years, with him finishing no better than 20th in that stretch.

"If Tiger finished out of the top 10 in any tournament, he's had a horrendous tournament," Stuart Appleby said. "He's that on his game that to finish out of the top 10 is pretty much impossible."

Fair enough, considering Woods has finished out of the top 10 in only eight of his past 41 starts since the start of 2006. He's also won 21 times worldwide in that span.

So is a perfect season really all that unreasonable? If so, is simply winning the four majors a suitable compromise? Woods openly talks about winning the Grand Slam as being something "easily within reason."

There was a time not so long ago when talking about a player winning the single-season Grand Slam was just a way to daydream the time away. Players would laugh it off as farcical.

"No one's laughing anymore," Colin Montgomerie said. "It's very much on the charts. It's about time Tiger did win the Masters. He hasn't won in a couple of years. We'll see what happens if he wins the first one. If he wins the first one, it's all go. Best of luck to him. It's fantastic to see it. Even to talk about it should be seen as 'Wow!'"

It's a wow for anybody not named Tiger. For him, winning is just another week at the office.