...Haven’t tumbled down just yet.

Y.E. Yang did what nobody else has this past weekend, staring Tiger Woods in the eye on a Major championship stage and emerging victorious. It was stunning stuff for the 37-year-old Yang, whose résumé (which also includes four Japan Tour wins, a Korean Open, the prestigious 2006 HSBC Champions in Shanghei and this year’s PGA Tour Honda Classic) is quite beyond what many mainstream media outlets seemed to realize, but which was not, on the whole, predictive of a week such as this. But while many a star of the Woods era has laid down before him on Major Sundays, Yang did more than just hold it together; indeed, his closing two-under-par 70 tied for low round of the day, his par save and the 13th and chip-in eagle at the 14th represented elite high-pressure execution, and his hybrid approach to within 10 feet at the 475-yard finisher was a genuine epic.

The law of averages always suggested that Tiger would give one of these away eventually, but Yang went out and beat Woods; he didn’t wait to see if fate might hand him the trophy.

Still, the majority of the new conversation pertains to Woods, and to what extent his game has declined from those halcyon days of 2000 – and several epic campaigns since. At a very obvious level, the fact that he has won five times in 2009 (including the two weeks directly ahead of the PGA) demonstrates conclusively that his game is not in some bottomless decline. Further, his failure to win a Major in 2009 is hardly without precedent; 1998, 2003 and 2004 were similarly Major-free, with the latter two seasons each offering only a single top-10 in the game’s four biggest events. [As an aside, Jack Nicklaus endured three Major-less years between turning pro in 1961 and the end of his 33rd year – so these things do happen.]

The bigger question about Woods, it seems, is the general state of his game, which currently resembles Seve Ballesteros in his prime far more than Nicklaus in his. Sunday’s “I hit it great all day” assessment notwithstanding, Woods’ game is clearly beset by questions, ranging from the occasional putting woes (perhaps temporary) to a golf swing which, despite the built-in straightness of modern equipment, all too frequently sees his tee shots spray rather epically off line. Yet despite such issues, he remains comfortably the world’s best golfer – and objectively speaking, there is still no serious threat to his throne.

That said, lets see where we stand a year from now. If Tiger wins another Major or two in 2010, his stranglehold on number one will remain absolute, he’ll be creeping ever closer to Nicklaus’s record of 18 professional Majors, and a supreme dominance of the game’s career record book will loom just over the horizon. Should he fail to claim another Major in 2010, however, an alternative story becomes considerably more writeable, and questions of a decline may carry legitimate weight.

There will be much to look forward to in 2010.