Evidence that the world's best player does as he likes.

With 12 major victories, and another 52 wins worldwide, it's not as if he hasn't earned the right to plan his own schedule.

Despite the fact that PGA Tour prize money has more than doubled to its current high of $265m since Woods's emergence . . . as someone said, he has helped fuel a lot of private jets . . . his reluctance to turn up for a couple of key tournaments was regarded at best as biting the hand that feeds him and at worst as downright arrogance.

"I understood the criticism, " was Woods's rationale. "Last year was a long year, and I just wanted to tone down and get away from a few things."

However, after sitting out the Tour Championship last November, he played in China, Japan and, naturally enough, in his own tournament, the Target World Challenge. After sitting out the Mercedes in January, he was jetting to Dubai where he now has a lucrative golf course design commission, and his fee is rumoured to be close to $3m. More evidence that the world's best player does as he likes.

This week's Accenture Match Play in Tucson is only his second event this season in America. Amid speculation over a stand-off with PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, he chose not to play in the recent Nissan Open in Los Angeles. Although Woods has insisted ambivalently that he doesn't know where the stories are emanating from, it has been suggested that a request to move his Target World Challenge from December to an earlier date in November was knocked back by Finchem.

Power play or no power play, what is clear is Finchem has been preoccupied with getting his most prized resource out on the course, and more importantly, on America's television screens.

Woods is the tide that lifts all the PGA Tour's boats to such an extent that players now talk about two categories of wins: those with Tiger in the field, and those without him. The International, a long-established event in Colorado, went out of business this year because the organiser claimed that Woods didn't have it on his schedule.

Finchem's response to the world number one's solo run has been to create the FedEx Cup. A four-tournament play-off series in August and September starting with the Barclays Classic at Westchester and culminating in the Tour Championship at Atlanta, all sweetened by a winner's bonus of $10m, is the commissioner's trump card.

Except that Woods may prove not to be overly enamoured of Finchem's play-offs. Immediately before the run of four tournaments, he is committed to play in both the WGC Bridgestone Invitational and the USPGA Championship. And Woods doesn't compete for four weeks in a row, never mind six.

"How am I going to peak at the end of the year when I've got a World Golf Championship, a PGA, four weeks in a row, then a Presidents or a Ryder Cup?" Woods asked recently.

"That's a lot of golf in a row. It's going to be hard."

Clearly, he won't play in all the FedEx Cup events. Because he now does things his way, and because there is a sense he is being coerced into a schedule not of his making. Perverse as it may be, an additional $10m into his pension plan is of no interest, whereas the pursuit of Jack Nicklaus's record of 18 majors is.

Before he was eliminated by Nick O'Hern in the third round in Tucson, there had been further debate about his so-called winning streak. Following victories last year at the British Open, the Buick Open, the USPGA, the WGC Bridgestone Invitational, the Deutsche Bank Championship, and the WGC American Express, and another win this season at the Buick Invitational, there was the possibility of making it eight PGA Tour wins in succession at the Accenture.

Because, in between, he failed to win at the Ryder Cup, and in China, Japan and Dubai, Woods initially said it wasn't a streak. Then, in the face of persistent questioning, he referred to it as a PGA Tour streak, when really the emphasis should have been on the outrageous quality of his play than some fabricated record.

But then, that is the world Tiger Woods inhabits. Where he is the alpha player, the compiler of majors, the arbiter of TV ratings. He fuels America's golf engine, one which invariably splutters when he decides to stay at home.

The well-being of the PGA Tour, and the success or failure of the FedEx Cup are in Woods's hands. He knows it, and Tim Finchem knows it.