ASKED last week whether he had ever considered the possibility of a perfect year, Tiger Woods revealed that he had achieved one already. “I peaked when I was 11,” said the world No 1, recalling the season when he and his mother would rise at 4am every day for a seven o’clock tee-time. He triumphed in every one of the 36 tournaments he entered on that year’s Cal Junior Golf circuit.

Woods was up at 3.45am yesterday for the quarter-finals and semi-finals of the WGC Accenture Match Play, which he negotiated in the same peerless way he has everything this year. He is unbeaten in 2008, thanks to wins in the Buick Invitational and the Dubai Desert Classic, and will continue to be so if he sees off Stewart Cink in today’s final.

Yesterday morning, he was a 3&2 winner over KJ Choi. In the afternoon, he finished two up against Henrik Stenson, who will have to content himself with facing Justin Leonard in today’s third-place playoff. The Swede, Europe’s only representative in the last eight, had won his previous 10 matches in this event, but there is invincible and there is Tiger Woods.

On a breezy day in Tucson, Arizona, Stenson’s name was added to a list of victims that also includes JB Holmes, Arron Oberholser and Aaron Baddeley. Maybe it will console him to be reminded that Woods has failed to win only one of his last nine events, and that was a tie for second in the Deutsche Bank Championship. The American has already won 14 out of 25 WGC events, so losing out to another display of precise ball-striking and phenomenal putting from all ranges was nothing to be ashamed of.

Maybe only Woods could have ended Stenson’s long unbeaten run. The European Ryder Cup player had never lost at the Galley Course in Tucson, and proved to be a ferocious competitor this past week. He has contested no fewer than 97 holes since play began on Wednesday, and that was after he had suffered a heavy cold and the effects of a debilitating stomach bug. His defeats of Robert Allenby, Trevor Immelman, Jonathan Byrd and Woody Austin proved the Swede is a sucker for the matchplay format.

Five of those wins were by one hole, and his second-round match against Immelman was decided on the 25th green. The world No 12, who first emerged at the 2005 Seve Trophy and holed the winning putt at the K Club, is either a fiendish competitor when push comes to shove, or a player without the clinical touch needed to secure an early finish.

Stenson, who has made his customary bright start to the year with three top10 finishes on the European Tour, believes that a matchplay encounter, the fluctuating score of which determines a player’s strategy, does not lend itself to wide winning margins. As if to emphasise the point, his quarter-final brush with Austin swayed back and forth as the players’ needs changed. Two down after six holes, Stenson went on the attack, exploiting the American’s notorious temperamental problems by winning five holes in a row. Then, just when the Swede looked ready to secure a rare landslide, Austin hit back with birdies on 16 and 17. Only Stenson’s accurate pitch to the final green enabled him to win two up.

After lunch, Woods had the advantage of a longer break in which to prepare. In the morning, he beat Choi with something to spare, while Stenson’s struggle to overcome Austin left him with just 40 minutes to catch his breath.

Stenson’s stuttering start was no surprise. He fell behind on the third, where he splashed out of a greenside bunker well enough, but allowed his five-foot par putt to lip out. On the par-five fifth, his drive found a bunker, and Woods was so angry about failing to take advantage that the five wood with which he missed the green was slammed into the ground.

The pair exchanged birdies on holes seven and nine, but it was on the 13th that Stenson best demonstrated his intent. After yanking an ugly hook over the gallery, beyond the cart path and into a crop of cactii, all he could do was chip it back on to the fairway. Looking as though he was about to fall further behind, he then delivered a sumptuous approach to within four feet of the hole, and holed it for a half.

Relieved by that escape, he holed out for birdie on the 16th, only to watch Woods do the same a hole later, after a special bunker shot. Stenson had enough experience of the 18th to believe he could salvage the match, but a heavy approach from the middle of the fairway didn’t even reach the green. With his opponent eyeing a makeable birdie putt, the match was conceded.

Woods’s reward for winning a spectacular shoot-out with Baddeley on Friday night had been a quarter-final against Choi. His third-round tie against the young Australian was being hailed as the best to have graced this tournament since it was first played in 1999, so his clash with the Korean was always destined to be mundane by comparison. While Baddeley matched his opponent shot for shot, and eventually succumbed at the second extra hole of an epic duel, Choi missed a series of opportunities early in their round and was later made to pay for it. The turning point was Woods’s chip into the hole for eagle on the 10th, after which he pulled away with another exhibition of ruthless putting.

After bombs on the 14th and 15th, Choi was left shaking his head, and shaking hands, on a 3&2 defeat.

Cink will be a formidable opponent in today’s final. The modest American, who knocked out Colin Montgomerie on Friday, looked almost embarrassed as he destroyed Leonard with his best golf of the week. One of the game’s finest putters, he had five birdies and an eagle in his first eight holes, by which time he had already gone four up. He had reached the turn in just 29 strokes.

The world no 22, who has also seen off Miguel Angel Jimenez, Padraig Harrington and Angel Cabrera, took his foot off the pedal before securing a 4&2 result. That he enjoys matchplay is evident from his impressive Ryder Cup record. He also has the 2004 NEC Invitational on his CV, but a familiar figure stands in the way of his second WGC title.