The longer he goes without defeat, the more he is repelled by the prospect. Had Tiger Woods failed to win even one of the four tournaments he has entered in 2008, it might have taken the edge off his appetite, but with every passing week of the latest chapter in his unparalleled career, he has a little more to lose, and a lot to gain.

So much for the theory that he will grow tired of all this winning. The pursuit of an eighth consecutive title, and maybe the 11 straight wins that would surpass Byron Nelson’s record of 1945, have fuelled in him a burning desire to win the WGC-CA championship in Miami this evening, and stride on to the Masters, a grand slam, and perhaps even the unbeaten year that is unheard of in golf’s long history of plurality.

Woods, one shot off the lead at the halfway stage, has never been so animated. Witness his celebration after holing the winning putt at last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, when he threw his cap to the ground and looked to the galleries with fire in his eyes. And at Doral on Thursday, after three-putting the final green, he quietly simmered through the press conference. “I’m pissed,” he said, cutting short the subsequent questions.

Woods is more motivated than ever, but the challenge to which he has risen is his own. The gap between himself and world No 2 Phil Mickelson is bigger than the gap between Mickelson and anyone else in the rankings. He has won 16 of his 25 PGA Tour events since the 2006 Open.

In a sport with so many variables, from changeable weather to fields of 156 and the tiny margin of error presented by the golf swing’s myriad subtleties, it is a staggering strike rate, almost embarrassing for the rest.

That he does it without being pushed by any of his so-called rivals is astonishing. Asked last week about the source of his hunger, he seemed almost offended by the question. “I don’t see how you can live with yourself not trying, and not giving your best,” he replied. “People do that. I don’t know how they do. That, to me, is unacceptable.”

On the face of it, there can be no downside, no reason to be cynical about what posterity will remember as golf’s golden era. The more he dominates, the more fascinated we become. To be consistently better than the rest borders on monotony, but there is nothing tedious about taking in his freakish assault on history. How many trophies can he lift? How many strokes can he win by? And how many different ways are there to do it?

With his multiracial background, glo-bal fame and muscular power, Woods has transformed golf from a leisurely pastime enjoyed mainly by the elderly and infirm into a pursuit for aspiring athletes. He has single-handedly made the game cool, and introduced it to countries hitherto ignorant of its charms.

Of course, he has pocketed a buck or two in the process. A victory in Florida tonight will take Woods’s career prize-money to more than $100m. If, as they say, his ancillary earnings amount to 10 times that, he will have become sport’s first-billion dollar athlete.

Just as significant are the riches he has brought to the game. His iconic status has increased crowds, TV figures and the number of blue-chip sponsors willing to boost a tournament’s prize-money. Last week’s final round at Bay Hill was watched on television by 68% more viewers than had tuned in the year before, when he was not in contention.

In 1996, when Woods said hello to the world, Tom Lehman finished top of the money list with $1,780,159. At the end of last year, Woods occupied the same position with $10,867,052. Davis Love III earned almost as much for finishing 96th in 2007 as he did for finishing seventh 12 years earlier.

And yet, amid all the hype there is just a hint of unrest. So far, those who find his domination boring are in the minority, but will there be more indifference after he has won his battle with his-tory? If he loses today, and the streak is over, don’t expect organisers of the next PGA Tour event to be happy. And what if he is beaten at the Masters? What if he continues to ride roughshod over the rest without a grand slam to shoot at? By lining the pockets of his fellow players, he has widened their comfort zone, and in so doing, perpetuated that which gives him his advantage. Nobody would suggest that the rest don’t want to win, but they have come not to expect it, and that cannot be good for motivation.

Ernie Els, who after winning the Open in 2002, could have been seen as a realistic challenger to Woods’s hegemony, now cuts a dejected figure when he and Woods go head-to-head in the final round of an event, as happened in Dubai last month, when Woods produced a string of decisive birdies to take the title as Els was left languishing.

That tournament also reflected another change in the order in Woods’s favour: his ability to come from behind. It has long been recognised that once he establishes a lead in a tournament, that is how it is likely to stay. In Dubai, he was four strokes off the lead going into the final round. At Bay Hill last weekend, he was seven shots back at the halfway stage.

This unprecedented supremacy perhaps explains why Tim Finchem, commissioner of the PGA Tour, dared to suggest last week that Woods’s monopoly of the game was not entirely positive. “You never get tired of it,” said Finchem. “But one negative is that he dominates so much of our attention that sometimes it’s difficult to grow the stars of the future. When you win by six or eight shots, it becomes more difficult.”

Neither can Finchem be comfortable with Woods’s ability to make or break a tournament. The flipside of his pulling power is that many of the 20 or so events he omits from his PGA Tour schedule are struggling. When The International conceded defeat last year, they blamed the absence of Woods since 1999.

You can have too much of a good thing, but if Woods’s grip on the game has any negative implications, they are outweighed by all he has achieved, and it is unlikely to make a blind bit of difference to the man himself.