Is it or isn't it? Grand Slam debate for Tiger could be in the offing.(South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

FORT LAUDERDALE _ Tiger Woods is poised to scale a mountain once believed to be unconquerable in golf.

He's a step away from winning all four professional major championships in less than a year.

When he arrives at Augusta National this week to begin preparation for The Masters, the world will be watching. Woods has the power to create the kind of spectacle that breaks beyond a game's boundaries and makes a non-sporting world stop and take notice. He's trying to make the kind of history that would have brought families together around the radio in their living rooms in the days of Bobby Jones.

Woods, 25, can make history, all right, but he poses a problem doing so. Families and strangers alike will debate what an unprecedented feat like this ought to be called. A Grand Slam?

By winning the U.S. Open, British Open, PGA Championship and Masters consecutively, Woods would become the first player to hold all four titles at the same time. Still, in the eyes of many of the game's great players, it's no Grand Slam because the championships weren't won in the same calendar year. Three would have been claimed in 2000 and the fourth in 2001.

Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead and Jack Nicklaus have strongly rejected characterizing this as a bid for the Grand Slam. Byron Nelson is reluctant to call it such a bid.

The term "Grand Slam" originated in Bridge, a four-player card game. The feat is described as "the winning of all the tricks during the play of one hand." Tennis adopted the terminology before golf. Bud Collins' Tennis Encyclopedia describes a Grand Slam as "the rare feat of winning the four major championships all in the same year."