With his win at Bay Hill today, Tiger Woods has once again become the number one golfer in the world and has climbed out of the hole he dug himself over three years ago.

The day after Thanksgiving 2009 was fairly forgettable for most everyone in America. If you are anything like most people, you probably spent that day on the couch, grateful for your day off and raiding the fridge of leftover every few hours. For Tiger Woods however, it was a day that undoubtedly changed the whole trajectory of his life from then on.

On that day Woods got into a domestic dispute with his then-wife Elin Nordegren, and soon after reports started to surface that the cause of the dispute was his infidelity. Soon a veritable throng of women started to come forward with stories of their own encounters with Woods, and both his image and marriage were irretrievably broken. At least he still had his golf game, right?

As anyone who's ever played golf knows, the game is never that simple. The mental toll taken on Woods from all of the public scrutiny became too much for even him, a man considered by many to be the best golfer to ever play the game. Woods quickly and unceremoniously dropped from leaderboards almost overnight.

It would be over two years till he would win another golf tournament, easily the longest streak of his professional career. During that time he had to constantly field questions from people who doubted he would ever be able to return his previous form. Many believed the formerly impenetrable Tiger Woods had simply cracked after that Thanksgiving weekend in 2009.

Over two years after that first moral victory, Tiger has finally sank another. With his two stroke win at Bay Hill, Woods has finally returned to his spot as the undisputed best player in golf. He has proved that he can withstand the most media scrutiny any golfer, and perhaps any athlete, has ever had to face, and he has come out on top once again.

"It was just a byproduct, a byproduct of hard work and getting back to winning golf tournaments," Woods said. "Consequently, I've moved up."

There is only one final hurdle. It has been 5 years since Tiger Woods won his last major, also the longest stretch of his storied career and without a doubt the toughest challenge of them all. The Masters is less than three weeks away, and the whole world will be watching.