Vijay

His three-shot victory in the Deutsche Bank Championship at the Tournament Players Club of Boston lifted his 2004 earnings above the $7 million mark. Remarkably, that eclipsed his previous best of $7,573,907 last year, when he ended Woods’s four-year reign as the PGA Tour’s leading money winner.

Singh, 41, has made no secret of his desire to dislodge Woods as the game’s leading player, although on occasions the ambition got in the way of his tournament success.

‘‘It has been my goal and I wanted to be number one before I finished playing competitively,’’ said the Fijian of Indian descent whose name means ‘victory’ in Hindi. ‘‘It was my goal at the beginning of last year and the beginning of this year as well. But it kind of interfered with my play. I was too concerned about that and I wasn’t focused on what I was supposed to do. So I totally refocused myself and said: ‘Well, let’s not worry about the world ranking. If I play well, win tournaments, it will happen’.’’

That strategy has finally worked and there will be very few players who will begrudge the hard-working Fijian, who has plied his trade across the globe since turning professional in 1982.

He clinched his maiden professional title at the Malaysian PGA Championship in 1984 and has gone on to win in England, France, Germany, Italy, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Spain and the United States, among many other countries.

Since starting out as a club professional in Borneo, Singh has been a byword for dedication and once memorably warned a caddie that he opened up and closed the practice range, routinely hitting 500 balls in a day. Not surprisingly, until he employed his current bag carrier Dave Renwick of Britain, not many were able to take the pace.

For several years, Singh was a leading drawcard in Europe. He won his first European title at the 1989 Volvo Open and two years later clinched the Scandinavian Masters and Lancome Trophy, ending the season a career-high sixth in the money list.

However, the lucrative pickings and higher quality of the US PGA Tour were a bigger attraction for him and he has played a full tournament schedule over there every year since 1994. His breakthrough at the highest level of the game came in 1998, a closing 68 earning him a two-shot victory in the US PGA Championship at Sahalee.

Major number two arrived two years later when he beat Ernie Els by three strokes in the US Masters but Singh failed to add to his major tally over the next three seasons, despite several close calls.

His putting, he felt, was his Achilles heel and he became the only top player on the PGA Tour to use a belly putter. Never in doubt, though, was the quality of his game and he proved that with a rich vein of form in 2003, winning four times.

‘‘I don’t think I’ve had this kind of performance ever,’’ Singh said of his golden run. ‘‘It’s been going on for a long time — I just hope I don’t wake up from this dream.’’

His only problem in 2003 related to the media, and he refused to speak to US reporters following his criticism of top women’s player Annika Sorenstam being invited to challenge the men at the Colonial tournament in May.

Although this should not have been a factor, it might have gone against Singh in the balloting for the 2003 PGA Tour player-of-the-year award, where he was edged out by Woods.

However, all that is now behind him. If his game was mightily impressive last year, it has been even better in 2004. He completed a run of 12 consecutive top-10 finishes on Tour with victory at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February, and has since added a further four titles.

Singh switched back to a conventional blade from a belly putter in late July, going on to win the Buick Open and the US PGA Championship in his next two starts.

Even sweeter, he is now the world number one. (Reuters)