“I was in the room with him when the doctor told him three weeks on crutches and another three weeks of inactivity,” coach Hank Haney said, “but he looked at him and said ‘I’m going to play in the U.S. Open next week, and I’m going to win.'” Who thinks like that?

Enter Tiger Woods.

After watching the entirety of the 2008 U.S. Open, I’m now convinced that the world’s best golfer is not, in fact, human, but rather a machine. If you tore open his chest, you’d find a bunch of metals, wires and switches, not to mention the biggest heart you’ll ever see.

With the odds stacked against him, Woods has delivered one of the gutsiest performances I have ever seen in a lifetime of watching sports. Hobbled by a torn ACL and double stress fracture in his tibia, Woods winced in pain after every shot and often looked like he would fall to the ground. He even spent half of his fourth round using his club as a cane because he couldn’t walk. However, he showed absurd mental toughness and kept himself in a position to win the world’s toughest tournament.

Never mind the six-under par 30 on the back nine Friday. Forget the 70-foot eagle putt, miraculous chip-in and eagled finishing hole on Saturday. We’ve seen all that before. When Tiger gets that look in his eye, the hole seems to get as big as a tire for him and he can’t miss.

What impressed me the most about Tiger’s performance was how in an event where he was struggling by “Tiger standards” he could hang around and force a playoff with his knee noticeably in a tremendous amount of pain.

There have been some who claim a torn ACL is not a big deal in golf. Those people have obviously never seen Tiger Woods’ swing, or any modern power swing for that matter. Tiger puts so much torque and pressure on his left knee that the fact he made it the week without collapsing is simply baffling (even if he did, you can bet that he would’ve had his beast of a caddie Stevie Williams carry him for the rest of the tournament).

But Tiger’s ability to deal with the pain is only half of what makes him so mentally strong. Fighting through all the adversity, he still showed he has the composure and focus to prove that he is the greatest clutch athlete of all-time.

As he stood on the 18th tee, trailing by one, must birdie the final hole of the U.S. Open, everybody is thinking the same thing. Is there honestly any way he won’t do it?

Standing over his birdie putt, with 12 feet separating him from a playoff with Rocco Mediate, you just knew. This putt was falling.

Tiger’s uncanny ability to block everything out but his ball and the hole allowed him to catch the edge of the hole and send Torrey Pines golf course into an explosion of noise any NFL stadium would be proud of.

After the putt fell, Mediate turned around cracking up. “Unbelievable! I knew he’d make it!”

As if that wasn’t enough, Tiger stepped to the 18th once again in the playoff trailing by one and needing birdie. Again, who could doubt him? And once more, he delivered, forcing sudden death for just the third time in U.S. Open history.

After five grueling days of golf, Woods finally took home his 14th major championship (through nothing but sheer will) with par on the 91st hole of the tournament in what he later called the greatest win of his career.

Almost on cue, Nike unveils its newest Tiger commercial narrated by Woods’ late father Earl. “Tiger, I promise you, you’ll never meet someone as mentally tough as you in your entire life. And he hasn’t. And he never will.” Clearly Earl knew long ago what we all know now.