Tiger Woods leads the 2018 Tour Championship. Then comes a victory.

The world rankings often do not tell the full story of how a golfer is playing in this moment. This is possible, but the OWGR also often misses the mark and is too weighted in one way or another, sometimes in the past.

Tiger Woods launched the Tour Championship this week in 21st place worldwide, but anyone who has watched the PGA tour over the past two months looks like it's incongruous. He has played as one of the top 10 players in the world since mid-summer and, more recently, closer to one of the top 5 players in the world.

It should not be surprising that he has another place in the middle of a tournament, the season on the PGA Tour. If you were told in January, when he started the year as the 666th player in the world, that he would lead the Tour Championship midway through, that would be simply surprising. It would be incomprehensible. Not credible or credible in any way. But now? Nah, it's just who is still Tiger Woods.

Currently, Tiger is fifth on the PGA Tour season. The cumulative total is the set of advanced parameters that we use most often to measure a player's game. He is behind Dustin Johnson, Justin Rose, Justin Thomas and Bryson DeChambeau. These are not players who do it with Tiger in the 20s of the world rankings. They are four of the top eight in the world and all have won this year. Rose is the only player of the four who did not win many events on the PGA Tour this season, but it has been so consistent in all of them that it happens to be the world's No. 1.

It's the game of society that Tiger now keeps. The part of his game that has been the impetus for this dramatic comeback at the top of the golf course is his ball hit. He is the best iron player in the history of golf. At the start of the season at Riviera, in his second return leg, he expressed his frustration at the iron match that had left him.

"One of my hallmarks of my career is that I always hit the ball with my iron shots, and I did not do it," he said after the missed cut in February. "My wedge game is fine, but my normal iron strokes I've always used for much of my career, it's just not there."

Now? This week, he moved to first place on the PGA Tour. After four operations, a DUI, a rehab and two years of golf almost without competition, he is again the best in the history of this sport.

It should not be surprising that he leads the smallest and most exclusive event of the year. Tiger is tied with Rose at 7 under and another 36 holes at East Lake. Ball striking is back, but power and stones too are needed to run it at the right time. Another important tiger statistic this week is in the heavy par-5 arrival hole. Tiger and Dustin Johnson, the biggest hitter of the game, were the only players to go home in two wins in the first round, Thursday at 18 years old. But what about consecutively in both rounds?

He is out of reach of tee and precision with his irons and the putter does not let him down and even occasionally convert bonus birdies. As long as the putter does not leave him completely, his game is too good not to face the weekend and the thread Sunday afternoon.

There is only one chance for Tiger to add a win in this season of return. With only 29 other players on the field, this is perhaps his best opportunity of the year. The field is small but it will beat the best in the world. Rose is right there with Tiger at 7 under and Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler and others have dominated the match in the absence of Woods these last two years.

His return to Atlanta for the first time in five years sparked a keen interest in the event, with ticket sales up 170%. Now, he is leading the way with the superstar generation he inspired in the all-around game, and the PGA Tour is salivating the weekend ahead of his playoff final. Maybe they can, in a way, slightly reduce the monopoly of football last year before advancing in the schedule to escape the domination of this sport in series.

Tiger's game is now back in the class of players surrounding him in the rankings. Seeing it at the weekend in Atlanta is not a shocking revelation. This does not reduce the shock of seeing him arrive at this point during the season. This is perhaps the biggest return in the history of sport. He said that this week he started the year just trying to get to the swing in Florida. This is the section of tournaments that starts in February. It is now September and it has made the most exclusive and difficult invitation of the season. The one that only 30 players reach in the end. It's amazing that he arrived here, but that's not the case in his context. Now comes the last piece: get that first win in five years.