Age may kill Tiger Woods’ career. It’s making Sergio Garcia’s much better.

What does age mean? For some, it’s a slow march toward the inevitable — losing your physical capabilities and faculties, before Depends and daytime television become the regular routine.

But for others, it is wisdom, maturity. We come of age, we grow up. Aging like, perhaps, a fine Spanish wine.

Halfway around the world in Dubai this weekend, golf’s biggest rivalry-that-was-but-wasn’t of the last 20 years took stage once again. Now nearly 18 years after the duel at Medinah, Tiger Woods, the sport’s forever once-dominant automaton, is old, broken, and shitty. Sergio Garcia, the once-petulant underachiever, is playing some of the best golf of his life.

For Tiger, age has caught up with him at 41 — with injuries, his father’s death, personal transgressions, and the Killhouse all perhaps acting as an accelerant. Even the heaviest of Steinberg-peddled Kool-Aid drinkers had to change tone after this weekend’s 77, WD-with-Back Spasms performance. It’s something quite clear that his body still hurts, and possibly can’t stand the rigors of competitive play anymore. It is no longer if or when he’ll contend at Augusta, but rather if he’ll make it to April without quitting the game altogether.

But on the same weekend as another Tiger disaster, Sergio Garcia, now 37, is playing golf like we’ve never seen him before. With his old rival exiting stage right early, Garcia went wire-to-wire in a dominating fashion in Dubai. He easily warded off a charging Henrik Stenson in the final round without breaking much of a sweat, and hitting ice-in-your-veins shots like this on the 15th when Stenson narrowed the gap to just two.

At 37, the new Sergio Garcia is still something like the old one. He’s still a brilliant shot maker and ball striker and one of the game’s best, just as he’s been for the last 15-some years. And he’s still speaking his mind openly about Woods, giving a more-than-fair assessment of how difficult it will be for Big Cat to regain his form before the tournament. But this, undoubtedly, is a new Sergio Garcia. The forever-bachelor is engaged. He seems to have achieved a level of comfort with who he is, what he’s done, and what he’s given to golf — regardless of whether he wins a major or not.

With age, Sergio grew up. He seems calmer now, less prone to the Sunday implosions and “choke jobs” that cost him major championships in the past. Dubai is Dubai and not Augusta or Erin Hills or Birkdale, but this kind of wire-to-wire win with a major champion in Stenson chasing should send a signal to the rest of golf. His three-stroke win is his largest professional margin of victory outside Spain since the 2001 Buick Classic, and he’s back inside the OWGR Top 10 for the first time since the summer of 2015.

And he, unlike his rival, hasn’t lost a single step physically.

You wouldn’t trade Tiger and Sergio’s career arcs in a second. But as his rival’s career may be winding down early, Garcia’s run may be just getting started.

Did you know there’s actually a player who’s had a better start to 2016-17 than Justin Thomas? As I did at the start of 2017, let’s now list Hideki Matsuyama’s worldwide results since the 2016 Tour Championship.

First, second, first, first, first, second, 27th, 33rd, first. That’s five wins and two runners-up in nine starts this season! If Thomas didn’t exist, Hideki would have seven! That stretch run is somehow far more impressive than JT, if you’re asking me. Hideki’s second straight win at the Waste Management Phoenix Open gives him the edge back in the early Player of the Year race over Thomas for the 2016-17 season.

Hideki now has more wins on the PGA Tour than any Japanese player ever. He’s 24 years old. And now with Rory McIlroy injured and Jason Day hardly impressing, it’s conceivable that Matsuyama could challenge for World No. 1 before 2017 ends. Much as I wrote in early January, he’s still your early favorite at Augusta.

The PGA Tour turns a bit north for the first time this season, heading up to the Monterey Peninsula for the Pebble Beach Pro-Am. You’ll have a decent field — with Jordan Spieth, Phil Mickelson, Jason Day, and Dustin Johnson playing to pick up their first worldwide wins of the 2016-17 PGA Tour season. Also, there’s celebrities playing alongside, so it’s literally the worst week of the year to watch golf on CBS. Fun!