(Sports Network) - Bernhard Langer won two Masters in eight years, no easy feat, and has compiled more than 60 victories worldwide in the past four decades.

Which is why you'd be wise to believe the 51-year-old German when he says that he's playing as well as he has ever played.

"I'm just having a great time out here," Langer said Sunday after winning the 3M Championship for his fourth victory of the season.

Langer currently occupies a unique position in the golf landscape, as he is far and away the best player on a tour no one seems to care about. Which is a shame, because his dominance on the Champions Tour is unmatched by all but one golfer at the moment.

When he chipped in for a winning eagle at the 18th hole Sunday, bending to his knees and pumping his fist in a rare histrionic flourish, Langer moved his winning percentage on the over-50 tour this year to 33 percent.

It's the same clip the PGA Tour's winningest current player, Tiger Woods, has forged through nine tournaments this season.

And Woods might be the only reason that Langer can't be considered the most dominant player in golf at the moment -- a silly designation, to be sure, but one we no doubt take pleasure in debating anyway.

It's a problem of competition, really.

Langer, as spry as ever and still a yearly guest at Augusta, where he opened with a 70 in this season's Masters, has claimed two of his wins this season over Andy Bean, the portly 56-year-old who has resurrected his career on the Champions Tour.

Bean was an 11-time PGA Tour winner -- and ain't none of us Adonis -- but he remains a man currently pushing 60 years old who weighs more than 250 pounds.

On the other hand, Woods has defeated two youthful PGA standouts in Sean O'Hair and Hunter Mahan, and a former major champion and No. 2-ranked player in the world in Jim Furyk.

Woods has a tendency to rip his opponents' hearts out, too, something that O'Hair learned the hard way in March when he had a front-row seat to Woods' winning 12-foot birdie putt at Bay Hill.

"No matter how friendly you are with him, he wants to slit your throat on the golf course," said O'Hair, who lost a five-shot lead to Woods that Sunday.

While throat-slitting might be too ghastly a description of what Langer has accomplished in his 22-plus months on the Champions Tour, he has certainly met and exceeded high expectations since he began playing the over-50 circuit in Sept. 2007.

He has won eight times in 37 starts, or 22 percent of the time. (Amazingly, Woods has won half of his starts -- 9 of 18 -- over that same period.)

Last year, playing his first full season on the tour, Langer was earned both Player and Rookie of the Year honors. And with nearly $1.5 million in earnings already this season -- twice as much as Bean, his nearest competitor -- he is well on his way to winning one of those awards again.

"It's been a great run," Langer said Sunday of his time on the Champions Tour. "I'm just enjoying my golf. I'm playing as good as I've played in my whole career."

The proof is in the numbers.

Langer is the tour's best first-round player, where his 67.45 scoring average is nearly two shots better than the next closest challenger. And he is also the tour's best closer, shooting a 68.82 average that is a third of a stroke better than No. 2.

His overall scoring average of 68.82 is almost three-quarters of a shot better than the next guy.

It helps Langer's dominance that the players we expect to challenge him have rarely done so this season -- including on Sunday, when 36-hole leader Nick Price, himself a multiple major winner, finished four shots back.

Price and fellow top players Loren Roberts, Jay Haas, Mark O'Meara, Fred Funk and Tom Kite have combine to win only twice this season, half the number of victories Langer has claimed by himself.

And if all this isn't enough, it seems that Langer, like Babe Ruth before him, has taken to calling his own shots. At least that's what Stefan Langer, the Hall of Famer's son and caddie, said about his father's winning eagle on Sunday.

"He called it," Stefan Langer said. "I was thinking more get up-and-down (for birdie) but he called it. Luckily it went in."

We said you'd be wise to believe him.













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