Vijay Singh has never had a better year on the golf course.

Or a tougher time off it.

No one should be surprised that the 40-year-old Fijian has four victories, more than $6.8 million and is on the verge of dethroning Tiger Woods atop the PGA Tour money list.

He has a history of performing his best under the most adverse conditions, and golf has always been his refuge.

Being banished from the Asian tour for a doctored scorecard in 1985 only made Singh work harder in the muggy rain forests of Borneo. He spent every free minute toiling on the range without knowing it eventually would lead him to two major championships.

“I was thinking about the next day, not really thinking about what’s going to happen in two, three, 10 years from then,” Singh said. “I was starting to think … ‘How many lessons are you going to have the next day?'”

More turmoil caught up to him in May, when he criticized Annika Sorenstam for playing in the Colonial. That brought him more attention than he ever got for winning the PGA Championship or the Masters.

“I hope she misses the cut,” he told the Associated Press. “Why? Because she doesn’t belong out here.”

Two days later, he was surrounded by reporters at the Byron Nelson Classic.

Vijay Singh drives the ball during the Deutsche Bank Championship Aug. 30 in Norton, Mass. Singh is enjoying one of his best years on the PGA Tour.

Fuzzy Zoeller was never the same after he was buried for his racial joke about Woods winning the 1997 Masters, when he advised him not to serve fried chicken and collard greens at the Champions Dinner.

As for Singh?

All he did was shoot four rounds in the 60s to win the Nelson Classic.

“When I get to a tournament, I totally close out everything that I can,” he said that day. “I guess that’s why I have been able to play so well all my career. A lot of things went on in my life. I just focus on what I have to do.”

Nothing brought him more consternation than the Annika issue.

At the U.S. Open, after hitting an 8-iron into 4 feet, a fan called out, “If it would have been Annika, it would have gone in the hole.”

As security escorted the fan off the course, Singh raised his putter at him, then made the birdie putt on his way to a 7-under 63, tying the record for lowest score in a major.

Since then, he has refused to come to the press center at PGA Tour events unless he’s leading, and even in the Funai Classic at Disney he stayed away until his name was on the trophy.

When the AP reporter asked him an innocuous question about his rib injury in February, Singh glared at him, looked away and said, “I’ll pass on that question.”

Singh then said he got along with just about every walk of life.

“There’s a couple of things that happened this year, unfortunately, for you guys and for him,” Ernie Els said earlier this month. “He’s a good guy that works hard, and I think he’s a little bit misunderstood sometimes. You’ve got to take him for what he’s done on the golf course.”