KEY POINTS:
AUGUSTA NATIONAL - The age of the Tiger has been written so large, so indelibly, in the sky here that when an old pro and former winner like Ian Woosnam sucks in his breath and reports that the course is playing longer than he has known it, and Davis Love III, a runner-up twice, endorses the view with a huge sigh, inevitably there is a reflex conclusion.
It is that the mastery of The Man, the shaper of modern golf, is about to stretch seamlessly into a new decade - 10 years after he shattered the course record with a score of 18 under par.
That triumph in 1997 was long ago enshrined as a benchmark of golfing excellence - and a milestone in the evolution of modern sport.
However, the rest of Tiger Woods' contribution to golf history is supposed to be relatively incremental, a year-by-year accumulation of passing glory, a Masters here, an Open there, a burst of domesticity of the kind which this year threatens his presence at Carnoustie as his wife, Elin, prepares to deliver their first child - and then, sometime in the next five years, the formal passing of the 18-major mark of Jack Nicklaus.
In itself, this is an extraordinary picture of taking-his-pick and living-his-life dominance, but in the view of a golfer of magical achievement in his own right it simply goes nowhere far enough.
Gary Player, who plays the Masters for the 50th time this week, with three Green Jackets and six other major titles to his legendary name, insists that the 31-year-old Woods is still nine years away from his prime.
"When he hits 40," says Player, "the Tiger will have the world at his feet. He can do whatever he wants. He can buy himself an island and bring up his kids, if he wants - or he can just keep on winning golf tournaments. My guess is that he will continue to do a bit of both - as the most perfectly placed and prepared golfer in the history of the game."
It is a career view which the Tiger does little to question even as he admits that having his first child will take him into experiences and reflections that do not naturally occur in the process of competitive perfection.
"I hate sitting still," he says as he prepares to claim back the title from Phil Mickelson, the only man who is, given the Tiger-proofed course and its special demands, offered as a possibility of stopping the winner of the last two majors.
"I've always got to be moving. I've always got to be challenged - a day without adrenalin is a day wasted, a day without pitting your skills and your competitive instincts has a certain emptiness."
Player contemplates such furies of intent and sees the image of a giant growing in the mists of the future.
He says: "I think a lot about the question of who is the best golfer of all time - and at the moment I have to say that in my mind Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods are tied. But I stress, it is for the moment.
"But then, to be honest, comparing Jack and Tiger in some ways is comparing apples and bananas. Jack never played a green with soft spikes applied. Every green we played had hundreds of spike marks.
"That's what we played with. That's what Jack Nicklaus played under. He never used a metal head in his prime. He never went into a factory and said, 'My golf ball is climbing too much. Can you adjust this with my clubs? I don't want them to climb so much'.
"This was stuff that a player as great as Ben Hogan, the scientist, never even thought of. How do you compare Nicklaus and Tiger Woods? The ball goes at least 55 yards further now. If you imagine Jack Nicklaus hitting the ball 55 yards further, every bunker is just uniform with a raking.
"What I'm trying to say, I suppose, is that if they played together I would have to call it a tie; Jack's record is superior but we all know that if anybody is going to beat it, it's going to be the Tiger - and then anything can happen if he still wants to play golf, if he hasn't tired of it."
Player sees a crucial divide between the two giants of golf.
It lies in Woods' relentless cultivation of his physical powers.
Says the 71-year-old South African: "For a time in his life, Jack was extremely strong. His legs were just as strong as the Tiger's and if you gave him the right club, the right equipment, he would hit the ball the same distance. But Jack's body went on the wane. It deteriorated at a certain age, whereas Tiger's body - believe me - is going on for a long time.
"So this is the most tremendously significant thing. When I started in the game 50-odd years ago, people laughed at me for doing exercises, trying to strengthen my body. One famous gentleman in this game, who I won't name, said: 'Gary Player can't last - he's doing all this weight training. Then Yogi Berra [the famous baseball player and manager] said to me, 'I wouldn't let my players swim let alone use weights'.
"And yet the other day I was in Dubai and coming out of a gym when Tiger went in. I turned around and patted him on the arm. It was like putting your arm on Tarzan... He was warming up with 25-pound dumbbells, and they were like nothing. He's tuned his body to a remarkable degree and we are seeing some of the results now - and we'll go on seeing them for a very long time."
With winnings and sponsorship and investment income, Woods 2006 earnings are estimated at more than US$100 million ($139 million).
"Most nights I make a few business calls - it's something I enjoy, and it's never going to interfere with the golf. Last year here was difficult with my father being so ill, and then winning the Open was important for me because I knew it was the way he would have wanted me to play.
"There's talk of another Tiger Slam [when he tagged the 2001 Masters on to a winning run through the US Open, Open and US PGA the previous year] but I learned long ago that you don't make such targets for yourself.
"You play from one tournament to another, you help your game along and you only put on yourself the pressure you can handle. Right now, I feel I'm handling it all pretty darned well."
For the ancient mystic of golf, for the insatiable Player, the Tiger is doing it so well, he is anticipating a new and daunting age of golf.
"It worries me sometimes when I think of what will follow Tiger's success. Young guys will see that he can go on for so long, without the terrible injuries that come in sports, and they will put all their athleticism into golf. The result? A different game, one that a little guy like me me just couldn't play."
The Tiger has long been immune from such speculation.
"People find a way of adapting to situations they find themselves in," he says.
"For me it would be enough for someone to say that I was as good in my age as Jack Nicklaus was in his. You don't go out to make history. You just try to give the best possible game you could have. And then you let history just roll along."
Here the confident expectation is that he will chivvy and drive it with some force, starting on Thursday.
The former winner Ben Crenshaw reckons, though, that the addition of 420 yards, strategically placed trees and a more challenging cut of rough, means that the astonishing scoring of Woods in 1997 is now fossilised in the records.
"I just think there is too much course for that to happen again," said Crenshaw.
Maybe so, but it is another academic point.
The Age of the Tiger long ago ceased to be about the detail of the scoring and the strict technique of an evolving game.
As old Gary Player insists, Tiger Woods has built more than an astonishing personal empire.
He has redefined the game he plays - and, maybe, so much of the rest of sport.
The most dangerous golf course in the world.
- INDEPENDENT
