Golf: Tiger gets back the stripes that many feared were lost

Tiger Woods

Some time before they reached into the most hallowed wardrobe in all of sport at Augusta, it was plain that something more was at stake than the fabled green jacket of the Masters.

It was a dream of perfection, of a restatement of genius and unique force, that just happened to concern the game of golf.

There was no more than a single point of tension after Tiger Woods reinvented the extraordinary force with which he came, a few years ago, to dominate his sport so profoundly; so deeply that courses had to be changed and all standards and possibilities redefined.

It centred, and with a stunningly compulsive power, on one question: could he hold the majesty, and bite, that had so consumed the 69th Masters on its third day and fourth morning, that had seen him move from two-over to 11-under in just a few minutes more than 24 hours?

This had been more, so much more, than a hot streak. It was more than adventurous, technically superb golf carried on a surge of old confidence. It was a glorious re-awakening of power and conviction that many said had been lost rather than temporarily mislaid.

Going into the final round he led by three strokes and when he walked to the first tee in the mid-afternoon the companions of his spirit were not only the late Gene Sarazen and Ben Hogan, and a Jack Nicklaus who had just stepped from inside the Augusta National ropes, for the last time, to go fishing in Florida.

Think of the nonpareils of sport and they were all there with Tiger. The required credential was simply that you had pushed back the barriers of individual achievement; had done something that reached beyond excellence and engaged a deeper spirit - and imagination.

Woods had again brought to Augusta, where he had won three times before, the renewed possibility of mysterious, dazzling force, way beyond the norm of the sporting imagination. He did it as a 21-year-old eight years ago, winning by 12 strokes and reducing rivals previously considered great to the status of mere cardboard soldiers. He had overwhelmed the opposition as Muhammad Ali had George Foreman in Zaire in 1974, as Emil Zatopek in Helsinki in 1952, as Pele in Sweden six years later.

Now he just had keep his head - and his nerve - which he did. It was the drama utterly central to the 69th Masters, relegating - or so it seemed - such a potentially explosive pairing as Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson to the margins of sub-plot.

Forty-eight hours earlier, Singh and Mickelson - members of the Fabulous Four who had apparently drawn in the dwindling aura of the Tiger - had to be separated in an angry confrontation in the champions' locker-room.

At the start of the third round, trailing Tiger by seven shots, they were now threatened with the anonymity of the green-shirted ice-cream sellers.

It was the common fate this side of an implosion by Woods to rank with the shattering breakdown of Greg Norman, who nine years ago surrendered a six-stroke lead on the last afternoon, which presented the green jacket to Nick Faldo.

At the finish Faldo cradled Norman in his arms as though he was a small bird with a broken wing. Such a chore did not appear to be facing Tiger's playing partner, Chris DiMarco.

The 36-year-old New Yorker had once before been drawn into the magnetic field of Woods' brilliance, in 2001. He also led the tournament last year.

This time, as he built his lead on Saturday, he might just have fancied that he, like everyone else, had seen the most destructive potential of Tiger's game.

It was no more than a pretty idea as Woods emerged to finish off his third round with two more birdies that landed like power punches in the first round of a heavyweight title fight.

DiMarco's response was a double bogey.

Tiger's explanation of the comeback was almost as bland as a routine traffic report.

"For a while I kept hitting quality shots without getting anything out of it. You know what, on the second day I just birdied the fifth hole, and hit a great shot into six, a yard from the hole, and then I was off the green and making bogey.

"So I said to myself, 'You know, I'm hitting good golf shots, just stick with it'.

"All of a sudden, the momentum started to build. I started making birdies. My shots were no better than before, but it was as though the momentum had just got on my side."

Still, there was one overwhelming reality. It was that Woods had re-established a capacity to achieve the most extraordinary feats on a golf course.

- INDEPENDENT