Tiger burns brighter

It was the moment Tiger Woods erased the memories of those calamities – and returned to a planet which golfing mortals can only imagine.

Remember the time – 3.52pm on an English summer’s afternoon of cloudless perfection and dramatic controversy at Royal St George’s.

It was a day the unfortunate Mark Roe will never forget after a scorecard mistake saw him disqualified after perhaps the greatest round of his life.

It might also go down as the afternoon Woods fashioned a way to get back on the major-winning trail after a so-called slump which had seen him go four majors without a title.

At the end of it Woods had recorded a two-under-par 69 to take him to one-over-par for the championship and make him the obvious man to beat on what promises to be an enthralling Sunday with the tightest of leaderboards.

But back to 3.52 and THAT shot.

Woods had pulled his approach on the 532-yard par five seventh hole into a greenside bunker, the ball nestling near the back wall, some 40 yards from the flag.

It left one of the toughest shots in golf. The statistics which report Woods is only 54th in sand saves on the US Tour and gets up and down from bunkers with only 53% success did not suggest heroics were in the offing.

Statistics, however, rarely tell the entire story.

And Woods simply flew in the face of adversity, detonating a cloud of sand as he chopped his sand wedge under the ball and propelled it towards the hole.

It sped across the green before braking smoothly as it approached the pin and then gently toppled into the hole for an eagle three.

Woods is renowned for shackling his emotions but the best player in the world raised both arms to the sky and shook with delight.

No wonder. It took him into the lead in the 2003 Open for the first time. It made light of that first tee shot 48 hours earlier when he had lost his ball, racked up an opening seven and sparked off a surreal bidding war among Britain’s tabloid Press to pay upwards of £7,000 to the marshal who eventually had found, if too late, the offending ball with the Tiger motif.

It also negated the four putts at the 12th last night, three from less than three feet, which had seen Woods visit the world of the weekend hacker.

If that collection of calamities was bizarre, then today it was business as usual for sport’s first billionaire.

“You’ve just got to be patient and take advantage of birdies when you get them,” Woods had insisted yesterday.

And patient is exactly what he was at the third when a spectator’s camera clicked at the top of his backswing.

Woods threw an angry glare in the fan’s direction before returning to his bag, towelling down and returning to send a tee shot ricocheting off the greenside mound and towards the pin.

Patience and luck – it is a formidable combination, though it was sheer talent which saw Woods make his first serious thrust, reaching the 497-yards par-five fourth in two and then sinking the 20-foot putt for an eagle.

After an arcing 30-foot birdie putt at the ninth he turned in 31 shots – five under par for the day, two under for the tournament, and in danger of running away from the field.

With the greens baking progressively harder, however, Royal St George’s was never going to run up a white flag.

“In a major championship this is the way it should be,” Woods had maintained.

“If you have a round in the sixties here you’ve played a great round of golf.”

Cue for the putting gremlins which had cost Woods in the first two rounds to return – bogeys at 11 and 13 scarring his scorecard as a rock-solid round turned into something of a rollercoater.

At 14 a double-breaking putt for eagle finished on the lip and somehow defied gravity, though Woods gave it every opportunity with his funereal walk to the hole.

A visit to the waist-high rough he got to know so well on the first two days cost him a shot at the next – Woods slamming his driver into the bag in frustration – and he was shaking his wrist and head in anguish after a poor approach at the 17th saw another shot slip by.

But the Tiger remains right in the hunt – and it would be a brave man who bet against him wrapping his arms around a second Old Claret Jug.