James Lawton: Tiger comes on strong as he hunts down Bear

(afp/getty images)

It was still another astounding possibility Tiger Woods brought to the 74th US Masters here yesterday, one even more dramatic than his assault on the golf establishment as a 21-year-old in 1997 when he won the green jacket by a record-shattering margin.

Now he had, after all, created the momentum for an equally stunning triumph after spending five months as an object of worldwide ridicule.

But maybe the expectation ran a little too high, a little too crazy. In the dusk here last night he was fighting not so much to win but to stay alive around the top of a tournament that four times he has claimed as a matter of right.

However, he did announce again that he has the means to fight his way all the way back to such certainties, a birdie on the last hole that brought him back to four shots from the lead. He was not giving up the battle, not the one for the future or the one that has been raging in his mind for three straight days now.

Perhaps the Tiger and his fiercest admirers should have realised that even if you happen to be the most naturally gifted golfer of them all, you do not walk out of jail quite so easily. You do not get the keys placed in your hand. The most crushing reminder of this harsh truth came when he seemed to be entering another of those classic surges which have always made him the man most capable of cowing an entire field of the world's best players.

He had two birdies on his scorecard when a woman in the gallery offered a high-five as he walked off the fifth green. He responded – in possibly the most relaxed moment he has experienced in his often draining attempt to be both good and brilliant – and strode off to the sixth tee with an easy step. Unfortunately, his immediate reward was too straight bogeys, and when his tee shot at the sixth drifted off course his language was less than statesmanlike: "Tiger Woods, you suck, goddammit."

It was a harsh but understandable conclusion after measuring the extent of his slide from that early, ferocious ambition – and execution.

He went just one shot from the lead on the third hole, then failed by a fraction to save par on the fourth after hacking his way out of a greenside bunker. There was another ordeal on the fifth green before he rescued par.

But through all the twists, the crisis of the middle holes when it seemed that finally the pain and the humiliation was exacting its price, you kept arriving at a certain conclusion. It was that whether he wins or loses today, whether his golf is defiantly triumphant over the last nine holes or just an indicator of better things to come later this year at other favoured places such as Pebble Beach and St Andrew's, the Tiger had already established a reality of huge historical significance.

The sense of it has been as pervasive as the pollen, as plain as the derision which had for two days been trailed through the blue Georgian sky by a plane that was yesterday finally grounded for "technical" reasons. It is that the moral majority, including the chairman of Augusta National, Billy Payne, can say or do what they like without beginning to separate the Tiger from the core of his strength.

As he won back three strokes at the 13th, 14th and 15th we could be sure the golf course is for Woods as the boxing ring was for Muhammad Ali or the football field for Diego Maradona, men whose careers were marked by rather more than the odd bout of turbulence. The golf course is where he can go now and proclaim that it is the one corner of his life where he is still able to fight for control.

There was a little more slippage almost at the end of the round when he gave back a shot at the 17th, after sending his tee shot through the trees and on to the 15th fairway. He recovered well enough with an immense hook shot but just failed to make his par putt. However, he was once again seen to smile. It wasn't one that spoke exactly of euphoria but nor was there about it a hint of defeat, a fact emphasised by that birdie at the last.

This ability to walk back into golf as though it is a refuge from a storm has stunned some experts and fellow players but not among them is the man who – if the theory is true, if the Tiger is indeed insulated on the golf course from the consequences of the anarchic sex life that has so devastated his public image – has most to lose if Woods regains a winning momentum.

Jack Nicklaus openly mocked the idea that Tiger's pursuit of his own record mark of 18 major titles had been pushed into the margins of his thoughts by the catastrophes of his private life. "Give me a break," said Nicklaus. "Of course he wants that record, of course he's still gunning for it."

There is, no doubt, still much pressure to be dispersed by the man who so recently seemed so intent on self-destruction. Some of it is scheduled later today. Some of it is as inevitable as a gust of wind or a malignant bounce. All of it, though, is concentrated on that part of Tiger Woods which is, we know now, least likely to break.