Unmistakably, unbelievably, unconditionally, Tiger-mania is back. Twenty-one years after he made red shirts a thing on Sundays, Tiger Woods returns to the sacred turf where it all began, where the most extravagant fist-pump in golf knocked over the old order, where the game was reborn in his image, the Masters. If the first coming of Woods at Augusta National 21 years ago was characterised by shock and awe, the resurrection is one of gratitude and relief. We thought these days were gone. It was only ten months ago that police officers in Florida were inviting him to walk in a straight line while pickled in prescription drugs, and posting the results online. The mugshot that went around the world was a cruel commentary on the scale of Woods’ decline. Yet here he is, pain free and swinging like it was 1997. His second place finish at the Valspar Championship, followed by fifth at the Arnold Palmer Invitational were vibrant confirmation of a sustained recovery from the broken days of last summer following a fourth operation to fuse the damaged vertebrae in his troublesome back. He closed to within a stroke of the lead at both events on the back-nine on Sunday, utterly transforming the mood around the game.

Boom time for the big boys

It is not as if 2018 is short of storylines. Rory McIlroy’s return to golf’s epicentre with a first victory in 18 months at the Arnold Palmer Invitational has raised the prospect of his joining the only five players to win the grand slam of all four majors should he triumph at the Masters. Three-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson’s slotted his first win in five years at the WGC-Mexico Championship. Bubba Watson, a double winner at Augusta, ended his two-year drought with a hefty success at the Genesis Open, and added the WGC-Dell Match Play Championship in Austin with a thumping win. World no.1 Dustin Johnson sounded the horn with victory at the first tournament of the year in Hawaii, no.2 Jon Rahm and no.3 Justin Thomas chalked the ‘W’ at the Career Builder Challenge and Honda Classic, respectively, while Jason Day weighed in at the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines. Only Jordan Spieth among the game’s youthful vanguard has failed to hit the net in 2018, but with three majors to his name by the age of 23 and a stellar record at the Masters, where his record reads 2nd, 1st, 2nd, 11th, he can never be counted out in the second week of April. But all of these chunky threads amount to knots on cotton compared to a Woods bicep curl on the first tee at Augusta.