Greatest comeback since Lazarus derailed but Woods retains incomparable adulation among fans

IT was amid the tumult of the turn, with Tiger Woods leading the Open after 63 holes, that marshals struggled to quell a crowd desperate to witness the sporting renaissance of a lifetime. So irresistible did Woods’ momentum appear, some patrons were muttering and shuffling even before Francesco Molinari, his playing partner, had putted, as if the Italian was but an obstruction to their view of the great man.

Two hours later, Molinari was the Open champion, and Woods had his mind set only on firing up the jet back home to Florida. Take that, Tiger, the gentleman from Turin could be forgiven for thinking. Except, as he slumped on a sofa in the players’ lounge, a diagram of emotional exhaustion, he looked too overwhelmed for any oneupmanship.

For all his abundant decency, Molinari was not the people’s choice of champion on this most theatrical of Open Sundays. Not when Woods (right) looked poised to complete the greatest comeback since Lazarus, or when Rory McIlroy vaulted from the margins to centre stage with his eagle at the 14th.

The thousands who gathered to watch his pairing yesterday were not much interested, by and large, in singing Il Canto degli Italiani at the end of it all.

Instead, it was the wonder of Woods that brought them there.

Could a man whose spacedout expression adorned the files of Jupiter Police Department just 14 months ago purge all the demons, all the premature professional obituaries, with his first major title in over a decade?

Almost. A sorrowful word, “almost”. Just ask Tom Watson, who almost won a sixth Open at 59. Or Jean Van de Valde, whose thrashings in the Barry Burn 19 years ago lent “almost” the most tragicomic pathos.

And yet the tale of Woods’s near-miss here should not be a lament. Even at the age of 42, his chance, one senses, will come again. As he explained after a round that delivered only a fraction of what it promised, he played exactly as he had envisaged in the gathering Carnoustie gusts. It was simply that when he began the back nine, the ring-rustiness set in. When he needed to move in for the kill, the impression was that he had forgotten how to do it.

Woods’s skill on Sundays has seldom sprung from hunting down the opposition. His genius, traditionally, has been in protecting his advantage. But after his front nine yesterday, he clutched a chance to do what he had never done, in winning a major despite not holding the 54-hole lead. The fact that all three of his initial targets, in Jordan Spieth, Xander Schauffele and Kevin Kisner, had fallen by the wayside gave weight to the theory of Butch Harmon, his former coach, that nobody could beat Woods in the wind. Harmon was only half-right. Where Woods was brilliantly calculated for nine holes, he then started to scramble. A fourth Claret Jug, a 15th major to move him within three of Jack Nicklaus: the stakes could hardly have been headier as he turned for home, but straight away he fluffed his lines, yanking a three-iron left into a deep bunker.

Not that anyone could accuse Woods of lacking fight. In the circumstances, his escape from

the sand, launching the ball on to the green when any imperfect strike stood to be gobbled by the Burn, was astonishingly nerveless. But with his accuracy now eluding him, his luck would not hold much longer.

At the 11th, he sprayed his drive right, into tangly rough that made controlling his second shot close to impossible. So it proved: the instant he hit it, Woods was disgusted, dropping his club amid screams of “fore!”

The ball sailed left towards the galleries, hitting a spectator at the junction between the thumb and a mobile phone. It was a fortuitous contact, gifting Woods a clean lie by a greenside bunker that he scarcely deserved.

Somehow, amid the drama, the Tiger PR machine kicked in, as Woods went over to give the man he had whacked a signed glove. “He told me that I was a good American,” Colin Hausch, of Washington DC, smiled.

Woods could have capitalised on his reprieve. Instead, with a flop-wedge in hand, he cut under the ball too cutely, watching it dribble back nearly to his feet. Exasperation setting in, he hit his putt from off the edge much too hard, missing the sevenfooter back to confirm a doublebogey and the rude derailment of one of sport’s most stirring tales.

The setback poleaxed him, and when Woods all but shanked an iron out of the long grass at the 12th, en route to a bogey, the damage could not be repaired.

To follow Woods as he navigates the maelstrom of a major Sunday is to encounter some bizarre sights and sounds. When he lashed in anger at his drive up the last, one lone voice cried out: “Free Palestine!” The culprit was escorted off the premises faster than a streaker at an R&A dinner.

To his detractors, Woods can appear a cold-eyed assassin, his electrifying presence offset by a dearth of human empathy. But it was hard not to be moved last night when he dedicated this display to his two children, Sam and Charlie. “It’s pretty emotional, because they gave me some pretty significant hugs,” he said. “They know how much this championship means to me, and how good it feels to be playing again. I told them, ‘Hopefully you’re proud of your pops for trying as hard as he did.’ ”

He could be assured that they were – and that everyone in attendance was thankful that this day happened at all.

(© Daily Telegraph, London)