Woods goes on and on, lurching from one false dawn to the next while the torment continues. At what point does he call it a day?

this reduced reality in the game almost impossible to tolerate while the continued stripping-away of all that made him powerful will be equally as difficult to accept.

But Woods goes on and on, lurching from one false dawn to the next while the physical and mental torment continues.

At what point does he call it a day? And can he actually bring himself to call it a day? When you’ve been the best and it’s all you’ve ever known, it can be hard to let it go. Not that I’m speaking from experience, of course.

Intrigued, fascinated golf fans – and the media too – can’t let it go either. Where the Woods circus goes, the masses follow. There were record crowds in Dubai as the roll-up, roll-up Tiger effect showed no sign of fizzling out, even though these increasingly calamitous cameo appearances continue to provoke more ghoulish curiosity than golfing awe and wonderment.

Despite the age-defying cavortings of, say, Mick Jagger or Roger Daltrey, the show can’t go on for ever. Even those mighty old princes of darkness, Black Sabbath, finally called it a day at the weekend. Woods’s woes have been so macabre recently, the band’s bat-chomping frontman, Ozzy Osbourne, could have croaked out a demonic lyric about him. After all, Woods was No.666 in the world last week. After 50 years, the bold Ozzy declared that Sabbath had finally “run its course”. Not for the first time, the golfing world is left wondering if Tiger’s race is run, too? From falling stars to a rising son of Japan. Hideki Matsuyama’s (inset) successful defence of the Waste Management Phoenix Open title continued the kind of purposeful and profitable streak that Woods used to conjure in his pomp. Five wins, two seconds and a fifth in his last 10 events has made him the hottest player on the planet.

It’s 40 years now since Chako Higuchi became Japan’s first, and as yet only, major winner when she won the LPGA Championship in 1977. Having finished seventh and fifth in his last two outings at the Masters, perhaps another year ending in lucky number seven will provide a historic major moment for Matsuyama.