James Lawton: Struggling Tiger fights to unleash true genius

World No 1 forced to ride rollercoaster of magical and meagre moments as he tries to claw back former powers. James Lawton reports from Augusta

(DAVID J PHILLIP / AP)

The only trouble with omnipotence, Tiger Woods learnt again yesterday, is that sometimes it can prove a stretch, especially when expectations are at their highest. It was a problem that was etched into every corner of his face on the day he was supposed to take over the Masters tournament for the fifth time.

On the 17th green, where he was poised to make his most serious move on the edge of the leader board, he fell to his knees in despair when his putt stopped an inch from the hole. This was supposed to be a time when the Tiger reclaimed all of his old ascendancy. Instead, it was a day when survival became a progressively desperate priority, and one that he had barely claimed when his last stroke of the second round, a saving putt, rolled around the lip and refused to fall.

By the end of it, the Tiger was just happy to be still in the fight – seven shots behind the two leaders, big-earning southern "ole-boy" journeyman Chad Campbell, and Kenny Perry, who are expected to be chased into the woods somewhere around mid-afternoon. However, there is no guarantee, given the volatility of the Woods game, that he will not be joining them. Another difficulty for the Tiger is that misapplied genius is not so easily forgiven when an example of it follows so quickly a moment of absolute perfection.

This was the great man's experience when he returned to the action after failing, in the wake of some classically brilliant work in the gathering dusk of Thursday, to make a massive, maybe even disembowelling imprint on his first major since last summer's reconstruction of his left knee.

If a cannonball had been fired from the first tee it could scarcely have had a more arresting effect than his first drive of the day. On the first day on this hole Woods' fiercest rival, and the world No 2, Phil Mickelson found two bunkers before making it to the green.

Yesterday the Tiger almost made it from the tee, requiring not much more than a nudge of the wedge after sending the ball soaring beyond the furthest of the fairway bunkers. The drive made two statements. One was that he was awash with the adrenalin of his return to a major theatre of golf. The other was that his failure to drive home his advantage of the previous evening was still gnawing at him deeply.

Unfortunately, the ensuing nudge was too slight and left him with a long putt, which he left short before making a white-knuckled save.

There we had more or less the complete picture of the Tiger in the first phase of his rehabilitation. Genius is still in residence, we saw that clearly on Thursday evening, but not yet arrived is that all-consuming sense that every tournament he plays has returned to his mercy.

The monster drive at the first was an earnest sign of maximum determination, though, and with the wind rising and pin locations more difficult, he was plainly anxious not to be left too far behind the blistering pace set by Campbell for a second day.

Before going to the tee yesterday Woods made it clear that a five-shot deficit on the leader – it was eight by the time Campbell had completed the outward nine – was for him, of all people, no grounds for panic. He said, "You know, it's a long week and sometimes you just have to hang in."

That became an absolute imperative yesterday as he parred his way through the early holes. On the par-three fourth, which is known in the brochure as Flowering Crab Apple, he could only taste some of the bitterness of wasted opportunities.

Most acutely, he had to regret the Thursday night shortfall in a climax to a round which could easily have left the rest of the field in a state of suspended destruction.

It was far from what he had in mind when he first picked up his stride on the back nine.

"What happened to me on the 18th was unbelievable," he declared. I just hit that little iron – I thought it was like a three-quarter eight-iron – and nothing too demanding at all. It was what it was and I think I hit a pretty good shot – and then it landed in a bad place and I finished with a bogey.

"Really, it's frustrating to look at my first-round score. It should have been at least two shots better, but then sometimes you have to accept days like that. I had good pace but I just didn't make enough putts. The thing was I was hitting most of the putts on my line – and I've just got to read them a little better. I found a combo I didn't quite expect, fast greens that were also soft. Going to the course I thought that five under would probably be the leading score.

"The thing is you just have to play your game and believe it will turn out OK. There is so much golf to play, a ton of things could still happen."

As the wind rose yesterday, it mostly didn't happen. Woods' mood was again buffeted almost at random. On the beautiful but treacherous sloping par-three sixth he made a fine birdie but then on the next, a par five which he approached with the kind of optimism that was welling up strongly the night before, he over-reached with his drive and paid with a bogey.

As he had anticipated, it was a round that had to be built on attrition, with the hope of a surge home which this time had to be exploited with a rather more measured touch.

It seemed like the most reasonable of ambitions when he launched himself into that first withering drive. The crowd gasped at such a warning of a fresh invasion from the Tiger and a broad smile broke through the earlier tension. When it was pointed out that he had never broken 70 on the first day, Woods snapped, "Yeah, that's how I won it four times."

The fifth triumph, though, was not going to be quite the gift some had imagined when he threw in victory at Bay Hill in his preparation for a return to the terrain that he has come to dominate so profoundly in the imagination of the game.

"I'm not far away," he insisted yesterday. "It's just a question of hitting a few more shots." Another brilliant one came on the eighth, when he returned to three under – a mere six shots off the lead. Perhaps the omnipotence wasn't, after all, quite played out.

It was a pretty thought but it didn't survive the majority of the second-round action. The most killing evidence of the extent of the Tiger's battle to smooth the effects of an eight-month absence came on the 13th fairway. There he elected to lay up rather than take directly the hazardous route over the water and into the green. Unfortunately, the safety-first shot was sprayed into the crowd – a potential disaster that only nerveless work retrieved.

Inevitably, he refused to surrender to these most unpromising circumstances. And so, of course, he went into the night insisting he still had a part to play, despite "so many wasted opportunities". But then he always says that. It is a habit to which the omnipotent are somewhat prone.

Weather forecast from Augusta

*Today

Mostly sunny, temperature 24C, winds 10 to 15mph, humidity 40%.

*Tomorrow

Mostly sunny, temperature 2C, winds 5 to 10mph, humidity 39%.

TV schedule

*Today

BBC 2, 20:30-00:00).

*Tomorrow

BBC 2, 18:55-00:00)