It was the shot heard round the world.

Just moments before, Tiger Woods, a single stroke clear of playing partner Chris DiMarco as they reached Augusta's par-three 16th on the final day of the 2005 Masters, had pulled his eight-iron left of the green. DiMarco was safely on and eyeing a 15-foot birdie putt that would surely have got him back level with Woods, who was really up against it to even save par. "We were just trying to escape with a three," Woods' then caddie, Steve Williams, said.

The watching world held its breath. CBS commentator Verne Lundquist spoke softly into his microphone. "To get it close he's going to have to put it up into the slope somewhat," he said.

"It's made a lot tougher by having that second cut right behind the ball. It almost forces him to have to play a low shot. He can't put it up in the air with the second cut that close behind the ball.

"You can see him putting the ball right back in his stance here and hitting right down on it. He's picked out a good landing spot which is some 25 feet away from the hole. There's a good chance he doesn't get this inside DiMarco's ball ..."

Lundquist paused as Woods addressed his ball. An eerie silence encased the famous golf course tucked away on Georgia's eastern-most state line.

Woods dug down sharply on his ball, which squirted across the green before making a hard right and gently trickling toward the hole. "Oh, my goodness," Lundquist gasped. The ball stopped, posing on the edge of the hole with the famous Nike tick on full display. Woods slumped to his knees. Williams put his hands on the back of his head in despair.

Then, with a gentle nudge from the Golfing Gods - or "Somehow, an earthquake happened" as Woods described it - the ball disappeared.

"Oh, wow!" Lundquist bellowed. "In your life, have you seen anything like that?"

Tiger Woods and Steve Williams couldn't believe it when the ball finally dropped Elise Amendola/AP Images

You'll be hard pushed to find a more exhilarating play - or a more spine-tingling piece of sporting commentary. It was sport at its cinematic best: The greatest player of all time, playing the most implausible shot, on the grandest of all of golf's biggest stages. And called to perfection by Lundquist.

But how we remember the shot could have been oh so different. Lundquist, speaking to ESPN about the television coverage that day, revealed what might have been.

"I need to explain to people that don't understand the seating in a production truck," he says. "At the very front, you've got the director, Steve Milton. He calls the shots, he decides what you see at home. So let's just hypothetically say the number of the camera was 10. Well his role was to start wide on Tiger and follow it and come up - and it was always camera 10, camera 10, camera 10.

"He zoomed in as the ball began tumbling down the hill, and then as the ball slowed its descent toward the hole. Steve Milton had a flanker camera way over here and his job was to shoot Tiger from here to here [Lunquist motions from chest to top of head]. Let's say he was camera six. So, as the ball seems to have come to a stop, Steve - as he properly should have! - said: 'Ready six ... Take six!'

"And Norm Patterson, the technical director who actually punches the buttons that allow you to see whatever Steve Milton has decided instinctively did not take six. And because he held on 10 and didn't take six, we all saw what we all saw. Norm just used his gut. And it changes everything about the shot. It changes what you remember at home. It changes what I said.

"Now here's the poignant part: Norm was jogging in San Diego in January of 2006 and fell dead of a heart attack. He was in his early 40s. Steve Milton went back and eulogised Norm and told that story at his funeral so that folks have an understanding of what he did and how he altered the way we all remember that shot."

A fascinating tale of what we are not privy to in golf coverage, but, of course, we may have all remembered that shot for other reasons due to what happened next.

A two-stroke swing in DiMarco's favour was suddenly Woods' - and it would surely have been the shot that won Woods his fourth green jacket and ninth major over all. Right? Wrong. Woods, with adrenalin still pumping, drove into the trees at 17 and it cost him a bogey. Just like that, his lead was back to one. He then put his approach at 18 into a greenside bunker.

Then, more drama! DiMarco, who himself had missed the green, chipped on and his ball ricocheted off the pin. The sharp gasp from the galleries rocked the azaleas. Woods just looked at the ground, alone in his thoughts. Williams shook his head.

Woods splashed out of the trap to leave himself around 15 feet for par and the win, but the putt drifted away and he tapped in for consecutive bogies that seemed so unlikely just 30 minutes or so before. Suddenly DiMarco was back in and now found himself with a 10-footer to force a play-off. He rolled it home like he had been holing putts under that kind of pressure his entire life.

"All of a sudden it looked pretty good. And all of a sudden it looked really good. And then it looked like how could it not go in, and how did it not go in, and all of a sudden it went in. It was pretty sweet." Tiger Woods on his famous chip at 16

Locked at 12-under, the pair headed back to the 18th tee for the start of a play-off that no one saw coming. Both players found the fairway, but DiMarco again pulled up short with his approach. (This was a time when golf courses were being 'Tiger-proofed', and Augusta National was no exception, adding around 300 yards overall in length, as well as new bunkers and trees.)

Woods, smelling blood, dropped his ball to 15 feet - "For some reason I hit two of the best golf shots I hit all week," he said later. You don't give Woods two bites at the cherry and get away with. He buried the birdie and Augusta's Tale of Two Chips was over.

So how was Woods feeling in the tensest of finishes? "This is fun," he told his news conference, before describing his bogey-bogey finish rather pleasantly as "throwing up on myself".

DiMarco was more reflective. "You know, I went out and shot 68 on Sunday," he said. "It's a very good round, and 12-under is usually good enough to win. I just was playing against Tiger Woods."

And that chip? "You expect the unexpected, and unfortunately it's not unexpected when he's doing it."

Woods had come into the 2005 Masters on the back of a much-scrutinised 10-major winless run - unimaginable when you consider he had triumphed at six of the previous nine. During the drought, which stretched from the 2002 US Open, he went under a complete overhaul of not only the Nike equipment in his bag, but his swing too.

And it looked like the run would continue after a sloppy 74 on a rain-soaked Masters that saw each of the first three rounds played over two days. DiMarco was seven clear through 18, but a second-round 66 saw Woods up to third - though still six behind a seemingly unstoppable DiMarco. Woods reached the halfway point of the third round on Saturday before darkness intervened - while DiMarco headed back to the locker room on the back of a 44-hole run without a bogey.

Finishing the third-round on Sunday morning, the tables began to turn. Woods went on to complete a seven-under 65 and move to 11-under overall, while DiMarco shot a back-nine 41 for a 74 overall and fall three off the pace of his rival. The really bad news? Woods had never lost a major where he led through 54 holes.

But DiMarco's refused to give up - "There's no backup in Chris," Woods later said - and it was his fighting spirit that gave us the finish to the Masters that will be a part of golfing folklore for many a year - our generation's "where were you when?" moment.

After finally seeing off DiMarco, Woods retreated to the back of the 18th green where his mother, Tida, and then wife Elin Nordegren offered him the beaming smiles and affection he craved. But it was the absence of dad, Earl, that was most noticeable. Battling cancer, Earl was unable to make it greenside, choosing instead to watch from the family's rented home nearby.

As dethroned champion Phil Mickelson handed over the green jacket, Woods' thoughts were with his father. "It's been a difficult year, he's not doing very well," he told the crowd. "He made the trek to Augusta, but he was unable to come out and enjoy this."

Fighting back tears, he added: "This is for Dad. I can't wait to get back to the house and give him a big bear hug."

Earl Woods passed away a little more than a year later - but not before he had witnessed his son remind the world that there is Tiger Woods ... and then there is Everyone Else.

Dethroned champion Phil Mickelson handed over the famous green jacket to Tiger Woods. AP Photo/Morry Gash

What happened next?

Woods and DiMarco went toe to toe again just 15 months later as the Open Championship rolled into Hoylake. Again, Woods proved too difficult to overhaul and, again, DiMarco was forced to settle for second.

As ESPN.com's senior golf writer Bob Harig reflects: "Prior to the 2005 Masters, DiMarco had lost the previous major, the PGA Championship, in a play-off to Vijay Singh at Whistling Straits. Then finishing second at the Open ... That is a pretty amazing stat considering his relative lack of success of just three PGA Tour victories."

Woods' win at Hoylake was the first after his father passed away, and the world wept with him on the 18th green as he buried his face in Williams' shoulder and sobbed uncontrollably.

Woods went on to reach 14 majors before scandal after scandal in his private life halted his charge. Now settled again, the only thing hampering his hopes is persistent injury and it seems unlikely we'll ever see the roaring Tiger we witnessed a decade ago.