This one was for the sinners, one for the egotists, addicts, idolaters and fornicators, for those who have suffered, those who have recovered and all the rest too, for everyone who ever believed in second chances or who just loves a good comeback story.

When Tiger Woods came here in 2010, right after his life started to fall apart, he told his old coach Hank Haney that he had decided one thing for sure: “When I play golf again, I’m not going to play for my dad or mum,” he said, or for his agent, Mark Steinberg, or his caddie, Steve Williams, or his sponsor, Nike, or for Haney either. “Only for myself.” But here he was, a decade later, playing for everyone.

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Everyone except, one may guess, the god-botherers standing picket outside the club’s front gates, waving placards warning us all that we are going straight to hell. But then, when they heard the roar that broke out when Woods made his first birdie of the day on the par-three 4th, maybe even they could not help but let their curiosity get the better of them.

Augusta National, worried about the storms forecast for later in the day, had rescheduled play so that it started on two tees, the 1st and the 10th, in threesomes, at 7.30am. By then Woods had been up for four hours, he had spent the time warming his stiff limbs and sharpening his mind.

The format meant that for a long stretch of the morning every single one of the 65 left in the field were out on the course. There were great players wherever you looked, past major champions, current major champions, future major champions on every fairway and green. But there was only one of them spectators really wanted to see.

Quick guide Tiger Woods since winning his last major Show Hide Tiger Woods has won his fifth Masters title and first major in 11 years after victory in Augusta on Sunday. It has been a long road back for the American, who has suffered numerous injuries and off-course problems. Meltdown On November 27, 2009 reports emerged that Woods had been injured in a car accident near his Florida home after colliding with a fire hydrant and a tree. Over the next days and weeks the reasons behind the crash became clearer, He said he had "let his family down" with "transgressions" and announcing an indefinite break from golf. He lost major sponsors including Gatorade and Gillette over his revelations of multiple infidelities and he and his wife Elin Nordegren divorced. Phoenix not rising Woods, now determined to return to the pinnacle of golf following his self-imposed years in the wilderness, recorded the worst round of his career in January 2015 as he shot an 11-over-par 82 in Arizona. His second-round performance at the Waste Management Phoenix Open left him 13 over and last in a 132-man field. Woods told reporters afterwards: "It's golf, we all have days like this." Don't call it a comeback In June 2016 he announced he was unable to compete at the US Open, the second major of the year, following two back operations in the space of six weeks. He ended a 15-month absence from the game in November but in January 2017 he missed the cut in his first PGA Tour event in almost 18 months, exiting the Farmers Insurance Open after finishing his first two rounds on four over par. The master misses the Masters The former world number one was unable to contest the 2017 Masters. The chance to compete at Augusta 20 years since he first won the green jacket was denied to Woods who continued to suffer from nerve pain which had required three operations in the space of 19 months. Under the influence? In a throwback to his indiscretions of autumn 2009, in May 2017 Woods was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence in the early hours of Memorial Day. He received a year of probation after pleading guilty to reckless driving and was ordered to undergo 50 hours of community service. Victory again In September 2018 Woods shot a one-over 71 for a two-shot victory at the Tour Championship in Atlanta - the 80th victory of his PGA Tour career and his first in more than five years.

The fans gathered around Woods as if he was handing out dollars, kisses and putting tips, pressing in close against the ropes in rows at least five or six deep so that the fairways ahead of him were the one clear route through a boiling sea of people, all of them shouting and screaming for him.

However good you are at golf, it is a game of great frustrations and dashed expectations, repeated confrontations with your own limitations. Which is why the fans wanted to believe in him, wanted to think there is at least one man, Woods, who is good enough to overcome everything life has thrown at him. So they hoped for him and wished for him even after he made bogeys at the 4th and 5th.

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Back when Woods was a kid his father, Earl, ran a programme of psychological warfare on his son. “Prisoner-of-war techniques,” Woods called them. “Things he learned in the green berets.” It was tough love and meant to teach his young son how to cope with pressure. He would shout abuse at him while he was making swings. He gave Woods a code word to use whenever it got to be too much. The word was “enough”. Years later Woods was still proud of the fact that he had never said it. “I was a quitter if I used the code word. I don’t quit.”

There have been moments these past few years when he wanted to. In 2017 he told his friend Mark O’Meara that he was not sure he would ever play again. There had been too many humiliations and too many operations. There were seven of them altogether, the last a spinal‑fusion surgery two years ago, right around the time he was arrested for driving under the influence. He was taking so many painkillers that he was unable to tell the policeman who arrested him which city he was in. Back then Woods could not bend over to tie his own shoelaces. Once he had to send his daughter to fetch help because he fell flat on his back and could not get up.

But Woods persisted. And if he did not quit then, he was not going to now. So those bogeys were not going to stop him. He made a birdie at the 7th and another at the 8th. The pressure was getting suffocatingly intense now as they came around the turn into the back nine and, as the old saying goes, into the start of the Masters.

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It was too much for Tony Finau, who was broken by the famous 12th, Golden Bell, where he put his tee shot in the water, and too much for Francesco Molinari, who did the same. But not for Woods. He hit his tee shot to the heart of the green and, while his two rivals sloped off to make their drops and take their third shots, he strolled over Hogan’s bridge, twirling his putter in his fingers as if he had no worry in the world.

He made his par and moved into a share of the lead. Soon enough he had it all to himself. Coming down the 18th it was clear that 14 years after his last Masters, 11 years after his last major, Woods had won again.

That little bridge at the 12th, where the 2019 Masters turned, is named for Ben Hogan, who won here the year after he returned to competitive golf after a life‑threatening car accident. The doctors told Hogan he would never walk again but he went on to win another six majors. It was always reckoned to be the greatest comeback in the history of the game … until now.