Tiger Woods did not win the 2018 Valspar Championship. His second-place finish snapped a 23-tournament streak of winning when either leading or within one after 54 holes in non-major PGA Tour events, but it was also his highest finish in the PGA Tour in nearly five years. While his 70 on Sunday was not his best (or anything close to his best) effort, and Paul Casey did clip him by one, Woods will now head to next week's Arnold Palmer Invitational with a head of steam as he continues to look for his first win since 2013.

All of that is fine -- for two reasons. The first is that Tiger is clearly healthy and looking primed for just his second Masters appearance since 2013. With each passing tournament, each helicopter-ing cut, each cross-country, sweeping draw, it is clear that Woods' confidence in his fused spine increases incrementally.

He is healthy. There doesn't seem to be much (if any) evidence to the contrary.

The second reason Woods not winning is fine is because he just turned the Valspar Championship -- a tournament wedged between two World Golf Championships ... on Selection Sunday ... a month before the main event of the golf year -- into must-see television. The ratings were higher than a Jason Day short iron. The galleries at Innisbrook resort swelled, and Woods gave them a show for most of the week.

You can continue to make the case that golf doesn't need Tiger Woods and whatever other arguments people who argue online have formulated. But what's the point?

Does any reasonable sports fan truly think that golf is better off with Woods sidelined? Was anyone less excited about the final round of a sporting event in Palm Harbor, Florida, in the middle of March with Tiger playing in the penultimate pairing on Sunday?

I know what I watched this week. I know what I felt when I woke up on Sunday. It felt like a big deal. It was a big deal. How could it not be?

Tiger hasn't played truly meaningful golf with a healthy body in nearly 60 months, but there he was trying to hold off multiple Ryder Cuppers at one of the best ball-striking venues on the PGA Tour with a stroke that awed patrons by appearing as good as it's looked in years.

Something that struck me throughout the week was how locked in Woods' colleagues were throughout the weekend. Multiple-time PGA Tour winners and major winners were all tweeting and commenting how much fun it was to watch probably the best to ever tee it up back for more at the age of 42.

There was a moment near the end of Woods' final round on Sunday just after his startling 44-foot birdie putt on the 71st hole. Woods hit his approach on No. 18 to 38 feet and needed to make that putt to get into a playoff with Casey. The scene looked like something out of one of those old 1930s World Series documentaries (minus the iPhones). Patrons were waving their caps in the air, toasting beers and chanting his name. NBC's Dan Hicks jumped in, "The whole game has changed." It was a surreal moment in a week full of them.

And maybe the most surprising part of it all is that Woods seemed to delight in the fanfare. He flashed a toothy grin and tipped his cap as playing partner Brandt Snedeker fell in line behind him the way playing partners do when they're conceding that the person next to them is about to win a major championship. Woods deserves that accolade, of course, but it was a fascinating little snapshot.

Woods strode confidently up to that putt on No. 18 like he was going to once again conjure up whatever exists inside of himself that nobody else in history has ever been able to summon. A birdie-birdie finish to force a playoff? It was suddenly a possibility.

And yet, he missed it. And nobody cared.

Tiger Woods is good at golf again; he might even be great again.

He's better than he needs to be for it to matter for a really long time. He's hop-stepping after putts, flipping wedges through hands that have held so many trophies over the years, and bending long irons around trees and into tucked pins.

It might be genuinely astonishing, but it's happening.

Maybe the most compelling question in all of sports is the one-time aging legend asking Father Time whether his run is over, whether there's anything inside of him resembles those distant conquests, whether the future can even be a cheap facsimile of the past.

There is confusion in that process. We live in a results-based culture that glorifies answers. No matter the outcome, we must get to it as quickly and as unambiguously as possible.

That's not where the drama lies, though. The real theater is not in the answers, whatever they may be, but in the questions. So many in the media, so many colleagues and so many golf fans all over the planet have been asking the same things of Woods over the last few years throughout his surgeries, rehabilitations and personal setbacks.

Can he still do it?

Is he still great?

The questions are not as interesting when seven billion people debate them. They only matter when he is asking himself.

Tiger Woods playing himself into the thick of these events is in the best interest of golf's future. And it just so happens to be the greatest show in all of sports.