Janet is 75-something years old, white-haired and in life’s final stanza, but also smarter than the rest of us fighting through one of the several pedestrian bottlenecks near Bellerive’s entrance. It’s just another one of the many points that signals to your brain that, well, maybe we shouldn’t be here. The logistics aren’t great, the course is soggy, damp, and forgettable — a less than ideal set-up for a PGA Championship that follows Augusta National, Shinnecock Hills, and Carnoustie.

Janet also doesn’t give a shit. She’s pulled herself out of the standstill foot traffic and is sitting on a flipped-over bucket, tearing through Marlboros like Angel Cabrera on a mid-aughts major championship back nine. She spots my media lanyard and hollers from the side of the path at me mid-puff.

“How the f*** is Tiger doing?”

This is not an unexpected shout toward anyone with a red media lanyard on Sunday — there’s something of a leaderboard shortage on the grounds. An older, white-haired woman ripping cigarettes and swearing from several feet away intrigues me, so I stop to chat. My short update on the day’s main act leads to talk about the venue, the city, the field. She’s heard the chatter that maybe the PGA shouldn’t be here. I ask her if it bothers her, a lifelong St. Louisian, to hear such complaints.

“Ahh, hell, let ‘em think what they want. Cards are out of town. Gonna be so many people here today they’ll forget about that real fast. This is a sports town like you’ve never seen.”

Janet was right, and so were the critics. This weekend, maybe Bellerive sucked. It was wet, slow, soggy, and a standard pedestrian big Rees Jones ballpark. It was hard to get a damn beer, or move in any direction.

No one ever will remember. And for good reason.

If there’s a moment that embodies Sunday’s pandemonium in St. Louis, it’s maybe a few minutes where not one golf shot was hit. Gary Woodland’s approach to the 12th green damaged the cup, and we waited around 10 or so minutes for the grounds crew to play rescue on national TV. Tiger stood and waited through what became an unintentional icing by Woodland and the PGA — and it’s maybe where our afternoon turned. Fresh off leaving one on the lip on the short par-4 11th, Tiger turned right around on the 12th and threw his approach four feet from the hole.

With a short putt remaining to move to solo 2nd place and within two of leader Brooks Koepka, we then waited. For 10 or 15 minutes, and what felt like an hour, Bellerive’s exhausted grounds crew repaired and repainted the cup. That delay hardly sucked the air out of the place — hooting and hollering and cheering followed for the younger grounds crew workers sprinting up and down the edge of the 12th fairway from a maintenance shed as if they were halftime entertainment. This did feel like a basketball game more than a golf tournament. We just subbed out some hustling crew members running with spray paint for Red Panda.

Then, it broke out.

LET’S GO TIGER. Clap clap, clap clap clap.

You’ll have chants that break out at golf tournaments from time to time, most originating from no more than a trio of quite-sauced bros and none lasting for more than a second or two. This was not that. The chant enveloped the entire 12th green, from the hill on the right-side, all the way around the green complex to where the absolute throng of media types stood. Full chant, on the back nine of a golf tournament, as the sport’s best-ever competitor (sorry, Jack) that we once left for dead charged up to fight for his 15th major title.

And Tiger, yeah, he felt it too. He talked about the scene, the fans here in St. Louis — perhaps never like we’ve heard him sing the praises of a gallery ever before. In that moment on the 12th, you could see a grin growing underneath the trademark black Nike hat, head down, perhaps a bit bashful but empowered by such wild support. It was a look of man, I’ve missed this if I’ve ever seen one.

From there, we entered catharsis. Tiger’s back nine run up the board sent echoes through the golf course. Golf-starved fans provided an electric current through the course that made the Rees Jones redesign feel more like Busch Stadium than a suburban country club. Eight and nine-deep at points following Tiger throughout on a still well-lubricated Sunday, they were loud, boisterous, buzzing, and, weirdly enough, respectful and positive. There were no shouts of MASHED POTATOES, no phones ringing in backswings. They were knowledgeable. For a city largely new to the professional golf circuit, that’s, uh, not normal.

“The people here were so positive, the energy was incredible, but the positiveness of it all. Everyone was willing every shot that everyone hit. There was no negative comments, no one was jeering, no one was making snide remarks, everyone was just very positive,” Tiger said after the round “They’re excited, yeah. They sometimes pick sides, yes. But they were respectful. I wish we could play in front of crowds like this every single week because this is a true pleasure.”

I wrote about it earlier in the week, but what isn’t here is maybe the first thing that strikes you as you visit the venue that hasn’t hosted a major championship since 1992. It’s been that long maybe for good reason. Space is limited, the simple task of moving people here and there from opening gate to merchandise tent to golf course felt like I-64 at rush hour. There are a grand total of maybe 1.35 memorable holes on the course that will stick with you from an afternoon walk. It’s wet, it’s soggy, it’s damp. Ingress and egress from the course for general attendees can be difficult. Oh, and that’s not to mention the most common complaint: there are far too few beer stands for a city that loves its Budweiser products.

But you don’t need substances, or perfect architecture, or passable walking paths when you have the scene we had on Sunday. Young and old, of all walks of life, of multiple backgrounds — packed like sardines to collectively will an icon into a triumph that would classify as one of the greatest moments in the history of sport.

St. Louisians have heard the complaints, and bring it up with the wrong set and you’ll strike a nerve. It’s a city that has hemorrhaged population. It’s a city that hosted the damn Olympics and a World’s Fair and is now also known as a place that’s lost its NFL team twice. Ask the wrong person about Bellerive’s suitability for a major, and you’ll get a prickly, defensive response. Think about it a bit longer, and it starts to make sense.

Maybe that’s what made Sunday so raucous and memorable. This is a city, perhaps like Tiger Woods, that’s been left for dead before. It’s best days are maybe behind it, thanks in part to some combination of time, competition, and self-inflicted damage. It loves a winner, and it loves something, someone that might love it back. For one insane day, Tiger and St. Louis were at the summit.

And maybe that’s the start of something. For Tiger, maybe this is the start of a run to again chase Jack — a return to his past form where majors become the trend rather than the exception. Maybe St. Louis becomes a semi-regular home for the PGA, growing the sport and breaking down barriers in a city that’s historically treated membership at golf courses more like a caste system than an equal opportunity for all. Maybe that collective boisterous mass of humanity that provided Sunday’s backdrop forces Bellerive into the regular rota, design flaws be damned.

Or maybe it doesn’t — because nothing is that simple. Sports moments, no matter how powerful, don’t serve as a cure-all for real problems. But it was easy to get lost in the day, lost in a scene that would’ve felt like a fever dream just one year ago.