That all depends on Woods’s staying power on the course, but for now fans new and old — and the various corporate interests that make money off golf — caught a glimpse of the kind of mania that a dominant Tiger Woods can elicit, an enthusiasm that history has shown to be contagious. And come April, when the Masters tournament begins in Georgia, guess who will be among the favorites to win — if not the favorite? It will be Woods, the four-time Masters champion.

Woods’s victory Sunday could also revive a debate that drew fans to the game for most of the 2000s: Will Tiger meet or exceed Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major championships?

Sports fans of any ilk love the drama of someone trying to rewrite the record book.

And if nothing else, Woods, at 42, becomes the deft if aging counterpoint to the flock of young golf guns in their 20s who have overtaken the top of the worldwide rankings. By Sunday night, Woods’s world ranking had jumped to 13, from 1,193 at the end of 2017.

The big question in the golf world, however, was if the renewed Tiger would still be victorious.

Here was a former champion, perhaps the greatest in the history of the sport, whose career was ruined by an ultra-public scandal spawned by his own personal, ignominious excesses.

Slowly, Woods regained some measure of credibility and success only to be abruptly undone by his own body. All manner of anguished injuries occurred, which led to four back operations beginning in the spring of 2014. Last year, six weeks after the last of those procedures, Woods’s arrest signaled a rock bottom. Woods blamed the situation on a bad combination of pain medications to deal with the recovery from his back reconstruction.

From 2015 through 2017, often limping or clearly playing in pain, Woods entered only 12 tournaments, and the results were embarrassing. The onetime king of golf, the winner of 14 major championships, plummeted to the bottom of the world rankings.

Chastened, Woods conceded he might never win another golf tournament. At various points, unable to stand or sit without pain, Woods wondered if he might ever play again.