I maintain that, in a gallery of 5,000-10,000 there will surely be an extremist or two who feels it is their duty to partake in some fan administered justice. I surely hope not, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility entirely.

I wouldn’t say Woods has no chance to win. He’s still a great golfer and obviously has the experience factor. There are a lot of guys in the Masters’ I’d put in the “can’t win” column ; Tiger isn’t one of them.

But let’s define “win.” Ordinarily, that would mean a Green Jacket. In this case, I would say the jacket really is secondary to simply demonstrating he can resume a normal life on the PGA Tour.

If that is indeed his primary objective, then starting with the Masters makes all the sense in the world. Whatever his first event is, it will go a long way in determining how he will be treated in subsequent events. The Masters presents the best possible chance of ensuring he is treated civilly by the gallery, at least on camera. On the other hand, if he had started at Bay Hill, and some loudmouths managed to make an embarrassing spectacle, that could well have encouraged loudmouths everywhere to do the same thing, even at Augusta.

The Masters gives Tiger the best chance to avoid being heckled to death because the crowds there are going to be more sensitive to the history and tradition of that event, and because the people running it simply won’t tolerate even the threat of obnoxious behavior.

I doubt very much that a lone wolf-type heckler will decide to take it upon himself to shout out something rude at a key moment in an effort to deny Woods another Green Jacket. While I think the public overwhelmingly disapprove of Tiger’s conduct, very few people, I think, would be inclined to make such an outrageoous public demonstration of their disapproval. That really would be the point at which the heckler lowered himself to the level of the hecklee. If there’s heckling to be heard, I would much more expect to see it on the practice range or while Tiger is moving from green to tee.

As for actually winning the Green Jacket, again, I agree it’s unlikely, mainly because it’s always less than a 50-50 proposition and because he simply hasn’t played any competitive golf for a lot of months. But I don’t agree he is under any particular competitive pressure to win this thing. The pressuure will be on doing what he can to make it as normal a week as possible.