Staring at the offending ball after it left his club, Woods shouted an expletive. For the record, it was 59 minutes into the round.

The will to compete was very much alive.

“I don’t go to an event that I don’t think I can win,” Woods said. “Why go? It doesn’t make any sense to me. So I entered this event with the same intention I do every event since I was a little boy, and that’s to win.”

Woods, of course, now has his own little boy, but anyone who thought the recent birth of Charlie Axel might soften him on the course should now be thinking again. Woods talked after the round about how watching the birth of his son and teaching his daughter new words is more important than anything he does in golf, but he plays with the same intensity and fire that he did a decade ago.

Fans love every minute of it, and it’s easy to see why television ratings for tournaments featuring Woods are double the ones he misses. On this day, they had eyes for only him and basically ignored the fact 31 other matches were taking place on the same course.

“They weren’t screaming on any other matches, but you could hear them screaming out there on his match, and that’s what we needed,” Davis Love III said.

Indeed, the eight-month absence seemed to make his fellow pros realize even more than they did before how their fortunes are so closely aligned with those of Woods. He carries the sport to a new level, and when he’s not playing, there’s not much interest.

That doesn’t mean they particularly want to be next in line to take a beating, like the one awaiting Tim Clark going into the next round.

Clark is the 32nd-seeded player in the world, but he knows there’s a big gap between No. 1 and anyone else.

“I live in Scottsdale so I’m prepared to get in a car and go home if I need to,” Clark said.