On Sunday, Tiger Woods completed his gentle re-entry into competitive golf after a 15-month absence.
It didn't go badly, but it reminded us that things will never return to normal for Woods on a golf course. At least, not in the way people want.
Woods picked the Hero World Challenge for his comeback. The event is organized by his foundation and is functionally an exhibition. There are only 18 entrants and no cut. Seventeen of them were ranked in the top 40 in the world. Woods was 898th.
Woods played well to start, then faded. He finished 15th. He donates his prize money from this tournament to charity. This will be a smaller cheque than they're used to.
"I'm so happy to be back here," Woods said after his third round. "I missed it."
That worked both ways, cringingly. The only thing that remained the same from the glory days was the fawning tone of the coverage. Woods's return completely swamped the efforts of his betters.
Every decent shot was cheered as if it were redefining physics. Every mistake was explained away as fatigue. The word "rust" got tossed around a lot.
It is painfully obvious how many people remain enormously invested in Woods's phantom reversal of fortune.
People don't just want him back to his old self. They want things to go back to the way they were when Woods was great and golf mattered outside the four weeks every year they play the majors.
The harder they wish it, the more forlorn it seems. You just have to look at the guy they're pinning it all on. He's nowhere close to the same.
Like many men who are boyish into their 30s, middle age has caught Woods up all at once. The 40-year-old is still remarkably fit, but he looks much older and tired. All the shine has gone off him.
People would settle for the T-3000 version of Woods – dead-eyed, fist-pumping, metronomic. For a long time, he was golf's only bully.
That guy is gone now, and it has little to do with his pernicious back problems. Woods has been altered in some indefinable way that is impossible to miss when you watch him. He's been diminished by his many humiliations. All the swagger has deserted him.
Many of the other competitors playing with him this week were Woods's favourite contemporaries or younger men who grew up idolizing him. This was all designed to make Woods comfortable, and give him the best odds at a brilliant return. In that sense, it failed.
Jordan Spieth, the charisma-challenged Texan who would like to be Woods's heir, said he should be given a year (another one) to rediscover his game.
"The world we live in as fans, as spectators, it's a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world. So I don't think it will happen," Spieth said.
It's an upside-down way of looking at things. If the golf world worked the way Spieth describes it, Woods would already be forgotten.
This isn't about practice or room to breathe. This is about getting old. Woods is a talented player who will never again be one of the best.
He seemed happy to be there – something that would have been an insult 10 years ago. But he's no longer an alpha. He's one of the pack.
The question is whether that's good enough. Clearly, it's okay in the short term. Given how many surgeries he's been through, Woods should be happy to be walking a course, never mind playing one.
But if his back holds up, that feeling will wear off quickly. Then he has to decide if he's golfing for fun or glory. Because one of those won't work any more.
More so than in any other sport, great golfers are able to accept the end. Arnold Palmer played for nearly 50 years after he'd stopped mattering as a player. Jack Nicklaus had it even tougher – not only watching his own ability erode, but having to settle into Palmer's shadow on the diplomatic circuit despite his better record.
For a long time in that little world, everyone had his place in the past-your-prime pecking order. The trade off to letting go of your competitive pride was getting monstrously rich as a designer, pitchman and barnstormer. Most important, you were allowed to stay in touch with the game.
Nobody managed that transition better than Palmer.
If you've been around golf lifers, every one of them has a gobsmacking story about Palmer's extracurricular activities. It never hurt him with the public. It seemed they rather liked him for this duality – vanilla family man in public, hard-drinking womanizer everywhere else.
Woods could still capture something of that. I believe that at this point, everyone recognizes that Woods has been mocked far more than is fair. Everyone loves a renaissance. Plus, there are vacancies. Palmer's gone. Gary Player is 81. Nicklaus is 76. Golf's old guard could use some new blood.
If Woods wants to begin transitioning to Palmer's elder-statesman role, now would be the time to start. Step back a little. Be seen having more fun. Competing would also be good, but not vital.
But I don't think he can manage it. He'll still build courses and shill products, but Woods is different from Palmer in a key way – he likes winning more than he likes golf. The edge that defined him as a top player has already become an emotional millstone as he declines. Every year, he seems … less. By contrast, Palmer seemed to grow as he got older. People loved him for that.
And Palmer liked people back. Woods has never seemed to.
"One thing that I've been good at over the years is eliminating the noise," Woods said on Saturday.
The fans who will carry him through the next year, next decade, next lifetime on a course – that would be the "noise" he's talking about.
It would be very in keeping with Woods's 'kill the prisoners' approach that this is how his career ends – swinging pointlessly until collapse.
Woods was so good, he never had to learn how to take a punch. He's taking them now. Eventually, he's going to take one he can't get back up from.
Cathal Kelly