John Huggan : One true master

THIS PAST week, while the best of the rest – most of them anyway – have been competing in the Houston Open that will climax today, Tiger Woods has been doing his thing back home in Orlando. Accompanied by his coach, Hank Haney, the world No.1's preparation for the Masters and what he hopes will be a 14th major championship victory will, as usual, have been aimed at him peaking physically and mentally just as he walks onto the first tee at Augusta National this coming Thursday.

Diligent as ever, the pair will have been working through a daily regimen that combines biking, running, weight-lifting, practising every aspect of his peerless game and a few holes of golf. For Woods, that combination of fitness and technical excellence, along with a mind that has to be the strongest ever to focus on the game of golf, has seen him create an enormous gap between himself and what passes for his competition.

So great is Tiger's current edge, one has to wonder why he bothers to put himself through such a punishing schedule. Doing half as much work, he would surely still be the single dominating force in the game he has made his life since childhood. But that is not exactly how Tiger goes about his business. For him, it is all or nothing.

"Tiger still desperately wants to improve," claims Haney, under whose guidance Woods has won five Grand Slam titles. "He's never ever going to change that. It doesn't matter how good he does. All he cares about is 'what do we need to do today to be better than we were yesterday? What are we going to work on tomorrow to be better than we are today?' That's the way he thinks. He can't look at things any other way."

That certainly rings true. In what is one of the few enlightening moments in any of Tiger's typically tedious press conferences, his response to the inevitable question on his targets for the future is always the same: 'to get better'. "That is the only goal I've ever heard him say," says Haney, who has worked with Woods since 2003. "People speculate on what they think his goals are, but the only one I've ever heard Tiger say is he wants to improve."

Should he continue to do so, the prospects for a generation of European golfers are stark indeed. Unlike the so-called 'Big Five' that totted up 16 major wins between 1979 and 1996 – not coincidentally the year Woods turned professional – the likes of Paul Casey, Luke Donald, Sergio Garcia and the rest have to tame the Tiger if they are to win at the very highest level. Since '96, in fact, only three Europeans – Jose Maria Olazabal, Paul Lawrie and Padraig Harrington – have done so with Woods in the field. Thank goodness, one has to say, for Carnoustie.

Which is not to say that the current group of young Euros hovering around the top of the world rankings is in any way inferior to the quintet of Nick Faldo, Seve Ballesteros, Sandy Lyle, Bernhard Langer and Ian Woosnam. A case can easily be made that they might even be better. I mean, does anyone seriously think that Faldo – never the longest hitter – would have six majors in his possession had Woods rather than the fragile Greg Norman been looking him in the eye come those far-off Sunday afternoons? No, didn't think so.

Anyway, barring a bout of illness or an injury, only one thing really stands between Woods and almost inevitable victory this week. Two weeks ago at Doral, a seemingly endless streak of seven consecutive wins came to an end when the three-time Open champion putted very poorly – yet still managed to finish only two shots behind the winner, Geoff Ogilvy.

"Putting is a big thing in any event, but it is huge at Augusta," points out the Australian. "Especially the short putts. You usually find that making a lot of six-footers is a pretty accurate gauge of who is hitting good approach shots. Six-foot putts from certain spots at Augusta can be a whole lot easier than a two-footer from the wrong place, usually above the hole. So bad second shots usually lead to tough six-footers for par. And, sooner or later, you are going to miss one of those. At Augusta, there is a huge range of difficulty on the greens."

That assessment isn't exactly good news for Ogilvy and the rest, of course. Week in and week out, Woods holes out better than almost anyone. And his relative failure at Doral will, if anything, have made him even more determined to begin another of his patented runs of success.

"My beating him may have hurt our chances at Augusta," admits Ogilvy. "Now the pressure is off him and he can freewheel. Who knows though, expectations have never seemed to weigh him down too much in the past." That is true. Woods has always been his own man and known his own mind, facts that were never more obvious than when he and Haney, to many howls of derision from elsewhere, first got together.

"There weren't a lot of people in that bunker with us, but we were in there," smiles Haney, who had to endure a flood of criticism, both personal and professional, before his star pupil won a first major, the 2005 Masters, with his 'new' swing. "I knew early on that I had to please one person in my relationship with Tiger, and that was Tiger. I knew how his practice sessions were going. I knew he was sincere when he said he felt like he was improving. I could see the improvement.

"The thing about Tiger, when he makes a decision, is that he never looks back. When he tries to change something, he's patient. He never once said to me, 'Hank, how long is this going to take? When am I going to get this?' He knows it is an on-going process, that you're never really going to get 'it.'" As for his immediate prospects, the addition of long grass and trees to the usual Augusta equation – fast greens, water hazards and silly pin positions – doesn't seem to have made much difference to Tiger. He has won three of his four green jackets since the changes were made. In fact, in one of his few publicly stated opinions, he actually feels that the 7,445-yard course is now easier than it was, say, ten years ago.

"I think it would play harder now if they took away the second cut (rough]," he says. "I'm sure it would be a more interesting test."

Hey, maybe there is a chink in the formidable Woods armoury: boredom.

Then again, I wouldn't bank on it. Whenever any of his so-called opponents have occasionally sounded off about how their admittedly far-off aim is to supplant Tiger as world No.1 (step forward Rory Sabbatini), his response has always been short and to the point: "Do they not think I am going to get better too?" If he does, or even if he doesn't, green jacket number five looks to be but seven days away.