It was fun but the television people couldn't cope. The world of TV rights and ratings is not a place where you pays your money and you takes your chances. You pays your money and you demand box-office entertainment.

All weekend TV people winced as the run came undone and Tiger Woods patted his pockets like a man at the top of a queue who'd just been told that his credit card had been declined and he'd have to stump up some cash.

Frantic. Are you sure? Can't be? How embarrassing is this. I put money in my account see. Don't you recognise me? Until finally with more grace than you expect from a kid who only ever wins, he turned and shrugged and flashed a big smile to the queue behind. So this is what golf feels like for you humans.

I get it now. It was great drama but it wasn't made for TV drama and the tanned frontmen kept assuring the shocked audience and advertisers that the Tiger Show would be resuming after this short intermission.

So this is what it's like when the sporting version of the Truman Show finishes.

If it was fascinating to watch Woods dismember the US Open field in Pebble Beach last summer, it was more interesting to see him wake up and discover that he had been possessed by the spirit of a Sunday afternoon hacker. Worse. For a couple of days it looked like he mightn't even be playing golf on Sunday afternoon at all.

He's never before been at a loose end at that particular time of week. Suppose he went out and walked his dog and threw his frisbee for an afternoon and discovered he loved it? Golf would die. Show over.

At Southern Hills he had to graft and, in fairness, he did. It was spectacle in itself unless you were a TV mogul. Woods excavated a little bit more of his own self with each round. His stats showed the struggle: he hit seven greens out of 14 on Thursday, nine out of 14 on Friday and 10 out of 14 on Saturday.

He made eight of the 18 greens in regulation on the first day, 11 the next and 12 on Saturday. The stats showed it and the introspective cast of his face showed it. This was an interesting time in Tiger Woods' life.

People were undecided as to what the week said about Tiger Woods. Probably it provided nothing more than proof that the man can catch the common cold.

They said his decision-making looked awry but this was Tiger Woods, he had to make decisions on what he knew he was capable of, not on what he feared he was merely able to do. He came to win, not to save face and he played that way, save for a few tees where reaching for an iron was the better part of valour anyway.

And besides Southern Hills isn't a course where anyone should arrive without their A game. Punishment for imperfection is severe.

The Bermuda grass in the rough is shorter than of yore but still provides two options. A generous lie up top or a snug little pocket in its undergrowth.

In this terrain a lesser golfer would have been gone by Friday evening. Woods noted ruefully on Friday night that his two rounds to that point had required 11 saves. All of them were heroic or verging on it. He was that close to the humiliation of missing the cut.

By Saturday night he had gained perspective and just about everyone else was in meltdown mode. Woods was right again. He had, after all, shot a 69, by two shots his best ever score in the third round of a US Open.

And what had it earned him: a place on the final day playing beside Padraig Harrington whose play all week had been genuinely heroic but had been undermined by a series of little disasters on the back nine on Saturday.

With Woods gone, television-land went into a shiver and cynically decided that the first shoulder they'd light on would be Phil Mickelson. Any good sport in a storm. Television is cold and knows what it is doing. Depending on your point of view, Mickelson is Phil the Thrill or The Most Reverend Never on A Sunday Mickelson. Twice last month Mickelson gave up three-shot leads on a Sunday.

On two other occasions this season (Pebble Beach and the Bell South), he needed just a decent score (69 and 70 respectively) to win but tossed a bad one (73 and 75 respectively) onto the table. He'll do fine for now, said the producer.

Television would suck the drama from Mickelson's struggles with himself and then sort out the tournament as a whole. For the money TV has shelled out, they need the boy wonder. That much was made clear.

What was surprising and interesting was the void which Tiger Woods left behind, not the manner in which he left it.

The final day of the US Open began in better shape than any Tiger-dominated tournament has. The king was lying dead and anyone of half a dozen from an unlikely supporting cast of characters was about to bend and pick up his crown.

TV was sulky about the prospect though. In TV terms (the only ones that matter), Woods is literally bigger than his sport. Viewership rises 30 per cent to watch Woods in procession on final day.

It slumps when he isn't around. Last year at Pebble Beach, he was 10 shots clear going into Sunday and NBC pulled a record rating of 8.1 (each point being worth a million households). The networks have learned that, without Tiger on a leader board, Sunday ratings will be reduced by two million households or more.

If anybody is going to beat Woods on a Sunday, they should do it on the 18th and they should be called Sergio, Phil or David. It was fascinating to watch Woods pat his pockets and wonder why he was suddenly broke at the US Open but we came away wondering if it was healthy that golf's relationship with TV had become so symbiotic. A couple more weeks of slump and they'll be giving headstarts to Tiger

You want Hamlet. TV wants cavalcades. There'll be only one winner.