Golf US Masters countdown After the Players' Championship, a tournament he didn't win, Tiger Woods went home to Orlando and worked on a number of things.

One of them was to put back on the weight - almost half a stone - which he'd lost due to a bout of food poisoning, and another was to work on shaping his shots. To hit them left-to-right, and right-to-left; shots you have to hit at will to win at Augusta National. And, in this modern game, nobody does that better than Tiger Woods.

He knows it, too.

Yesterday, for the first time since winning his third green jacket a year ago, adding to his wins in 1997 and 2001, Woods made the drive down Magnolia Lane in the morning darkness and reacquainted himself with a course he knows intimately. Tomorrow, he will tee-off in search of a third successive Masters title (it would be an unique achievement) and, not for the first time, and not for the last, he is the man all others have in their sights. "I guess I'm still the favourite," he admitted, smiling.

Favouritism is nothing new, of course, and Woods rarely gives a true insight into how he actually prepares for a major championship. Yesterday, though, he gave some inkling. How many other players would contact the Met Office for the forecast? Woods did.

"I knew what the forecast would be, and I knew that there wouldn't be as many three-woods (off the tee) this year, if it's this wet. You've got to go ahead and drive your pill out there. I worked to make sure I can shape the ball both ways, and hit quite a lot of drivers.

"I'm very pleased with how my practice went, to be able to practice at home and in peace and work on the things I needed to work on. It felt pretty good to go out there and hit more balls and really work on the game and be focused about it."

This season, Woods has won three of five tournaments - the Buick Invitational, the Accenture World Matchplay and the Bay Hill Invitational - and accumulated $2.9 million in prize-money. But he's hungry for more, hungrier than ever.

"I really would like to win this week, and I think it would be huge to win three Masters (in a row). No one's ever done it before. And I've been able to do certain things in golf that no one's ever done before. And if you're in that position, you want to take advantage of it because it doesn't happen all the time."

If you can judge anything from appearances, Woods, who stayed away from the course on Monday when inclement weather ensured there would be no practice rounds, looked back to his full health yesterday. In Sawgrass, he looked drawn - a consequence of the food poisoning that struck the weekend of his Bay Hill win, when he lost six pounds in three days - but the glint has returned to his eyes, the tiredness gone.

His sharpness was apparent in the way that he side-stepped questions about Martha Burk and her campaign to have women admitted as members to Augusta National.

Q: Do you feel an obligation to speak out about the social issues around the sport, or an obligation not to speak out about the social issues surrounding the whole thing?

A: I've answered that many times prior to this event. Right now, I'm just trying to get myself ready to play on Thursday.

Later.

Q: In your own mind, Tiger, do you categorise women not being allowed to join a golf club as prejudice against a minority?

A: That's a good question. I never looked at it that way.

Q: Do you have a gut instinct on the matter?

A: Oh, everyone knows my opinion. Should they become members or should they be members? Yes. But, you know, I don't really have a vote in how they run this golf course, and this club.

For the past week or so, Woods claimed that any "outside issues" he was concerned with were not with the question of female membership, but what was happening overseas. "I've been glued to what's going on," he said, a reference to the war in Iraq. However, Woods claimed that he had the ability to put outside issues aside when it came to golf.

He explained: "Even when I was a little boy, I've always been one who was very intense when I played. My biggest thing was to learn how to relax on the golf course. You can't be focused for five straight hours, and I've learned to break it up. I've always had that ability. I don't feel tired through the middle part of a round, I don't have lapses of energy. And I feel so much more in control of my emotions because of that."

All of which was confirmation of what every other player in the field already knew, that once a major comes around, Tiger's senses get sharper than ever.

He is on the victory scent again; and he knows it only too well. So does everyone else, only too well!