IN THE gloom of yesterday morning, before the sun managed to break through grey skies, Tiger Woods's first shot of the 108th US Open was the kind that had the medical doubters' outside the ropes sagely nodding their heads.

It was a drive that pulled so far left of the fairway bunker it finished in rough so thick his only option was to hack back out onto the fairway. It was so unlike his normally aggressive self that you wondered if his dodgy knee would survive the day, let along the championship.

Oh, ye of little faith! While that opening gambit for Tiger - in the company of Phil Mickelson, who bizarrely chose not to include a driver in his bag, and Adam Scott - was to lead to a double bogey six on the par four first hole, it was almost as if he was only cleansing his palate before indulging in more savoury treats. By the turn, he had recouped those shots and more, a run of five pars and three birdies leaving us with the feeling he'd never been away at all.

In the eight-week absence from the tour, during which time Woods recuperated from his knee surgery, his absence had left a void. When you get the winner of the Players championship starting his victory acceptance speech, as Sergio Garcia did, by thanking Tiger for his absence, you get the message of how much others look for his name on the leaderboard.

It's not just fellow players, though. If we needed any indication of Woods's immense drawing power - especially when drawn in the same first round group as Mickelson and Scott, the world's one, two and three all playing together - it came yesterday where a massive gallery squeezed 10-deep all the way down either side of the first fairway and around the green.

There are times when an out-in-the-field golf reporter requires the sure-footedness of a mountain goat. Yesterday was one such day. In such circumstances, a piece of black fabric - with the words "MEDIA INSIDE ROPES ACCESS" - is priceless. The trick is to move ahead of the main act, finding positions around the landing areas on the fairways and moving stealthily on to the green.

As far as tracking the Woods-Mickelson-Scott triumvirate was concerned, the big surprise was Mickelson's waywardness. Unlike Woods, who has been recuperating for the past two months, Mickelson - in the whole of his health - has been obsessed with winning the US Open on what is effectively a home course.

And, while Woods walked gingerly down the hill from the third tee towards the green, there was no obvious indication his knee was proving troublesome. That drive on the first, it seemed, was an aberration. The real Woods materialised on the fourth, where a long-iron approach from a fairway bunker finished 18 inches from the hole for birdie number one.

Each and every move of Woods was accompanied by a symphony of camera shutters, as the army of photographers captured each grimace, smile . . . literally anything. And Woods's reaction to a pulled approach into a greenside bunker at the seventh demonstrated how badly he wanted to get into the thick of things. Typically, he got up and down for a par save.

As impressive as the three birdies that followed that opening double bogey were the par saves Woods conjured up later, from 20-feet at the 12th and 12 feet at the 13th. However, that good scrambling came to an end on the 14th, where Woods ran up the second double bogey after originally suffering bunker trouble off the tee from where he put his next into the rough, requiring two attempts to extricate himself.

Despite grimacing after hitting his tee shot on the last, Woods reached the green in two but three-putted for a par, to finish one-over par 72, a shot more than Mickelson's 71 and one fewer than Scott's 73. Not one of the world's top-three had managed to break par.