World Golf Championship: All the way up the avenue that leads from the entrance gate at Mount Juliet to the clubhouse are lampposts with banners that hail the various winners of the World Golf Championships. Not surprisingly, Tiger Woods occupies more poster space than anyone else.
Quite simply, since their inception in 1999, Woods has dominated these tournaments - he has won nine - that come under the global umbrella of the WGC, a mishmash of the international professional golf federations.
But whether Woods can win his third successive American Express championship, and make it 10 WGC titles in all, is questionable. It's not just his form (a failure to win since annexing the Accenture matchplay back in February) that prompts such a question mark. Since arriving here on Monday, Woods has spent more time in the physiotherapy unit for treatment on a back injury than he has on the course. In fact, he'll reserve a decision on actually playing until he completes his pre-round warm-up routine.
A doubt over Woods's possible participation is all that this event - with $7 million in prize money, the richest tournament ever staged in Europe - needs. Three of the world's top-10 players are already absent: Vijay Singh, because of hurricane damage to his home in Florida; Phil Mickelson, for personal reasons; and Mike Weir, due to illness. If Woods were to defect too, it would be a devastating blow.
"I've never been one to pull out of tournaments and quit just because I am physically sore. I've played through my knee pain for quite some time," said Woods, who underwent surgery two years ago to rectify that problem. "If I can go, I'll go. If I can't, then I won't. If I can't actually swing a golf club, then it's pretty tough to play."
The injury, as it now is, dates from a little over a week ago. On the Monday after the Ryder Cup, Woods was in New York to launch his new computer game - Tiger Woods 2005 - and was so physically exhausted that night on the flight home to Orlando he fell asleep awkwardly and awoke with a strain between his shoulder blades.
"It's just a couple of rib heads aren't gliding properly and it has spasmed up and hasn't been the same since," observed Woods.
Crucially, it is only in the act of swinging a golf club that the injury has affected Woods. "I've never had a back pain in my life, so this is all new to me. I guess this is what happens when you get older . . . it's no big deal if you can play, I can handle the pain. Whether I will be able to swing a golf club is a different story. That's a whole other question."
You can bet your bottom dollar if Woods is able to swing a club, he'll take his place on the first tee shortly before one o'clock alongside KJ Choi and Luke Donald. As defending champion, and seeking a so-called "three-peat" in the tournament, having previously won here in 2002 and in Atlanta last year, Woods badly wants to play.
Then, there's the added incentive of simply returning to winning ways. All through the late spring, into summer and on into autumn, Woods lost the winning habit and his world number-one spot to Singh. Losing that accolade to Singh doesn't irk as much as actually losing tournaments, it seems.
"Who's won more in the last two years? Obviously, it's Vijay. When I had that five-year run where I won five-plus tournaments per year for five straight years, I was going to be number one in the world because I was winning a lot. That's how you earn number one and that's how you stay there."
Up to sustaining this injury, and the Ryder Cup apart, Woods had actually shown signs of returning to form.
"I just need to eliminate a couple of mistakes per round, a single up-and-down or a missed fairway here or missing the green on the correct side," he insisted.
"Just simple things, a matter of cleaning up a round of golf. I think the work I've done has laid the foundations for that, and now I'm able to position golf balls around the golf course. I've had two straight second-place finishes, which is a very positive sign," he said.
If the absence of Messrs Singh, Mickelson and Weir would appear to have depleted the field, there's sufficient quality left to make Woods's task of attempting to retain the Sarazen Trophy a tough one. There are seven of the world's top 10 and 44 of the world's top 50 playing, while adding a Ryder Cup edge to proceedings is the presence of 10 of Europe's successful team - the exceptions are Colin Montgomerie and Ian Poulter - and nine of the defeated US team.
Of course, the Ryder Cup was little more than a sideshow to non-Americans and non-Europeans, among them Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, the two players dominating the European Tour money list. Like Woods, Els has lost the winning habit, failing to win a tournament since May but a two-week break has recharged his batteries.
"I needed this break, and I'm ready to play golf again . . . I'm really looking forward to getting back into it. I've never won a tournament in Ireland, so I'd like to give myself a chance come Sunday," said Els.
He's not alone. The four Irish players in the field - Padraig Harrington, Darren Clarke, Paul McGinley and Graeme McDowell - would surely echo those sentiments.
Of the quartet, Clarke is the only one who has managed to win a tournament on home soil (the European Open in 2001) and, on top of that, is the only European player to have claimed a WGC title.
"You've got to putt well this week. These greens are very undulating, you've just got to putt well. You have to," he said.
Yet, it's unlikely this tournament will come down to a putting competition. Unlike 2002, when Woods won with a 25-under-par total, weather conditions are likely to be more hostile this time round and the fairways are sanded so the course will play longer than its 7,256 yards.
As Sergio Garcia, who shares the course record 62 with Retief Goosen, observed: "The weather is not going to be as warm so the ball is going to go shorter . . . when you start to hit longer shots into these greens, then it's going to be a different thing. But you'll probably still see a good winning score."
