It was a weird experience following Tiger Woods yesterday, a reminder, mercifully, that he is fallible and that his world is not necessarily one filled with genius and miracle unfolding at every corner.

Woods had a 70, to finish on two under for the tournament after striding his way around Carnoustie with an unfulfilled purpose and dignity. Yet what was surreal about his final round was the utter lack of emotion pervading the scene.

It is nobody’s fault, but something in the air has been missing from this Open Championship. You felt it again following Woods yesterday, beneath grey skies, in front of quite a few empty seats and with accompanying galleries that were faithful in their pursuit, but not heaving or jostling for space.

Nobody can control the weather, but what has been missing this week has been that classic Open ambience of a hot, dry summer, thundering hooves and crackling excitement. Woods has the global fame that Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Muhammad Ali once possessed, but you would not have known it from this Sabbath calm on the Angus coast.

As the rain pelted down on the 1st tee, the spectators were hanging from the rafters of the Carnoustie Golf Hotel and bunched three and four deep as Woods and Rich Beem were announced on the tee. It was to prove a scene of misplaced expectation.

Despite posting birdies on the 4th and 5th holes, Woods, starting eight strokes back, failed to give thrilling chase.

It was worth remembering, too, that poor Beem was a part of this match. Watching these two players perform was a reminder that perhaps the most anonymous thing any professional sportsman can do anywhere is play alongside Woods.

Beem might have been invisible. “C’mon, Tiger!” they shouted on the first fairway, followed by “Go get ’em, Tiger!” or “Nail it, Tiger!” plus multiple variations of the theme.

I swear there was not a single “Go, Rich!” or even a chivalrous “Good luck, Mr Beem!” in the entire 4½ hours. The only relevant comment you heard in the direction of Woods’s opponent was: “Who’s the other guy?”

In Woods’s playing partner, it is worth remembering that we were in the presence of a major championship winner. OK, it may have been the ugly duckling of the four majors – the US PGA Championship, which Beem won in 2002 – but nothing he has done in his life surely warrants the sheer indifference with which he was welcomed yesterday.

There was, perchance, one other reason for Beem’s exclusion from attention. The greatest excitement around this player in recent years has been provided by the book about him, Bud, Sweat and Tears: Rich Beem’s Walk on the Wild Side, a tome that contains yarns of not debauchery, exactly, but deeds of which the PGA Tour’s Bible study group would not approve. So it is possible that some of Angus’s most Presbyterian puritans were viewing the good-timer with dark, disapproving stares.

Woods needed a miraculous start to have any hope of winning and, having given himself an opportunity, he fluffed it. On the 1st green, his 15-foot putt for a birdie, had it dropped in, might have filled him with something turbo-charged, but it stayed out.

On the 4th he struck a wedge out of rough to four feet and made birdie and on the 5th, quite exquisitely, his mid-iron flew 160 yards to three feet, from where he clawed back another shot, moving to three under.

But Woods would prove flawed. On the 183-yard 8th hole, he missed the green right from the tee and bogeyed and then suffered the indignity of watching his bunker shot on the 11th climb up above the lip, only to roll back into the sand again. His round, a patchwork of four birdies and three bogeys, was never going to threaten the leaders.

“I’ve shot under par, but it’s not what I was looking for,” Woods said. “I was being realistic about it – I figured I could shoot six or seven under out there because there were definite birdie chances if you were playing well. The pins were on the knobs, which made for very interesting putting.”

Afterwards Woods met his usual fate, immediately being besieged by reporters. No one noticed Beem, who hit a 72, slinking away to take his shower.