And so he set out down the road to history with an angry flail of a four-iron, a botched chip and a hack out of the trees. Well, no one said the grand slam was going to be easy. Actually, Tiger Woods had said it was “easily within reason”, but even he must have felt a butterfly as he stood at Augusta yesterday amid the throng on the 1st tee.

Stretched out before him was not only 455 yards of verdant fairway, but also the potholed road to the grand slam, full of twists, turns and unforeseeable complexities. Ahead lay more than 1,000 shots to achieve his goal of winning all four majors, an ambition that he had announced as attainable with a startling degree of certainty.

As he stood waiting to club his first drive, did he feel different? Was there a special heightening of the senses? Does Tiger do clammy hands? It was tempting to conclude as much as he heaved his ball a couple of yards into the rough on the left, but then you remembered that, at Augusta, Woods never nails it with his drive on a Thursday off the 1st tee.

He has scored under 70 plenty of times in this genteel corner of Georgia but never in the first round, not in his previous 13 attempts, so yesterday’s 72 proved to be par for the course in so many ways. “You’ve just got to keep yourself in the tournament and I’ve done that,” he said after finishing four shots behind Justin Rose, better placed than the majority of the field.

Woods seems to play these first rounds at Augusta as though he is sizing up the course, landing a couple of jabs before he throws the big punches over the weekend. And a 72 was perfectly acceptable for a four-times champion with much more to give. He declared himself happy with his game — “I think I played a lot better than my scoring indicates,” he said — but it had not looked that way during one tempestuous spell on the back nine.

At the par-five 13th, a “214-yard high-draw four-iron” carried through the green. “I thought it was perfect,” Woods said. “I ended up in the hardest place on the course to pitch.” He seemed to spend an age deliberating over his next shot, yet still chose wrong. Attempting a fiendishly difficult chip through the apron, he fell short and the ball rolled back into the rough. Another bogey followed after he drove into the trees on the 14th.

At that point, Woods seemed to be playing under a sullen cloud and those two dropped shots had given him something worth fretting about. But no sooner had his mood darkened than a dazzling ray of sunshine burst through when he chipped in for an eagle from the edge of the green at the par-five 15th.

For the first time all day, we saw the dazzling white smile. If it was not still there at the end, there was at least a look of businesslike assurance. “The weather is going to get more difficult at the weekend,” he said. He spoke with relish.

His round had started five hours and 25 minutes earlier. Having lashed his drive into the left rough on the 1st, Woods had strode forward with Gatorade in hand — he is such a corporate machine these days that someone asked if he was actually thirsty or whether he was carrying it to satisfy the sponsor. Woods has his own range and, from the garish colour, it looked like Red Drive (cherry-flavoured) rather than Cool Fusion or Quiet Storm. He recorded a par — the first in a run of 12 — in between swigs.

For Woods, such statistical consistency was not a cause for celebration. Certainly not on the 3rd, where he boldly drove to within 20 yards of the green only to chip clumsily 20 feet past the pin.

There were a few more frustrations to follow. Woods was at least one club short with his approach at the 7th. “A gust of wind,” he said. Then came the error, the sort that draws gasps of shock, at the 13th. It would have been the defining moment of his round had he not chipped in two holes later. “It was good to get some positive momentum.” One shot had put him right back in business.