If you go on to ebay and see a blackening banana skin on sale - as eaten by Tiger Woods! - it may just be the genuine article. The mania around Woods has reach such a frenzy that a discarded fruit, its innards munched by the world's best golfer and its skin accidentally dropped by Steve Williams, his caddy, led to a minor scramble on the 17th fairway at Augusta yesterday.

Snatched off the muddy ground by one fan (crushing the hopes of plenty of others), its whereabouts are unknown. Did the teenage claimant try to get it autographed? Has he put it in a glass case on the mantlepiece? Or will he try to create a bidding war? There might just be a market.

If a piece of bubblegum chewed up and spat out by Luis Gonzalez of the Arizona Diamondbacks can be sold for 10,000 bucks and a pair of false teeth worn by baseball legend Ty Cobb can go for $8000, what price the remains of a Woods' banana? Particularly given that it propelled him to a birdie. Its worth can only soar if Tigers wins the Masters this evening.

That is a prospect that no one was ruling out last night even if Woods was six shots off the lead after a captivating third day. One shot alone was enough to remind you that anything is possible.

As he disappeared out of sight amid the trees to the right of the 18th fairway, Woods was surely resigned to hitting out sideways. There was stunned silence, then rapturous applause, when he somehow found a gap through the branches and landed on the putting surface to save par. "Man it's just the only shot I had," he said. It kept alive that Grand Slam dream.