Tiger Woods, limping heavily and at times bent double with pain, produced another spectacular finish at Torrey Pines last night to force an 18-hole play-off today with Rocco Mediate for the 108th US Open.

The world No 1 came to the par-five 72nd hole trailing Mediate — who, at 45, was bidding to become the oldest winner of the second major championship of the year — by one shot. But if ever a scene had been set for the greatest player the game has seen, then this was it.

Woods had eagled the hole the previous day to take a one-shot lead over Lee Westwood into the final round, so he knew that another would probably bring him the title. At the very least, he would have expected to birdie the hole.

Imagine his frustration, then, when he landed in a bunker with his tee shot and then compounded the error by leaving the ball in light rough with his second. His third, however, was vintage Woods. He landed the ball about 30ft past the hole before sucking it back to about 12 feet. And when he proceeded to roll in the putt, he was off and running, with his full array of double-fisted uppercuts and the now-familiar Tiger roar.

Poor Mediate. His chance had come and now it has almost certainly gone. Expect Woods to take his third US Open crown today and his fourteenth professional major championship in all. Victory would bring him to within four of Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 majors with plenty of time on his side. Nicklaus was 46 when he won his last, the Masters in 1986. Woods is 32.

Westwood, too, deserves plenty of sympathy. Playing alongside Woods, he held the outright lead at the turn but struggled to keep his momentum going on the inward nine and also came to the last needing either an eagle to win or a birdie to get into the play-off.

The Englishman also found sand off the tee and had no choice but to play to the middle of the fairway when he would have preferred to chance his arm with a fairway wood to the green. He left his third shot about 25 feet from the hole but his putt for a birdie drifted just wide at the end and he had to settle for a par and third place outright — his best finish in the championship. He had rounds of 70, 71, 70 and 73 for a level-par total of 284. Woods also had a 73, while Mediate had the best round of the three, a 71.

“I almost played my way out of it,” Westwood said, referring to a back nine in which he dropped three shots in four holes from the 10th, “but I hung in there and am optimistic for the future.” From the start, it was plain to see that Woods was vulnerable. He had surgery to remove damaged cartilage on his left knee nine weeks ago, had not played competitively since the Masters and it showed. This, after all, is a course he has played since he was a child, and where he has won the Buick Invitational six times, the last four on the trot.

He produced an astonishing sequence of shots in the last nine holes of the third round to take the lead into the final day, but when he dropped three shots in his first three holes yesterday, he surrendered the lead and was made to work hard to get it back — at one point moving one shot ahead with a birdie at the 11th, but losing it with a bogey at the 13th.

The 1st hole had proved a particular bugbear to him. He double-bogeyed it twice in his first three rounds and did so again yesterday, his drive finishing to the left of the fairway, his second hitting a tree and rebounding farther left and his third not even reaching the fairway.

He has limped his way through the tournament and it was said that he was winning on one leg. The question was: could the knee stand up for one more day? The early signs in the fourth round were not good. Tee shot after tee shot was followed by the sight of Woods grimacing before moving gingerly on his way. By the end of the round, however, it seemed to have eased enough for him to play as he wished. Now he has to play for an extra day. It is probably Mediate’s only hope.