IN JULY 2010, eight months after the scandal in his personal life became public, Tiger Woods came to Ireland to play in the JP McManus Invitational Pro-Am at Adare Manor. I was among the media horde watching his every move.

We got to walk around with him as he played alongside former rugby international Brendan Mullin and a Swiss banker.

At one tee-box he waited 15 minutes for a fourball ahead to clear. He stared into the Limerick evening sky and we all wondered what he was thinking about.

We watched as his contemplation was disturbed by a figure on the fairway up ahead. He walked towards the man, and they embraced affectionately. The man was Irish billionaire Dermot Desmond and they chatted and laughed for a brief minute. We wondered if they were friends, or if this was just the surface bonhomie of the rich man’s club.

We had circled the prey long enough. The next day, in a press conference, we asked our questions. We probed and prodded.

Someone asked how he would prepare for the upcoming Open Championship. “Practising.” Where? “Home.” Why not try and play some links golf? “I need to get home.” Personal stuff? Tiger’s face glowered with contempt. “See my kids.” More questions followed, more poking of the wounded animal, more private pain as public interest.

He was gone soon afterwards, back to his personal hell and the collapse of his career.

It was easier to justify picking at his fresh sores back then. Brought low by his own monstrous ego, it felt like he was getting back what he’d dished out when he was on top. The hunter had become the hunted. We all took a piece.

This week’s news that he has registered for June’s US Open was a surprise. Especially after what has been an extraordinary few months in the business of picking through the wreckage of Tiger Woods’s life. In that time, three pieces of journalism arrived in quick succession that revealed much about where he is and why.

First, in December, Woods sat down with Lorne Rubenstein of Time magazine to mark his 40th birthday. He spoke of being unsure if he would ever return to golf, how he rarely watched the sport, and how his devotion to his children now trumped golf’s place in his life.

Then, either side of the Masters, came Alan Shipnuck’s Sports Illustrated cover story “Tiger Woods: What Happened?” and ESPN’s “The Secret History of Tiger Woods, an epic, forensically-sourced long-read by Wright Thompson.

Chuck Burton Chuck Burton

These three stories detailed the events that culminated in his public disgrace and the injury-afflicted emptiness of its aftermath; the search for meaning after the 2006 death of his father that led him to an obsession with the Navy SEALS and blonde waitresses, but also helped him cherish his own children. The backdrop to all three is a single, irrefutable reality: the end of his golfing potency.

The latter two are fantastic pieces of journalism, particularly Thompson’s, work that gets as close as anyone has to understanding one of sport’s more complex and brilliant figures.

But they left me feeling uneasy, much as the Tiger-baiting in Adare had done.

Shipnuck and Thompson quote myriad sources: friends, competitors, acquaintances and witnesses to his downfall.

Navy SEALS who facilitated his fascination moan about his failure to pick up a lunch tab. His friend Michael Jordan is open; a little too open: “The thing is,” Jordan says, “I love him so much that I can’t tell him, ‘You’re not gonna be great again.’” Some voice open concern, some lingering awe, few sound like they are talking about a real person.

After all that has happened, the great predator that stalked so many major Sundays now lies bloodied and prone, and it feels like all the frightened animals are crawling out from their hiding places to bite the beast back.

It seems cruel, as it did to me in 2010, but the recent scrutiny does help us understand Woods a little more.

We learned about the deeply strange psyche behind the success, how his brutal dominance of golf was wound up in his relationship with his father, and how his grief and pain at his father’s death sent him on a self-destructive tailspin of sex and soldiering. He had, after all, already mastered one of his dad’s three passions.

We see him now, a pathetic figure with a broken body, playing video games in his mansion, and we finally stop to wonder what will become of him.

There is hope in the recent coverage. He is clearly a loving father and has a positive relationship with his ex-wife, Elin. But children alone cannot give your life meaning, unless you want to end up like Earl Woods.

He tells Rubenstein that his charitable foundation will be his legacy. “My learning centre, kids go through it and they don’t know who I am. They don’t know what I’ve done. But it’s a safe haven for them to learn and grow.”

But erasing golf from his life, even if it were possible, isn’t the answer either.

Becoming a Ryder Cup vice-captain hints at a future as a Tour father figure, while Shipnuck, speaking about his piece to Off The Ball, quoted Geoff Ogilvy’s hope that Woods could fashion a viable late playing career by foregoing power. “Just bunt it down the fairway, shape shots, beat people with his mind and scoring ability.”

It’s a nice thought. Tiger growing old gracefully, giving us an occasional flash of his old glory, outsmarting the big hitters; keeping his family close, and the public and media at a friendlier distance; making peace with his father’s memory.

There are better targets for Tiger than 18 career Majors now. Maybe it will start with his latest comeback.

Maybe we’ll leave him alone now.

The42 is on Snapchat! Tap the button below on your phone to add!

We’ll Leave It There So: A date for The Jackal, trouble in Kerry and all today’s sport

‘I love working with him’ – Leinster appreciating McQuilkin influence