FOR A brief few minutes yesterday, a look of panic appeared on the faces of a couple of Tiger Woods’s entourage. The number one man – who’d come off the course after his practice round – was nowhere to be found. Bewildered, flustered expressions all round. Until, finally, somebody decided it might be a good idea to check the driving range. Of course, that’s where he was. Hitting balls, doing his stuff. Same old Tiger.

An absentee at Royal Birkdale last year, as he recuperated from reconstructive knee surgery, Woods – a three-time winner of the Claret Jug, most recently at Hoylake in 2006 where he used his driver just once in 72 holes in a masterful display of patience and accuracy – has returned to the sport’s oldest championship with a new spring in his step but the same old look of a man who knows what he wants.

For the past three days, Woods has played a practice round on the links. Each day brought with it a different wind, allowing him to see the links from different angles and help him to work out a master plan to conquer a course he described as “fantastic, in great shape . . . but we haven’t had the big winds yet.” Interestingly, no gales or especially strong winds are forecast by the met office.

Woods knows that the three men – Tom Watson, Greg Norman and Nick Price – who have won British Opens here, had reputations, just as he does, as pure ball-strikers. He knows it is a course that should suit him.

“You just can’t fake it around this golf course,” said Woods. “You have to hit good golf shots . . . you have to drive the ball well, you have to hit your irons well.”

Woods, who hadn’t played the Ailsa links prior to arriving on Sunday, has had to use these practice days to work out what way to play the course: does he use irons and fairway woods off the tee to lay up short of the bunkers, or does he try to overpower them?

“You’ve just got to really make sure you do your homework, because I can’t rely on past years’ experiences,” he said.

“You have to be committed to either putting the ball short of the bunkers or carrying them and skirting it past them. You have to make sure you know what you are doing out there, especially with the cross winds in some of these fairways where they’re slanted . . . you’ve got to understand why the last three champions are some of the best ball strikers.”

The driver may not be left in the bag as often as it was at Hoylake, with its sun-baked fairways, but the likelihood is that Woods will adopt a strategy of mainly using fairway woods and irons in his quest for a fourth British Open and 15th major in all.

Certainly, his well-being these days is a far cry from a year ago.

“I was in pretty good pain. So, watching this tournament (on TV), I didn’t do much of that until the last nine holes (on Sunday) and I was amazed at how windy it was . . . . what Paddy (Harrington) did on the back nine was pretty phenomenal. When it really mattered, he had to shoot a number and he did.”

Woods comes in on the back of a win two weeks ago in the ATT at Congressional. Indeed, there has been a degree of symmetry about Woods’s build-up to the majors this season, winning in his final regular outings – Bay Hill before the Masters, Memorial before the US Open – but coming up short in the ones that really mattered to him. “You’re playing different shots over here, you’ve got to manoeuvre the ball differently. So, you have to make some adjustments.”

Nobody has a greater armoury of shots than Woods himself, which, understandably, has him licking his lips in anticipation of the challenge ahead.