Tinkering Tiger Woods is confident that he has found his range

Woods is right. Torrey Pines, a course on which he has won a record eight times, proved a brutal test for most of the PGA Tour field last week with the rough high and greens he described as ‘concretish’. Woods loves an opportunity to prove his critics wrong, the fifth 79 of his career is this week’s motivation to slap the field in Dubai, where he has won twice.

McIlroy is well placed to join Woods on that number. This was the scene of his first professional victory five years ago. The horrors of 2013 are well behind him. McIlroy even talked about going for a hole in one on the risk/reward par-4 17th, which requires the players to take out the dog leg to strike gold. The reward for acing the hole is a cool $2.5 million (£1.5m).

“If I’ve got the right wind on the 17th I’ll go for it,” he said. “If you are confident enough with your driver, why not? If they move the tee up it’s only going to play 295 or 300. That’s a 3-wood. It shouldn’t be a problem to get there. There are not many chances you have to win $2.5m in one shot, so I’ll give it a go.”

A year ago McIlroy elected to go skiing in Courcheval rather than play here, a decision he now accepts was wrong. His form went downhill quicker than his skis in the weeks and months that followed.

“Last year I felt like working on the range, especially with the new clubs was going to be better than playing,” he said. “It was probably the other way around. I needed to test the stuff out in competition. I sort of learnt that pretty quickly into the season.”