I am Tiger Woods. Or at least I was Friday.

I can do what Woods did during his 27 holes worth of grinding at Bunsen burner-hot Southern Hills. Fat a 3-wood off the tee? Been there. Pull an iron? Done that. Short a wedge? In my sleep. Push a driver? With ease. Cook an approach? Hey, does a Jesper go flaps up?

For one wonderful day at the U.S. Open, we were all Tiger. That's what makes golf 10 of the best sports I know. The greatest player on the planet spent considerable parts of his day perfecting the same pose we use during a crummy round: hands on hips, incredulous smile on face, four-letter word on tip of tongue. He was in the rough, amongst the trees, in the sand divots, over the greens, on the beach. He completed a 4-over-par 74 in the morning and then returned for an ordinary 71 in the afternoon, putting him oh-so-close to missing the cut. He didn't, but whoever thought Tiger would have to sweat out the during and after parts of his round?

When he was finished, Woods trudged up the hill beyond the 18th green, added up the disappointing numbers, signed the scorecard and then reported to an asphalt parking lot for a chat with sun-baked media members. He chugged some water from his Aquafina bottle, placed the container on a rail and turned toward the cameras.

"Ready," he said.

It had been a long day. The wake up call came at 4:30 a.m. There was a thick coat of dew on the practice range when he arrived at Southern Hills, hardly a whisper of wind when he finished. For someone who escaped the cut by the stubble on his chin, Woods was upbeat, almost optimistic about his chances of winning a fifth consecutive major.

"I kept myself in the ballgame," he said.

Some ballgame. Most guys would need a pair of Bushnells to see the leaderboard from 5-over. But this is Tiger. This is the guy who seems to have a closet-full of bottles with lightning in them.

Can he still challenge for the championship? "Oh, god, yes," he said.

It would help if he actually hit some greens and fairways in regulation, if he recorded his first real fist-pump of the tournament, if he quit imitating, well, us. The good news is that he says that he's close, that his timing is just a little off. The bad news is that he only has 36 holes to prove it.

The deficit isn't insurmountable. Not on this course, not with Tiger in full "I'm-coming-to-get-you" mode. He'll need help to make majors history. He'll need to stand on the first tee and say to himself, "I am Tiger Woods."

Gene Wojciechowski is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at gene.wojciechowski@espnmag.com.