It was quite a sight wasn’t it? The delirious, unrestrained ranks that spilled on to the 18th fairway at East Lake on Sunday to carry Tiger Woods to the final green of the Tour Championship on a veritable tsunami of triumphalism was like those clips from Open Championships of yore when a single R&A official with a brolly would try to hold back a tide of jubilation, flared troosers and lambchop sideburns.

This latest twist in the Tiger tale was such an epic production, it should have been directed by DeMille. He was the people’s champion, a moniker you would’ve struggled to give him back in his steely, machine-like pomp.

This was an implausible redemption for Woods and his 80th PGA Tour title, and a first since 2013, generated such a rousing reverberation it just about broke the Richter Scale.

It wasn’t that long ago, amid a series of downbeat updates and grim prognoses on the state of his back, that many were expecting the next bulletin to be Woods’ official retirement.

Now, he’s even got the man who holds the major-winning tally of 18 worrying that his record could yet be broken by the resurgent 42-year-old.

“Maybe Tiger’s got another 40 majors to play,” said Jack Nicklaus of the 14-time winner Woods after this hugely significant victory. “Out of 40 majors can he win five of them? He’s playing well enough.”

For Woods, the sense of satisfaction was obvious. “I’ve been sitting on 79 for about five years now and to get 80 is a pretty damned good feeling,” he said. “Just to be able to compete and play again this year, that’s a hell of a comeback.

“Some of the people very close to me, they’ve seen what I’ve gone through. Some of the players have seen what I’ve gone through, and they know how hard it was just to get back to playing golf again, forget the elite level. Just be able to play golf again and enjoy being with my kids and living that life. And then lo and behold, I’m able to do this and win a golf tournament.

“Probably the low point was not knowing if I’d ever be able to live pain free again. Am I going to be able to sit, stand, walk, lay down without feeling the pain that I was in? I just didn’t want to live that way. This is how the rest of my life is going to be? It’s going to be a tough rest of my life.

“And so I was beyond playing. I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t lay down without feeling the pain in my back and my leg. That was a pretty low point for a very long time.”

There’s no rest for the winners in this game, of course, and Woods has travelled to Paris for this week’s Ryder Cup. If his appearance at the event even before his victory had ramped up the interest factor, the mouth-frothing will now be at fevered levels.

“I think the weekend was a pretty good introduction into the Ryder Cup, for sure,” said Woods with great understatement.

As far as Team America is concerned, the captain, Jim Furyk, must feel like he has added a howitzer to his armoury.

The visitors will be trying to win the Ryder Cup on European soil for the first time since 1993. After performing, and revelling in, his role as a vice-captain in 2016 at Hazeltine, there is a feeling that Woods’ regard for the Ryder Cup has deepened, his sense of unity with a team has strengthened.

This most individual of individuals, who tended to take the phrase “there is no ‘I’ in team” and add, well, an ‘I’ into it relished that subservient role. The greats like Hogan, Nicklaus or Palmer never performed such a task but this other golfing great embraced it with considerable gusto.

“Tiger, can you take those turkey sandwiches out to the 10th?”is certainly not something you would have envisaged him doing in his major-winning majesty.

Here at Le Golf National, Woods is back on the frontline as a player and Furyk couldn’t be happier. “It was important for him to win, you could see the emotion in talking about how he was fighting back tears and he had the arms in the air and the fist in the air,” said Furyk. “When you look at it now, maybe comparing past Ryder Cups to this one, I think what’s so special is how Tiger has ingrained himself in our team atmosphere.

“He became such a big part of the team in 2016 as a vice-captain and I think it’s special for him now to kind of join these younger players as a team-mate.

“What’s special for him is to be a part of that team, to be a part of that group. It’s a 12-on-12 type of atmosphere, and I think he really enjoys that right now. You know, he won on Sunday as an individual and I know how much that means to him and how important it was.

“But he’s flipped that page pretty quickly and is really excited to join his team-mates and move forward in that process.”

There was wider significance to Sunday’s win for Woods the family man. His two children, Sam and Charlie, hadn’t witnessed their daddy conquering all. Now, in their eyes, he is no longer a golfer whose best bits belong on a nostalgic showreel.

“I think they understand a little bit of what dad does now,” he said. “A lot of times they equated golf to pain because every time I did it I would hurt. And so now they’re seeing a little bit of joy and seeing how much fun it is for me to be able to do this again.”