Tiger Has Margin for Era

It’s time to be awed by the onslaught, to recognize the mastery in the mundane.

Tiger Woods drains the drama out of major championships, reduces them to museum exhibits and yet it’s still fascinating.

We finally get what we’ve craved for two years--Woods and David Duval, paired on Sunday in a major--and it could have all the tension of their prefabricated Showdown at Sherwood last year.

Woods takes a six-shot lead over Duval into the final round of the British Open, meaning once again he’ll be taking on history, not the field.

So where’s the excitement? It’s in the details.

It’s in the way Woods can hold some of the world’s classic golf courses at his mercy.

It’s in his unique combination of long game, short game and strategy.

Watching Woods is like watching a football team with Dan Marino at quarterback, Jim Brown at running back and Bill Walsh calling the plays.

Anyone who likes golf should be able to appreciate it.

David Toms did, and he’s the guy who saw his slim chance of winning this tournament shrink so dramatically you’d need an electron microscope to see it.

“I enjoyed it,” said Toms, who was Woods’ playing partner Saturday and went from three shots down to seven behind by the end of the round. “That’s the first time I actually played with him. To see him at the top of his game playing on a Saturday at the British Open and to watch him perform was pretty impressive. He deserves all the accolades that he gets.”

Woods put a 67 on the board Saturday and this won’t even go down as one of his most memorable rounds. He had two bogeys. He didn’t produce much for the highlights.

What he did was provide a steady demonstration of superiority, an enviable ability to proceed down a golf course on his own terms.

It’s Tiger the Technician who is winning this tournament.

As Sam Snead said: “He has a good head, and he thinks well.”

Woods uses a blend of creativity, golf-manual recall and mental stamina.

“It seems like he knows exactly what he needs to do on every shot,” Toms said. “A lot of players out here might tend to get lost a little bit during a round. He just doesn’t seem to do that.”

It’s the deep bunkers that put the danger in the Old Course. Take them out of the equation and it’s like clipping the claws off a cat.

Except it was Woods who chose to retract his own nails and softly pad around the course at times. Instead of trying to drive along the middle of the fairway and carry the bunkers, he chose to hit irons off the tee and leave his ball well behind them on the second, third, ninth and 16th holes.

“I haven’t really played that aggressive, to be honest with you,” Woods said. “Look at the way I’ve played. Pin locations are such where it is hard to play aggressive. What are you going to do? You can’t fire at every pin. And you’re going to have to try to two-putt or make a putt from 40, 50 feet around this place. That’s just the way it is playing at St. Andrews.”

Then there was the way he handled two potentially troublesome shots on the notorious Road Hole this week.

In the opening round, his tee shot on 17 landed in the rough on the left side of the fairway. A similar position started Notah Begay on his way to a triple bogey earlier in the day.

Woods swung so hard he had one foot well off the ground, but he managed to get enough control to put the ball in front of the green.

“I was trying to hit it hard with my right hand then hold on with the left,” Woods said. “You have to open up the face because you know the grass is not going to grab the club head; it is going to grab the shaft. that’s the trick to it. You need to hit it hard, hold on so you don’t trip it.”

In the second round, his approach shot on 17 dropped off the green and (fortunately for him) rolled across a dirt path and settled in some grass.

He hit from almost the same spot during practice rounds, so when he found himself in that situation he used a shot he had devised: a wedge that skidded off the green, and used a mound on the edge of the Road Bunker on the opposite side to slow the ball down and deposit it near the hole. Another saved par.

Woods had one absolutely cold shot on Saturday, a tee shot on the 175-yard eighth that dropped so close to the hole the kid operating the leader board nearby had already climbed the ladder with the lower number in hand before Woods knocked in his 18-inch putt.

But most of his tours around the links have consisted of lagging long putts near the cup and then finishing off the hole.

“He picked his spots, played aggressive when he needed to play that way, settled for the 30-footer when he had to,” Toms said. “That’s the way you have to play this golf course.”

Now Woods has a chance to not only win all four of the majors, but to capture three of them in record-breaking fashion.

He set the lowest score at the Masters in 1997. He won the U.S. Open by 15 strokes last month.

If he can duplicate his second-round 66 here he can set a record for lowest winning aggregate at a British Open, beating Greg Norman’s 267, in addition to breaking Nick Faldo’s record for lowest under par at a British Open (18 under in 1990 at St. Andrews).

Meanwhile, a great group of golfers struggles to even come close to Woods. A female streaker tried to catch up to him at the end of his round Friday, but was intercepted before she could reach him.

Further proof that no one can touch Tiger Woods on the golf course right now.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com.