Tardiness in golf tends to be punished. So, given that Tiger Woods was 15 minutes late for his pre-Ryder Cup press conference here at Le Golf National, Europe should at least be one up.

It seems the resurgent Woods, fresh from his first win in five years at the weekend, can do no wrong, though. Even one drooling radio broadcaster seized the communal microphone in the interview area and said “a big thank you for what you did on Sunday” in a show of gushing reverence that really should have been kept for a Tiger Woods edition of This Is Your Life.

This sporting life, meanwhile, is alive and kicking. By all accounts, Woods doesn’t just move the proverbial golfing needle. He is the needle.

The TV viewing figures in the US for his win at the Tour Championship on Sunday, for instance, were up by 206 per cent on the same event a year ago.

“Are they good?” Woods asked before he was informed that those numbers had sky rocketed. “If the ratings are, as you say, huge, especially against football on a Sunday in the States, then that’s a big deal.” We didn’t want to inform him how those figures compared against SPL highlights on Sportscene meanwhile.

Woods is the talk of the toon here in the French capital and he has a bit more than what the locals would call a certain je ne sais quoi.

At 42, he is still golf’s biggest draw and for a younger generation of players who always fancied going toe-to-toe with him when he was in his pomp, there was a smiling flexing of those muscles from Woods. Hear that clatter in the background? Well, that was the sound of a gauntlet being thrown down.

“The younger guys were on their way in when I was on my way out,” he said of a new wave that thrived as Woods’ game and body slithered into what many thought was terminal decline. “They never played against me when I was playing well. A lot of them were coming on to the scene and had just not played against me.

“When my game is there, I feel like I’ve always been a tough person to beat. They have been kind of jokingly saying, ‘we want to go against you’. All right, here you go.

“I had a run at it on Sunday. It was a blast. I had to beat Rory [McIlroy] in the final group. Rosey [Justin Rose] was tied with Rory and I had a three- shot cushion but I hadn’t done it in five years. These guys had both ascended to world No.1, they have won majors and I have not really played a lot of golf in the last few years.”

There has been little time for Woods to reflect on that conquest in Atlanta. If that victory was something of a redemption, the 14-time major champion has an opportunity for more salvation on the Ryder Cup front this week.

In this particular golfing tussle, Woods’ record is as wonky as some buckled vinyl. In seven appearances, he has been on the winning team only once and has lost 17 of his 33 matches. The two Ryder Cups the US have won over the past decade, in 2008 and 2016, were years in which he wasn’t involved on the playing front due to injury.

Here at Le Golf National, with its tight fairways and abundance of water, Woods’ next challenge is to start polishing those statistics. “Looking back on my Ryder Cup career, that [his record] is not something that I have really enjoyed or liked seeing,” he said of back catalogue in the event that is about as uplifting as reading the inscriptions on a row of headstones. “I’ve played a lot of matches but we haven’t done well.”

Another thing that certainly did not go well was Woods’ pairing with his old foe Phil Mickelson during the 2004 match.

Hal Sutton, the stetson-wearing US skipper, went against all rational thinking and flung the two together in the kind of gung-ho approach that could have had him replacing Lord Cardigan at the head of the Light Brigade.

It proved to be a calamitous decision as the duo lost two out of two amid much muttering and grumbling.

In 2018, and with a relationship between the two that’s now based on mutual respect more than bitter rivalry, Mickelson did not shy away from thinking the unthinkable.

“I think we would both welcome it,” said Mickel­son with a sense of intrigue when asked about the prospect of partnering Woods before giving his thoughts on what could make this historically awkward alliance work.

“When we go over little details as to why we were or weren’t successful, when I talk about it openly and try to share insight, sometimes it comes across as though I’m trying to take a shot at somebody and I don’t want to do that,” Mickelson added.

“The bottom line is going to be preparation. When we can eliminate the variables, eliminate the uncertainties, it eliminates the pressure. That’s probably the best way to answer it. I’d say we would be more prepared.”

There’s also another factor in the current Woods climate. “This is the best I think I’ve ever seen him swing the club, even going back to 2000, when I thought he was at his best,” noted Mickelson.

Compared to the generous open expanses of Hazeltine in 2016, Le Golf National is posing the US captain, Jim Furyk, some problems

“There are not a lot of wide parts out there,” he conceded. “We are trying to figure out what’s in store for us.” Whatever it is, it should be good.