You can quench your thirst like Tiger with his signature sports drink. You can cover your bald spot like Tiger with his trademark TW cap. You can drive Tiger's car. You can putt Tiger's ball. You can probe the limits of your credit with Tiger's charge card. And even go all virtual Tiger on your Wii.

But you can never know how Tiger Woods does it, when the lights are up and the gallery strains against the ropes like tuna in a net and the golfing world holds its breath until the sonic crack of club-head-meeting-dimpled-urethane signals it to exhale.

Chris Stanfield/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)

Apparently, Tiger Woods is back there somewhere. Spectators reach over one another in an attempt to snap a photograph of the golfer during a practice round for the Masters.

Chris Stanfield/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)

Golfing legend Arnold Palmer says of the winning ways of Tiger Woods: 'He gives up a lot of stuff. Lot of family life, a lot of buddy-buddy type stuff, to do what he does.'

Ben Gray/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)

Tiger Woods (right) chats with playing partner Richard Green while strolling down the second fairway during Monday's practice round in Augusta. The Masters begins play today.

Jason Getz/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)

All eyes will be on Tiger once again this year.

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That moment is Woods' alone, the one that has transformed a golfer, of all things, into the country's highest-profile, most marketable athlete.

John Smoltz, however, has some idea how this rising-to-the-occasion thing works. But even the Braves big-game pitcher is a little amazed when talking about the competitive steel his spring golfing buddy is bringing to this Masters. It is as if he is sounding a warning to everyone else in the field.

"He's got a 2-3 shot advantage over most of the guys he plays with," said Smoltz, who figures he's played maybe 40 pleasure rounds with Woods through the years.

"When you live for it and when you want it — that's what separates him," Smoltz said recently. "When you want to take the last shot in basketball or be on the mound, it doesn't guarantee you success, but I believe it gives you an advantage over the rest who would rather have a six-run lead or a six-shot lead."

Once more, with the coming of another Masters, Woods is the tiger shark in the fishbowl. If it is possible, there is even more attention trained on him this year than ever before as Woods at 32 has separated himself from his fellow professionals by yet another lap.

He has turned winning a golf tournament into an event with all the suspense of a coronation. Until finishing fifth at Doral his last time out, Woods had won his last seven outings worldwide, and nine out of his last 10 dating to the 2007 British Open.

But here this week is where the serious myth-making begins. Without winning the first of the year's four majors, Woods can't very well become the first to claim a golfing Grand Slam since Bobby Jones in 1930.

With the mention of a Grand Slam, the stakes have been raised and expectations whetted to surgical sharpness. He is not just favored to win his fifth Masters and his 14th major professional title here this week — he is fully expected to begin production on something phenomenal. It is as if all the sunshine during the next week is passing through a magnifying glass, and all the gathered light is trained on Woods.

In other words, this is exactly the setting for which he was made.

'It's like Michael Jordan'

It began back with Earl Woods, the former Vietnam warrior, constantly challenging his boy Eldrick to block out everything except the next shot. He'd employ such little tricks as rattling car keys or issuing a warning about a water hazard in his backswing.

"I asked my dad to do that to me, to make me a tougher golfer, to make me a tougher person, so he did," Woods recalled again Tuesday. "He put me through the same stuff that he had to go through in Special Forces, all the psychology part of it. It was frustrating to me at first because I didn't understand how to deal with it, but I just had to figure it out."

It continues today, each time he rises to meet outlandish expectations serving as a tribute to his late father's unique nurturing and Woods' own simply worded motivation:

"I love winning."

Running out of golfing comparisons, they are now beginning to reach for the ultimate compliment.

"It's unbelievable. It's like Michael Jordan," fellow PGA Tour player Bubba Watson said just moments after watching Woods curl in a 25-foot putt on the final hole to win at Orlando last month.

Not winning is a fluke

Another Braves star, who played with Tiger this spring and once won a deciding World Series game, finds himself as amazed as any regular Joe in the gallery.

"I don't know that there's much to compare it to. It's in it's own stratosphere," Tom Glavine said.

"You have to be in awe of — or have a tremendous amount of respect for - what he's doing, given all the attention he gets," Glavine said. "He gets enough attention as it is for being Tiger Woods. But on top of that they're expecting him to win every tournament."

They're not the only ones.

"I really believe when he doesn't win he thinks that's a fluke," Smoltz said.

Woods arrived here early, appearing on the Augusta National practice range Sunday afternoon and didn't leave the practice green until the sun was setting below the pines. It was the quietest time he will spend on the property all week.

By Monday morning, the gates were open to those with a precious practice-round ticket, and the Tiger hunt was on. The ones who knew his patterns, or who just couldn't wait to get to this festival of photosynthesis, were right on time. You have to get up early to track a Tiger.

With the course open for play at 8 a.m., Woods was the first off for the Monday practice round, playing with good friend Mark O'Meara and Australian Richard Green. He couldn't beat the crowd. From the beginning, his approach to each green was a walk into a valley of excited flashbulbs.

"So many distractions, camera flashes going everywhere," Green said. "It has to be very difficult when you try to prepare for the biggest tournament of the year and you have so much attention. It's very, very difficult to focus on this is the shot I want to make on this hole, this is what I want to try to do, without having thousands of expectations of hitting it close to the hole."

Prohibited from bringing cameras on the course during the tournament, fans are allowed open season on the players during practice rounds. And they wear them out whenever Woods is within their viewfinder.

"It's history in the making," said Augusta's Paul Bailey, one of the gallery marshals who paused long enough to pull a camera from his pocket and get several close-ups of Woods as he walked by Bailey's fourth-hole station Monday.

'He just works so hard'

The world's most dominant athlete stays that way largely by eliminating all distractions away from the course. Woods is studiously apolitical. He avoids controversy like he would a hickory-shafted driver. He handles all his charitable/social responsibilities quietly through his foundation. There is a tight curtain drawn around his personal life — when news leaked out that he missed his daughter's christening in Sweden in October, it was an extremely rare revelation. That follows the Michael Jordan model almost exactly.

Back on the field of play, his dominance usually is explained in rather workmanlike terms, as if all those Nike shirts come with a blue collar.

"He just works so hard. He's a hard worker, he's a thinker and those are the things you have to do," said Arnold Palmer, golf's king in the 1960s. "You have to sacrifice. He gives up a lot of stuff. Lot of family life, a lot of buddy-buddy type stuff, to do what he does."

"What I admire about him is there's no earned rights," Smoltz said. "He has every entitlement to slack off, maybe not care as much, but he's done it all the right way."

The focus he brings to the course can slice through metal. And it abides no frivolity. You didn't find him playing in the par-3 tournament, the just-for-yuks nine-hole Masters prelude that is being televised for the first time Wednesday. He hasn't played in that since 2004.

Woods' wiring is evident even in a spring round with some ballplayers down from Atlanta. Smoltz usually cautions some of the younger teammates who join him not to engage in the usual jock smack talk with Woods. But, still, they can't resist.

This year it was Jeff Francoeur, the impetuous right fielder. Gee, Tiger, he observed at one point, it doesn't seem like you hit the ball nearly as far in person as it seems on TV.

So, another opportunity to prove himself was presented to Woods, and he happily seized it. It's what he does.

The next tee shot inevitably flew longer and straighter than physics should allow.

And a ballplayer realizes a basic truth.

"We try [to make Woods crack]. It doesn't work," Francoeur said. "Nothing works."

Woods will do everything in his power to convince others of that this week.