Tiger Woods' Masters triumph showed yet again why there is no greater storyline than redemption

The BBC News on Sunday night was in no doubt about the scale of Tiger Woods’s victory in the Masters: his astonishing win led the bulletin. This was a golf tournament, normally consigned to the latter moments of the sports briefing. Even had Rory McIlroy or Tommy Fleetwood won, it is unlikely the front of the programme would have been cleared to accommodate it.

But Woods’ win was something different. It was not just a victory. It was a comeback. A sporting rebirth, moreover, of such epic scale even Lazarus would have acknowledged it as something special. And there is nothing that captures the collective imagination like a comeback.

We have had a few to savour recently. There was Serena Williams, reaching last year’s Wimbledon final after suffering significant complications during childbirth. There was the antediluvian student James Cracknell, 14 years after hanging up his oar, rowing to victory in the Boat Race. There was Troy Deeney, seven years after being sent to prison for thuggish assault, showing the metallic nature of his cajones by blasting an equalising penalty in the dying moments of an FA Cup semi-final. Then there was Woods, returning from apparently terminal self-destruction, resurrecting his career before our disbelieving eyes.