Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy making for a mouth-watering Masters

If it’s indeed “All about the Money” as the song said, then it’s a song Tiger Woods certainly doesn’t need to be playing. For Woods, it long stopped being about the money.

But for the rest of us, the money is another timely reminder of just how impressive Woods’s comeback has been.

Excluding playing in his own Hero World Challenge, in the five counting tournaments towards the PGA Tour money list that Woods has played in upon his return to the tour, he has earned roughly $1.1 million.

Rory McIlroy has in his five PGA Tour events this year earned only a shade more – roughly $1.7 million. And this includes money from his win in the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Jason Day has earned about $2.1 million through five PGA Tour events. And Justin Rose and Dustin Johnson have each cashed about $2.7 million in their five PGA Tour events this year.

So what does this tell you? Well, it says that based on money made alone, if Woods had at any stage managed to convert one of his five tournaments – which included a finish of tied second and tied fifth fifth – into a win, the 42 year old with multiple injuries and surgeries and officially belonging to a previous generation of golf stars could well have come back to the game even better than the current generation.

As it stands, he’s more than on a par with many of them.

Sure, it’s early days and there are still multiple variables to come into play, not least of which is Woods’s ability to sustain this level of performance.

But it certainly makes the run-in to The Masters all that more tantalising.

A competitive Tiger Woods and a resurgent Rory McIlroy has clearly lifted the mood of world golf.

Could it all just fizzle out by the time that trip down Magnolia Lane arrives? Of course it could.

But the hope that maybe there’s something developing here that could make the first Major of the year the start of a truly memorable Major season in 2018 is good enough for the moment.

As even Gary Player Tweeted after McIlroy’s win, “No doubt a superb performance that has us all fired up going into Augusta.”

Tell the azaleas at Augusta National to start blooming.