Any doubts that may have lingered about the Aintree Grand National being a gloriously parochial affair were dispersed by BBC'S John Hanman, who proudly informed us that the occasion was "also live in China".

Perhaps the Chinese decided to secure the rights to the race as a sop to their American aviation guests, who can't be having too much fun surfing through the local channels in the hope of finding George Bush saying sorry.

It is small consolation to the hapless pilots but at least they got to see 15 minutes of truly astonishing television that probably got washed away in the flood of Tiger images dominating the US cable channels.

Aintree on Saturday was everything that Augusta wasn't and was all the better for it. Aintree was so real you could almost feel the damp and smell the horses, while Augusta came and went with its inevitable look of manufactured utopia, the Pleasantville of sport. The BBC, was, of course, at Augusta and managed to somehow venerate the tradition and class while nimbly sidestepping the fact that its foundations are those of prejudice, bigotry and good old-fashioned snobbery.

Much of this has to do with the commentary of Peter Allis, purring away in cocoa-and-Jackanory-fashion through the entire proceedings.

"Hello," he murmured as the cameras settled for a moment on a turtle. "He's an old fellow. They sit on the banks, you know, when the sun comes out and ponder things."

Golf is a curious sell as a sport these days in that the issue of doubt, the debate over the contest, has been all but erased by Tiger Woods's bloodless brilliance. Never is the pressing invitation, the subtle insistence that we should all be left breathless by Woods's genius for the game so globally evident as during the Masters tournament.

It is, as Colin Montgomerie observed on the eve of this year's exhibition, "the only story in town." It was a strange thing, to watch one of Woods's would-be competitors admit what is rarely acknowledged by the perpetrators of the incessant Tiger talk; his contemporaries are an insipid bunch.

No wonder the broadcast directors elect to show us non-stop Tiger rather than the uninspired field of fading masters and ultra rich, ultra professionals who don't seem to have an angry bone in their bodies. Golf is not a game of people. It is Tiger versus the course, Tiger versus the sport itself. Magnificent though the spectacle may be, the pity is it is such a cold-eyed and essentially passionless story. The pity is five minutes of John Daly is more compelling than five hours of Tiger Woods.

"Tiger Woods - he is a class apart," said Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, who turned up for Aintree. "It's not just his ability to win, knowing how, it's in his eyes. You can see it in his eyes. It is an obsession in a way."

The perfectionist in Ferguson, a sportsman of exceptionally rigorous mindset himself, empathises with Woods but even though he was communicating his admiration for the golfer, it was hard to detect the joy or the exhilaration that supposedly informs the global love of sport. That was why the mud-splattered image of Carl Llewellyn hanging onto to the rein of his horse, Beau, as the last two survivors in the National left him in their wake was last weekend's truly great moment in sport.

"Terribly disappointing. He was going bloody well," said a rueful Llewellyn afterwards.

Always a wonderful occasion for even the most half-hearted of racing fans, this weekend's National was extraordinary. At one point, with the rain teeming down and the jockeys covered in mud, it was difficult to see which of the horses were still seated.

Only in the National could you hear the words, "and there is some carnage at Becher's as we come to Valentine's Brook". Racing commentators and competitors alike unashamedly describe the great falls and tumbles for which this race is famous in language that evokes something of the phraseology used to account for casualties in the great war.

"Yes, fell at Becher's first time," was Tom Scudamore's understated account of his own spectacular demise.

"I had nowhere to go. Had to fall," said Norman Williamson.

Falling was more or less what the race was about, so much so that at one point it appeared the history of the event was about to reach its natural conclusion and that nobody would actually manage to finish the course. "And we have to go back to 1928 for the last time when only two horses remained," declared Jim McGrath as Smarty and Red Marauder improbably stayed the course.

So unprecedented was the nature of the race that afterwards, collective relief at having survived and participated seemed to govern the mood of the jockeys more than individual disappointment.

Back in Augusta on Saturday evening, the prediction was nobody would survive the closing round onslaught of the man Allis would have us know as "the Tigger." Woods's tee shot at the 18th was a movement of singular power and beauty and it was the faces in the crowd that were worth watching more than the golfer's own expression, which rarely deviates from that of iron resolve. People get funny near Woods; they adopt looks of beatific joy and awe as they sit on their deckchairs in their pastel American summer clothes.

"He is living in a glasshouse but somehow fits it into his schedule," said Allis as Woods acknowledged the gallery on the closing green. It was momentous television in a way but distant too.

Somehow, the sight of Norman Mason, all giddy and childish after Aintree, saying he "was nearly in tears", and that never in his life had he seen a race like that seemed to matter more. It was easy to relate to, the opposite to the bewilderment with which commentators account for golf's wonder.

Tiger Woods needs a great adversary, a human adversary, if watching his unfolding genius is ever to become a less remote pleasure for the world at large.