Last Sunday afternoon I was guest host for a radio programme originating from one of those ubiquitous sports bars, this one on Cape Cod. As we waited to go on the air, we were surrounded by a bank of television sets. Several of them were showing various NCAA basketball tournament games from around the country, and one was tuned in to the Bay Hill Invitational golf tournament down in Orlando.

Tiger Woods was still playing the front nine when an errant tee shot scattered the crowd. Tiger's ball was prevented from straying into further trouble when it struck an anonymous spectator and came to rest in the light rough just off the fairway.

I'm not claiming to be clairvoyant here, but I did say, out loud, at the time to one of my colleagues "you know, if we could play with Tiger's galleries we could probably shave eight or 10 strokes a round off our scores."

All right, that's an exaggeration. Attempting to strike a golf ball in front of that many people would make most of us so nervous we'd never get it airborne, but put it this way: if you or I could line every fairway with 10,000 or so strategically-placed, lifesized mannequins we'd find far less trouble off the tee than we do.

The point being that the swarming army of spectators attending Woods's every stroke has grown so large that it has become almost impossible for him to drive a ball into serious trouble without hitting one of his fans first.

As most golfing aficionados are by now aware, Woods made his first successful defence of one of the nine tour titles he won in 2000 at Bay Hill last Sunday, when a spectacular birdie on the final hole gave him a one-shot win over Phil Mickelson.

It may not have been as widely publicised, but Tiger's chances were considerably enhanced when his wild hook off the final tee first struck a spectator named Tony DeKroub and was then picked up by Tony's curious girlfriend, Kathleen Eidsvaag, who dropped it like a hot rock when she discovered that the offending missile was a Nike ball whose logo had been augmented with the word Tiger. Woods played Bay Hill again on Monday morning in a charity event, before approximately 15,000 fewer eye-witnesses. Had he hit the same tee ball off number 18 that he had a day earlier, it would have at the very least wound up in the trees, and in all probability it would have been out of bounds. He'd have been lucky to make six on the hole.

When a moving golf ball strikes an uninvolved bystander it is, of course, considered a rub of the green. Neither does a penalty obtain when a ball in play is handled by an "outside agency" - such as a dim-witted spectator.

To be sure, these rules apply equally to all competitors, but they remain more likely to help Tiger Woods than any other golfer simply because he usually has a larger crowd of slowmoving targets available than anyone else. This advantage is magnified when he is playing in the final group, as he was last Sunday.

By the time Tiger got to the 18th tee, he had not only his own gallery, but everybody else's, to use as backstops, a fact which was not lost on Woods himself. Even as his drive violently changed course, the expression on Tiger's face remained almost serene - as if he were confident that what did occur inevitably would.

"With that many people over there," he explained afterwards, "it was going to smoke somebody."

If we could play with Tiger's galleries we could probably shave eight or 10 strokes a round off our scores Tony DeKroub was unhurt by his inadvertent collision with Tiger's ball, which actually one-hopped off the cart path before it hit him in the neck. Eidsvaag, for her part, was so mortified by her own thoughtless intervention that she initially denied having picked up the ball at all, but televised footage of the episode shot from an overhead blimp nailed her. Tracked down by Orlando Sentinel columnist David Whitley and confronted with the incriminating videotape, Eidsvaag eventually confessed. Asked what on earth she could have been thinking when she picked up Tiger's ball, Eidsvaag told Whitley "I don't know. I wasn't thinking."

Woods, in any case, was allowed a drop from the spot where Eidsvaag had hastily disposed of the evidence. Then, because his stance was on a paved cart path, he was allowed another, which left him just enough room to nail an amazing 195-yard five-iron to the green, which was followed by an equally impressive 15-foot putt to win the tournament.

The episode was eerily reminiscent of a similar misadventure involving a dead-left Tiger tee shot at last year's PGA Championship in Louisville, which may or may not have been aided by spectator interference.

His Tigership is not, of course, the only golfer who gets help from the crowds. Three years ago, his closest golfing friend Mark O'Meara took advantage of a similarly generous drop (after his "lost" Strata ball materialised in the pocket of a spectator's jacket) to win the British Open at Royal Birkdale.

Even after his good fortune off the tee, Woods still had to make two shots that would have been beyond the mortal limits of most of his peers to win the Bay Hill tournament, and as a crestfallen Mickelson, holding his baby daughter in his arms, watched in amazement, he did just that.

The fact remains: if one of us hits that same shot next week, we're hitting three off the tee.