Hush! It's like sunshine and shadow. You can sense it with your eyes shut. Tiger Woods blows cold. Tiger Woods blows hot. It's an atmospheric condition.

He's cold and you don't even have to watch the ball, you can read it all in his body language, the loathing he feels for each shot, the sense he has of his game slipping away, the knowledge that somebody called JL Lewis is 11 shots ahead of him in the US Open.

You can hear it too, the anger of Tiger Woods. It spews out in the hot words he spits out under his breath, in the geyser eruptions of gasps and sighs among the faithful as they thunder around Southern Hills. Five over after two rounds is not a country he's familiar with.

"From what I've been told by the TV people," he says later. "I'm hitting okay. To be honest, though, I've pulled a couple, I've shanked a few right, a few long, a few short. I've got the whole gamut going. From now I've just got to play one shot at a time and keep the ball in play. I tried to do that towards the end. That's my game from now on in."

His day had started well enough. Tiger sank the eight-foot putt he'd left on the 10th green the night before when the rains came. That should have set him up, but the last seven holes he played were as if he hadn't quite woken up from an uneasy dream. Double bogey at the 18th and he thunders into the scorers tent to submit his worst first round at a US Open since 1998.

Not long afterwards, Tiger is out in the sunshine again. Fresh round, fresh hope. He drives into the trees on the second. Mutters bitterly. On the fourth, a Tiger-friendly 360-yard par four, he finds a deep bunker in front of the green. Fails with a 12-foot putt when he gets up. He moves on to the monstrous fifth, a par five. Bogeys it as well.

The seventh. Tiger at eight foot - for a birdie. The ball sneaks past. Tiger raises his eyes to the sky. Twenty five holes he's played now, one birdie. The glorious drive-for-five has turned into a question of whether Tiger is going to make the cut.

Each hole has its grim count. He made one birdie in his first round. By the ninth hole of his second round it's one birdie in 27 holes, then one in 28. Woods smiles at the hand he's been dealt.

"I am out there trying as hard as I can and sometimes things don't go your way. Nothing you can do about it. Try as hard as you can and it's even funny to see the ball bounce that way sometimes. Sometimes you have to laugh at yourself."

He says it but there is no play in his eyes.

People keep joining the gallery out of morbid fascination. Six over. "Ah can say ah saw Tigah when he was six ovah. Honey watch this, it's the X- Files honey . . . You're still the man Tiger.

On the 10th he has to play a wonder shot out of the bunker just to survive, but survive he does. He smiles broadly for the first time today.

Suddenly there is a lightness about him. He just plays golf now. Dissects the fairway on 12, sinks a healthy one for birdie and goes to 13, a big par five. The whooping and hollering tell the story of another birdie. It's four greens since he two-putted.

People come running. Tiger is charging. The world is back on its axis. He made one more bogey to make today but, even as a long shot, it's game on folks, game on. He is slightly frustrated later he hadn't charged the last few holes but he is walking steady. That's enough.

"Where the pins are it's difficult to go after some of them. I short-sided myself a few times. Got up and down most of the time, which I am proud of, but not something I want to keep doing. I made the two straight birdies but it's not like `great I'm going to run the table now', you can't think that way on a golf course this difficult. It's a shot at a time."

One shot at a time. He knows he's not dead. His friend Mark Brooks has put freakish amount of red on the board. If Brooks can do it, so too can Woods.

"If I'd made a birdie on the last hole (an eight-footer that refused the hole) I'd be four shots from even par with another 36 holes to play. You never know. If I play a round tomorrow like Brooksie is right now, if I can play like that I get myself back in the tournament. That's the beauty of a course like this that's set up difficult, if you post the scores you'll move through the field."