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The week began with Lee Westwood championing the strong United Kingdom contingent and they receive for their enhanced world standing.

Although Westwood didn't live up to his billing, the two English finalists ensured that home golfers truly made their mark on the world game.

And by has stepped up to a new level. He became the first Englishman to win a WGC event and the first from the UK since Darren Clarke's win in this tournament back in 2000. It was also Poulter's first win on American soil.

The and those much ridiculed comments of "there's only Tiger and me" of a couple of years ago are looking rather less outlandish.

This is a player who doesn't travel with a coach and has no time for the mind gurus. He has his own mental strength, and always has had from the moment he made up his handicap (four) when signing his forms to turn pro back in 1994.

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Word first surfaced a couple of weeks ago that Tiger Woods was in the week of the WGC Match Play Championship at Dove Mountain - and the story has proved correct.

Yes, Woods has not teed it up here at Dove Mountain, but he has resurfaced and with sufficient impact to completely overshadow the event backed by his former sponsors Accenture - the company that was most damning of the world number one when it dropped him.

Coincidence?

It's 82 days since Woods' car crash that precipitated his private life being paraded through the media. Bar a couple of statements confirming early in the affair, there's been nothing. He disappeared from public view and left the world to guess his next move.

Until, that is, the first day of the Match Play and precisely the moment the morning wave of first-round matches were . That was when he broke cover and started to let us back into his life.

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Is there another sport at which UK sportsmen excel more than golf? It's a question worth posing, as is one that asks whether our leading golfers receive due credit at home for their success on the world stage?

This is thrown into sharp focus given the make-up of this week's WGC Accenture Match Play, which is supposed to throw into head-to-head combat the world's top 64 players.

Unfortunately the continued absence of and Phil Mickelson's decision to take a re-scheduled holiday robs the event of the top two players in the world.

But in their absence the stage is set for home players to prosper in the Arizona sunshine. There are no fewer than 11 UK hopefuls in the 64-man field, a reflection of the extraordinary strength in depth we can boast at the moment.

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These are fractious times in the world of golf. Not only has one of for misdemeanours on and off the course, the world's leading active player is railing against the game's rule makers.

Tom Watson's comments in Dubai on Tiger Woods are telling, but it is (United States Golf Association) for its new rules on grooves that provides the more significant talking point for the game.

The emphasis of the row has moved from the question of the morality of exploiting a loophole and is now all about how the rule change for the pro game is being implemented.

It has implications that stretch far and wide because the right of manufacturers to produce the most effective clubs is being called into question, and so is the role of player power.

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