Perhaps the single greatest asset that Tiger Woods has is the ability to turn a bad day with his swing into a good day on his scorecard - and never has that been truer than during the third round of The Masters.
To put it bluntly, and despite the odd stunningly good shot, Woods played a terrible round of golf at Augusta on Saturday. He carved drives into the trees, blasted irons long and short of their targets, putted like a man with the touch of a drugged-up elephant, and chipped poorly from spots where he would normally leave the ball stone dead.
BM wasn't the only one wondering what on earth happened to him that he three-putted three times in a single round. Tiger himself mentioned it in his post-round interview, clearly as bemused as the spectators under the Georgian sun.
His round was in total contrast to his first two days, when his brilliant shotmaking came to the fore and a steely putting touch on the greens left him in the thick of things.
But the fact that he managed to turn his pig's ear of a day into a round of 70 says everything you need to know about his comeback. Just when things were starting to fall out of his control, he rattled in three birdies in a row from the 13th, despite cursing at his drives on two of the three holes.
Even those heroics did not mask the fact that he wasn't playing well, and he hit a drive on the 17th that would have shamed an 18-handicapper. The ball scooted miles off towards the 15th fairway; but he played back over the trees, pitched to eight feet and very nearly saved par. And to make up for the bogey he even spanked a perfect approach up the last to tap-in range for a birdie on the last.
He might be four shots behind Lee Westwood and three back from Mickelson; but Woods has just got his bad round for the tournament out of his system - unlike the men that he will be chasing.
Westy and Lefty will probably struggle to sleep well tonight, but let's hope they do. If so, and if the final round turns into the same sort of dramatic birdie-and-eaglefest that the first three days have seen, then the 2010 Masters will go down as one of the greatest tournaments in the history of golf.
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Another player getting his bad round out of the way today was Ian Poulter. Chin up, Poults: one bad round doesn't mean you're a bad player. And, as demonstrated perfectly by Mickelson picking up six shots over Lee Westwood in the space of 20 minutes, anything really can happen at Augusta.
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Shot of the day: Phil Mickelson's eagle on the 14th was a great shot, but it's always a bit of blind luck when a ball hit close actually goes in. So the award instead goes to his second shot on 13, when after a gutsy drive that flirted with the stream he set up an eight-foot eagle putt to kickstart a hitherto lacklustre round.
Quote of the day: "I've played golf long enough where I've never had four great rounds in a row. One day is always going to be your off day, and on your off day if you can keep it under par it's always a good sign, and I did that today." - Tiger Woods on his shocking ball striking day that still yielded him a two-under-par 70.
Stat of the day: Lee Westwood has hit 80 per cent of greens in regulation, an astonishingly high percentage - but the stats are artificially low since they don't include balls which finish on the fringe, even if they are also close to the flag. That's how good his ball striking has been this week.
Nonsense of the day: The pin positions on the 16th and 17th - a mid-range par-3 and a short-ish par-4 - were both perched on the sort of shelves that a mountain goat would struggle to hang on to. On 16 only a ball flying within three feet of the flag at perfect distance ever had any chance of getting close; while on 17 the position was so extreme that there wasn't a single birdie all day - and this on a hole where the majority of the field are attacking the green with a wedge.