Here at his 25th Masters, Tiger Woods sounds all of his 47 years. It is not just that he fears the havoc this week’s forecast chill in Georgia could wreak on his bionic right leg, but that he betrays not a scintilla of belief he can win.

A necessary dose of realism, you might think, from a man still rebuilding his body after crashing into a ravine at 87 mph. But it is still bracing to hear the sport’s most remorseless champion, a man who at his zenith left his rivals not so much beaten as neutered, admit to becoming a ceremonial golfer.

For the greats, it is a fate that curdles the blood, this drift into competitive irrelevance. Augusta, by contrast, treats the sunset of a past winner’s career almost as a beloved rite of passage. You see it everywhere: in the lifelong exemptions, in the first-tee schmaltz with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, in the applause in 2002 for an 89-year-old Sam Snead even when he had just brained a patron with his drive. But for Woods, the acknowledgment he is no longer a contender is almost a mortal wound.

“I don’t know how many more I have left in me,” he said, the reconstruction of his leg had left him with a pronounced limp and lingering pain. “It’s just being able to appreciate the time I have here and cherish the memories.”

This marked a radical departure from his rhetoric 12 months ago. Having shocked the world by turning up so soon after a near-fatal car crash, he raised eyebrows further by declaring victory was possible.

Gone now is the obligatory prediction that he can confound the odds. In its place is a reluctant acceptance of his diminished state, a tendency to dwell less on the future than the past.

“The joy is different now,” he explained. “It’s harder. I don’t play as many tournaments, I don’t practice as much. I’m limited in what I can do. I’ve been able to spend more time with my son, Charlie, and we’ve been able to create our own memories out there.”

It is a curious energy that Woods generates these days. Somehow, his unparalleled dominance has given way to status as a sentimental underdog, with the galleries harbouring faint hope that despite his myriad physical struggles, he can contrive a way to break par.

“For me to come back and play last year was a small victory in itself,” he reflected. “My mobility is not where I would like it, but I’m lucky to have this leg. Yes, it’s been altered and there’s some hardware in there, but it’s still mine. It has been tough and will always be. The ability and endurance of my leg will never be the same. That’s my future, and I’m OK with that.”

There was a pathos in hearing Woods depict his limitations so vividly. But to study him in practice at Augusta was to observe a man at peace. He has been playing alongside his lifelong friend Fred Couples, who offers a useful template for Woods in this twilight period, having managed to stay competitive around this course into his -sixties, all while fighting chronic back pain.

“I think when he tells you, ‘I’m only going to play four events this year and Augusta is one of them’, he’s ready to go,” Couples said. “It’s probably not going to be easy. But I think he’ll be fine.”

He has played four competitive rounds all year, and while the third of those, a 67 at Riviera, was auspicious, he still wound up in a tie for 45th.

The brutal truth is that Woods is here to reminisce rather than engineer another result for the ages. He has tried everything, even setting up greens in his back garden to replicate the Augusta challenge, but the prospects of a shock are vanishingly small.

Quietly, imperceptibly, the most ruthless winner of all is reconciling himself to his casting as the elder statesman.