So, what’s a GOAT to do if he’s already got five green jackets in his locker back at the clubhouse? Particularly, since Fred said, “Er, uhmm, if you don’t mind, just to save a little locker space and, you know, be a responsible steward of the planet’s resources, if you win a sixth jacket, we’ll just recycle the first one, from 1997, OK?”

Wait a minute, Ridley, who can get into a sports coat from the last century? I mean, we’re talking some serious tailoring, and, in a sport overrun with insufferable young flat bellies, even a GOAT doesn’t want to deal with the trash talk from that.

One year ago, he found his answer on the 12th hole on Sunday afternoon. Lights. Camera. Action. In front of a national audience, take 10 on a par 3. Yeah, yeah, yeah, then we have the birdie storm for the rest of the back nine, give the lunchmeat in the media something to talk about. But, a Sunday afternoon birdie fest from Tiger Woods at a major? Been there, done that.

• Related: Tiger Woods WITB 2020

Let’s get back to the blowup hole. (you can refresh your memory via the video below)

So, let’s start with two sets of assumptions. One set concerns Tiger Woods. Assume he’s a highly trained athlete who has benefited from superlative coaching during his career. For sure, the guy is gifted with enormous natural talent, but at the end of the day, the 99 percent perspiration, not the 1 percent inspiration, defines the man’s character.

Let’s also assume that Tiger Woods has been an enormously successful competitor in his chosen sport. That’s less an assumption than a reminder. Actually, so is the one before it. The second set of assumptions concerns you, gentle reader.

Let’s assume that you, too, trained intensely under competent coaching in some sport, not necessarily golf, but preferably an individual sport rather than a team sport, at some point in your life. And let’s assume that you’ve competed as an athlete, not at the PGA Tour level, of course, but at, oh say, the level of intercollegiate sports, or a high school team that went to state (“teams to remember play in December”), or that individually at some point in your life you carried a state/regional ranking.

So, how did he do it? A 10 on a par 3, a blowup hole, by any measure. This isn’t your ordinary “how to” article, as in, “How to swing like [insert current longest hitter on Tour].” This is more “how did that happen?”

Well, you get up on the tee box. Size up the situation and do the club selection thing. Pre-shot routine. Execute. Splash. Maybe you misjudged the wind. Maybe the wind shifted on you (what he said at the presser). Whatever. You are superlative trained and coached, and how many times have you heard “trust your body, trust your instinct,” if something misfires, don’t get rattled, don’t get shaken. Get back up there and do it again. Which he did. From the drop area. Splash. Lying four. Twice is different from once.

Deep breath. Slight shift in strategy. Something is going on up there above the trees, so, instead of shooting for the pin, you basically want over the water, on the dance floor, and to stick once you’re there. Over the creek. Over the green. In the bunker. Must have been a little amped up. That’s understandable. This hole is not going well. Well, at least nobody’s shooting at you with live ammo.

So, you gotta get out of the bunker. Up and down. It’s between you and the course, or, more precisely between you, the lie, the lip, the green and the pin — the rest of the course is blanked out. Coach always said the most important shot is the next shot. Which slides across the green, into the creek. (Lying seven, now, if anyone’s interested, but you’re not, put that thought out of your mind).

At this point, you have made the same mistake twice, twice. You are out there, by yourself, and no one else can turn it around. OK, if something goes wrong twice, that’s different than something going wrong once, and if two things go wrong twice, that’s different from something going wrong twice. Time for a reset.

For whatever reason, you are in a greenside bunker. For whatever reason, getting up and down is now off the table. What’s a GOAT to do? Same thing as anyone else. Get out the trap, onto the green in a position to two-putt and two-putt. Which, of course, is what he did.

This was not an exercise in floundering to ten. Take it apart, and it makes perfect sense. Not something you’d want to go through very often. But fundamentally different from thrashing around out of control. Not a definition of insanity — repeating the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. Not bad luck, compounding by an error in judgement, aggravated by a failure in execution.

It was a very disciplined 10.

And it, not the “oh-well-there-he-goes-again” birdie run afterward is what gives Woods a claim to being the GOAT.