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AUGUSTA, Ga. -- A tornado ripped through here Friday night, and somehow not a pine needle at Augusta National was disturbed.

Winds reported in excess of 100 mph blew across the Garden City of the South damaging homes and property, prompting weather warnings that sounded like air raids and dropping hail the size of golf balls, or maybe golf-ball markers, into the Savannah River valley, yet not one leaf was out of place here at the club.

It was as if the storm never happened at the 73rd playing of the Masters.

Tiger Woods blew through here this week after gale warnings posted off his previous win two weeks ago at Bay Hill. He burned and cursed and grimaced and muttered and stomped around here for three days, firing shot after shot into and against the winds, missing putts and yardages and opportunities for 53 straight holes before willing in a long putt at the 54th to keep his head above water and the leaders in sight heading into the final day.

They'll play the fourth round of the Masters today, and it's almost as if Woods hasn't been here at all.

For a week now, he's wandered around Augusta National Golf Club with a pained look on his face, lipping out birdie putts and taking angry one-handed swats at pars and bogeys. Woods looked the same after his practice rounds early in the week as he did walking off the 18th Saturday afternoon, a mere four strokes under par and seven shots behind leaders Kenny Perry and Angel Cabrera.

Saturday's round was not unlike the previous two, a slow start followed by a frustrating final nine with balls slamming off pins and drives disappearing into 100-year-old pine trees that stood straight and tall Friday evening and somehow appeared straighter and taller Saturday morning.

That's both the allure and the magic of this place. While the rest of the city was recovering amid the sound of chain saws and sirens, the cardinals were chirping inside the privet hedge and nothing appeared out of place. The patrons walked onto the property having been through a long night, tornadoes touching down at various points around Richmond and Columbus counties, and along a line between Augusta and Columbia, S.C.

Police had gone through the downtown area Friday night issuing warnings and detaining people inside sound structures as the Weather Channel went live to Augusta with engrossing coverage of what it described as a major weather event.

Creeks were out of their banks. Limbs were strewn all over the area and a layer of leaves and twigs covered almost every square inch of Augusta, some of which was still under water when moving day at the Masters began.

At about 2:30 Saturday, as Woods walked across the Hogan Bridge between the 11th and 12th greens, Rae's Creek at the bottom of Amen Corner looked just as it had the day before. The meandering stream has been through many stages of flow through the years, from a trickling brook in the early days of the Augusta National Invitation Tournament, as the Masters was called until 1939, to a raging floodwater that wiped the hallowed 11th green off the earth in 1990.

The water appeared calm Saturday as it flowed slowly toward the quaint dam house that serves as a picturesque backdrop on television. Behind the dam, just off the course property, the torrent crashed in waves against the eroding banks.

Woods would make bogey at the 11th, and he walked back across Rae's Creek after his tee shot at 13 with a score of 2-under par, exactly as it was when he walked off the course after the first day. He has broken 70 one time since his 2005 win here, and he made barely a ripple walking from the lowest point on the golf course to the highest late in the day.

He'd double-bogeyed the first hole after driving into the trees close to the ninth fairway, then three-putting. His tee shot at the par-3 No. 6 slammed into the pin and ricocheted off the green. Woods walked down the long hill into the azalea-filled bowl where the 16th pond rests amid the patrons and the redbud plants that give the hole its name. He was alone in his thoughts.

"You don't want to know my thoughts," he said later. "You do not want to know my thoughts."

The redbuds were perfectly in place Saturday as were the azaleas and the nandina and the giant magnolias and live oak that have grown here for more than a hundred years. Not one leaf was out of place, not the least indication that an inch and a half of rain had fallen overnight along with tornadoes touching down and hail pounding the entire South in one of the strongest line of spring storms to come through Augusta in a long, long time.

On a moving day like no other at the Masters, nothing had moved overnight. It was as if the storm simply didn't get past club security, as if some miracle of nature had occurred and spared the course from the tempest that tossed Augusta.

Tiger Woods can win the Masters today only if another miracle occurs and nine men collapse in front of him and nine more collapse around him. Woods enters Easter Sunday at the Masters with about as much a chance of winning as a tornado slamming into Augusta without moving a pine needle at Augusta National.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com