Designers have spent much of the past decade trying to Tiger-proof golf courses. Usually this involves adding another suburb onto their length, but at a humble 6297 metres, Victoria Golf Club has proven that when it comes to taming the world's fiercest golfer, size doesn't matter.
Victoria is a classic sandbelt course, built in what many believe is the greatest collection of golf courses in the world. Exposed to the wind, with difficult rough and greens which can make grown men weep, this links in suburban Cheltenham has had the world No.2 scratching his head all week.
It has mainly been the greens which have caused Woods the angst. The wind makes it hard to putt and the grain makes it hard to read. At the end of two rounds, of Tiger's 141 shots, 66 of them have been with the flat stick.
In comparison, leader Adam Bland, who for the record is currently ranked world no. 546, has had just 50 uses of blade and sits nine shots better off than Woods.
It's apt that Victoria's greatest feature, its greens, should provide the point of difference between performances this week. Eight years ago, the greens proved the club's great downfall. Cut too short, the balls wouldn't sit on them and as a result the first round of the Australian Open was abandoned.
The course has served its stint in golf's version on the naughty chair. It has already proven that even though it doesn't possess length, it is far from the anachronism that people thought these types of courses might be when Woods was monstering his drives unheard of distances ten years ago.
The key for any golf course is its ability to use its natural characteristics as its strengths. The course has not changed dramatically since the debacle of 2002, but a stronger accent has been put on the things that make it so hard to play.
It was described by Geoff Ogilvy earlier in the week as a thinking man's golf course and nobody is better placed to make that call than Ogilvy, who is a member of this club and its most famous one at that.
Sergio Garcia, one of the most travelled golfers in the world having regularly played on the majority of the world's continents, has been rediscovering his love for the game this week, thinking his way around a challenging course and getting the rewards with an excellent 65 on Friday.
Bland, an unheralded 28-year-old with only a few pro victories on minor tours in Canada and in Australia, sits atop after two rounds, but he is well aware that this course can make a goose out of you in a matter of minutes.
His good mate Alistair Presnell is a study in that. On Thursday night he was top of the world after opening with a 65 to hold the joint lead. Thirteen holes into Friday, he was looking for somewhere to hide as he crashed to 12-over par and confronted the prospect of missing the cut.
If there is a small mercy to this course it is the kind ends to both the front and back nines. Presnell climbed his way back with three late birdies and will front up again, albeit early on Saturday.
As for Woods, he is still upbeat. The trials and tribulations of the fickle Victoria greens pale in