AUGUSTA, Ga. - Tiger Woods wants it all. He wants to win, and he doesn't want to be questioned when he doesn't. He wants a home and a family - good for him - and a golf game no one will ever forget. History will note whether Woods can have it all. History starts this morning when Woods tees it up seeking his fourth Masters championship.

"You can't look at each day, or you'll drive yourself crazy," Woods said recently. "You have to look at the big picture."

Big-picture outlooks work well for most of us, but maybe not so well for prodigies, virtuosos, masters and other geniuses. Their lives demand a smaller, sharper light. For them, there is no big picture. If Edison had been a big-picture guy, our grandparents would have bought oil lamps instead of chandeliers.

Maybe for someone as singularly gifted with golf clubs as Tiger Woods, the big-picture life isn't available. At least not without cost.

That's why this new phase of the erstwhile wonder kid's career is so interesting. Can he maintain the passion and the drive his talent demands?

While Woods was winning his eight majors, he lived in a golf cocoon. He was a wonk. Woods will debate that point: " 'E' and I have lived together for two years," Woods told the New York Times, referring to his fiancée, Elin Nordegren. "When I won two majors in 2002, we were already living together."

Cohabitating and deciding to make it legal are two different things. You can debate what effect Woods' engagement and marriage might have on his professional single-mindedness. Until he wins a few more majors while sharing a roof with "E," it remains a fair question.

In the last two years, Woods has split with his coach, Butch Harmon, and displayed a less dour, more playful side, at least in the manicured-image world of television advertisements. (You have to love that ad where he's trying to kill the gopher, a la Bill Murray in Caddyshack.) Instead of playing the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am in February, Woods was just up the road, watching Stanford, his alma mater, play basketball. Woods looks to be having the time of his life. Off the course.

On it, he's spraying tee shots and missing greens. And his demeanor seems to have changed.

The Woods who pillaged the PGA Tour through June 2002 cared little about who else was playing. If he had his "A game," as he called it, it didn't matter. When you asked Woods about winning golf tournaments - he has 40 wins already, one this year - he said he expected to win. It was arrogant at first. Then he kept backing it up.

Ask Woods now about winning, you probably will get this: "You know what? These players out here are very good. And golf is very fickle," he said last month. Spoken like a mere mortal.

When Woods was shut out of a major title in 2003, Ben Curtis won the British Open and Shaun Micheel the PGA. Woods needed heroics just to make the Masters cut. He has reacted defensively to the questions, as if it is unfair, ridiculous even, that we should expect more. "I was compared to (Jack) Nicklaus when I first came out here. Now I'm being compared to what I did in 2000, 1999 and 2001. The scrutiny has been amazing," Woods said. No more amazing than how Woods played between 1997 and 2002.

The Augusta National he'll see this week no longer is a home run hitter's paradise. Stubbly rough, bunkers moved to catch 300-yard tee balls and weather predicted to be drier than the last two years will make short-game wizardry as important as 320 yards off the tee.

It's a course they once tried to "Tiger-proof" by moving back the tee boxes. Lately, that notion seems quaint.

It's a new day for Tiger Woods. No longer dominant but still feared, Woods' career begins Phase 2 today. Everyone will be watching.

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com