Extraordinary. Phenomenal. Legendary. Those were just a few words being bandied around here in the US in the wake of one of the most thrilling and unpredictable golf tournaments any of us are likely to witness.
And that was before it was discovered the injury to Tiger Woods' left knee will now keep him out for the rest of the season.
The adjectives since then are pretty much off the scale, but they start at 'wondrous' and escalate off into the upper stratosphere of literary munificence.
Woods: Played through the pain
If we thought the sport of golf was already hooked on every shot and utterance of one man, it is even more the case this week. And you know what? Every cough, spit and splutter is fully deserved.
The simple fact is, there are no words to explain satisfactorily what we saw over five days at Torrey Pines; no ordinary measure of achievement by which to judge Tiger's 14th Major success; and no way of really knowing just how much mental and physical agony he went through to edge out the valiant Rocco Mediate on the 91st hole of a true sporting epic.
The pundits here are struggling bravely to equate the Battle of Wounded Knee with all and any previous examples of gallantry on the sporting fields of America, including Los Angeles Rams' Jack Youngblood playing in Super Bowl XIV with a broken leg.
Hall of Pain
And the general consensus is that Woods earns the No 1 spot in the Hall of Pain, possibly by a large margin.
Five days; 91 holes; in the spotlight every moment; and with the massive weight of expectation adding to the equally heavy burden of a torn ACL and double stress fracture of the left leg.
Those of us who watched every hole of those 91 (albeit from the comfort of the sofa) will have been left in no doubt this was an achievement for the ages, even allowing for the relatively feeble challenge from some of the other so-called big names in world golf (Phil Mickelson? He started the final day 12 shots off the lead. Three-time Major winner Ernie Els? A reasonable 14th, but five-over-par for the final two rounds. Or how about top European and world No 6 Sergio Garcia? He never threatened on the Sunday, slumping to a 74 and six over, the same as Mickelson).
No, it was left to journeyman Mediate and Britain's resurgent Lee Westwood to provide the main threats, and both performed admirably in the circumstances.
But this Open wasn't so much about the competition as about Tiger's ability to overcome his own physical stresses.
The pain was clearly etched on his face on numerous occasions but we could only guess at what was going on inside that knee, despite innumerable close-ups. The TV commentators were equally helpless to estimate accurately the toll that joint was taking on arguably the most famous sportsman on the planet.
But still we marvelled at his eagle-starred performance on the Saturday; his stunning birdie finish on Sunday to force the play-off; and the unforgettable drama of the final holes on Monday, including another nerveless birdie on the 18th.
Many were quick to acclaim the tournament right then as possibly the greatest of all time (hard to argue for that with the relative poverty of the rest of the field). Yet the full picture was still not revealed for almost another 48 hours.
The true enormity of his victory, basically playing on one leg and gritting his teeth through not one but two major injuries, finally surfaced only on Wednesday with the announcement of the end of Tiger's season and the subsequent medical details.
Golf, as a sport, took a huge indrawing of breath and has yet to exhale fully. Pundits scrambled to assess what they were hearing and pronounce judgment on this unprecedented news.
Of course, the fundamental verdict is not one to cast much positive light over the other 155 men who started the 108th US Open, or who contended in any of the other tournaments in which Woods has competed for the last year or so.
That verdict insists, fairly plainly, that Tiger on one leg is pretty much better than any of the others on two; a chasm of ability which no-one seems likely to bridge anytime soon.
Totally unique
But it is not so much the gap to The Rest as the realisation of where Woods truly is; how far he has advanced the sport in competitive terms and what makes him totally unique in the sport's annals.
You can pretty much decide that no-one else has ever been so driven, so single-minded, so utterly undeniable on a golf course. Add in a talent level that has always been little short of sensational and you can make a clear case for Tiger being one of the greatest of any sport and any generation.
Predictably, the gasps of astonishment have already led to pronouncements of The End of The Season As We Know It, with no meaningful golf for the rest of the year, including Royal Birkdale and September's Ryder Cup in Kentucky.
That may be a touch premature (those events WILL still take place and there will be winners, despite the lack of a Tiger!), but it is understandable how many will feel a huge sense of anti-climax at tournaments without the world No 1 in attendance.
However, it will also serve as a six-month reminder of the events of Torrey Pines in June. I wrote last week that if the wounded Tiger was, somehow, to win the US Open, it would be a mighty leap forward on his inexorable March to History.
It may have become, ultimately, a horribly crippled leap, but it was most certainly a jump of heroic proportions.
