Woods - already has Green Jacket (Getty Images)

As the only man to have held all four majors at the same time, Tiger Woods does not need anybody to tell him how best to go about trying to win a Grand Slam.

But he certainly should not try the method employed by Jose Maria Olazabal when the US Open championship was last at Pinehurst six years ago.

Two months on from his emotionally-charged second victory in the Masters - three years earlier he feared a future in a wheelchair after rheumatoid arthritis had been diagnosed - Olazabal travelled to North Carolina full of hope.

An opening 75 which left him eight adrift of the leaders, who included then world number one David Duval and Phil Mickelson, was not quite the end of the dream.

But so annoyed was the Spaniard by the finish to his round that on his return to his hotel room he punched the wall and broke a bone in his hand. It put him out of golf for a month.

Woods finished joint third with Vijay Singh that week, one behind Mickelson and two behind Payne Stewart, whose victory story turned to tragedy four months later when he died in a private jet accident.

Woods, Singh and Mickelson will draw strength from their 1999 performances as they return to the Pinehurst No 2 course. For Woods, the goal is number two in his quest for a first-ever clean sweep of all four majors in one season and number 10 in his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus' record 18 majors.

Every year, of course, the winner of the Masters goes to the US Open as the man who can win the Grand Slam. But very few get as far as the Open with the possibility still alive.

To date only five players have ever won the first two majors of the year. Craig Wood was the first in 1941, but there was no Open that year because of the war and he was knocked out in the second round of the then matchplay US PGA.

Ben Hogan did it in 1951 and 1953, but first because of his health and then because of a clash of dates the Grand Slam he deserved was never accomplished.

Arnold Palmer won the Masters and US Open in 1960 and only Kel Nagle denied him the Open at St Andrews, while Nicklaus was thwarted by Lee Trevino at Muirfield in 1972.

And then came Woods. A year after completing his "Tiger Slam" - victories in the 2000 US Open, Open and PGA and then the 2001 Masters - he made a successful defence at Augusta and won the US Open again at Bethpage Black.

By coincidence Muirfield was the setting again for the third leg, but from only two off the lead at halfway he fell victim to the worst Open weather of recent years, crashing out of contention with an 81.

With St Andrews staging the Open next month for the first time since he triumphed there by eight shots in 2000, many are saying that if he wins two he will win three and if that is true, there will be plenty of excitement going into the US PGA at Baltusrol in August.

But Woods knows better than to make leaps like that in his brain sticking firmly to the mantra of one major at a time, one round at a time, one shot at a time.

"You stay in the moment, stay in the present, because there are so many different circumstances that could happen out there," says the 29-year-old.

And the way he won his fourth Masters underlined that. Chris DiMarco was clear until Woods had his amazing run of seven successive birdies in the third round, then he followed that unbelievable chip-in at the 16th with two bogeys to fall into a play-off, before winning it with a birdie.

Pinehurst is so stiff a challenge that the course alone should stop him getting ahead of himself with the main defences being the raised greens, many of them like upturned pudding bowls.

"You can putt off the green 50 yards and not feel like you hit a bad putt," comments Woods, who refreshed his memory with 36 holes there last Monday after finishing third in the Memorial Tournament.

"Pinehurst is so different to any other US Open because it so much more relies on short game than pure ball-striking."

Horrifyingly for his rivals, that probably plays into his hands more.

Inevitably, in the aftermath of Augusta the Grand Slam question was put to Woods just as it was in 1997, 2001 and 2002.

"I've done four in a row before, but it would be nice to do it in the same year," he answered. "It would be different to how I did it the last time."

And the fact that nobody else has done it gives him an enormous edge.