I was in a terrible mood last night for a variety of reasons. Up covering the high school baseball state championships (Section 1 with three champions: Mamaroneck, Kennedy and Keio. The section hadn’t produced a local winner since 2002), I was in the midsts of working a 16 hour day, if you include driving back from Binghamton and the worst part was getting to miss out on watching moving day at the U.S. Open.

But fate had a way of making my day a lot more enjoyable. Myself and three other Team Journal News members wound up filing our stories from a hotel lobby in which there was a big screen TV and thus, the day was saved as I got to witness the magical end to yesterday’s round for Tiger Woods.

I still can’t believe what I saw. The wayward stinger off the tee that re-injured a bad left knee wound up becoming a birdie in the form of a one-hop-and-in chip-in. Then two perfect fades on the 18th lead to a long eagle putt to vault Eldrick into the lead heading into tonight’s final round. Absolutely incredible.

Greatest athlete ever? If you don’t think golfers belong in that conversation that’s your business. But most dominant athlete ever? He is No. 1 by a landslide.

By the way, how about the job by Larchmont-native Andrew Svoboda? The guy was six-over on his front nine to fall near the back of the pack, but then rallied for a 3-under 33 on the back nine!

After all that, he shot a 74 to actually move up a spot from tied for 49th to tied for 48th. He will tee off at 12:40 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

As for Tiger, he will tee off about 4 hours later. Is there anything better than the final round at the U.S. Open? With the pressure and everything else, I can’t wait to watch the absolute struggle that clearly makes this the toughest test in golf.

I think 3-under, where Tiger is now, will wind up winning. No matter what happens, it should be fun. Enjoy it and enjoy Father’s Day.