St. Andrews, Scotland ? There’s no better place than St. Andrews — surrounded by ruined cathedrals and tumbled-down castles and monuments to burnt martyrs, the stony debris of epic pride — to regain a sense of humility. The Old Course demands awe, and provides historical context. What’s clear against its backdrop is that Tiger Woods has been a great player, but not a great champion. What’s unclear is whether he’s up to becoming one.

In his two previous victories at St. Andrews, Woods was all towering stature and false virtue. Now his image looks like one of those ruined spires up on the hillside. His personal scandals have done incalculable personal damage, and may have done harm to his competitive mastery, too: He has never gone this deep into a season without a victory.

This British Open is therefore an important rite of passage and turning point for him. He has a chance to make some real progress in his comeback, both professional and personal.

Woods’ public re-entry wasn’t going to be complete until he had faced St. Andrews — both the hard questions from the British tabloid press, and the questions begged by the honorable Old Course itself about worthy champions. St. Andrews is Woods’ favorite course in the world, and a victory would prove he has recovered his game, but more importantly, a graceful performance might help restore some of his lost esteem.

Tuesday was his day of reckoning with the media. As it turned out, he faced just a half a dozen mildly brisk questions about the toll the scandal has taken on his golf swing. He treated them as interrogations, with rote, toneless replies.

None of it sounded insincere — but none of it suggested Woods has experienced any real epiphany about his public responsibilities, either. In fact, the most tense moment came when a British reporter accused him of becoming annoyed with spectators during a practice round, and asked whether he’s lived up to his promise to be kinder to his galleries.

A British reporter asked him: “Tom Watson has said you need to clean up your act on the golf course. He’s gone on record. Many of us over the years have heard you use the F-word, we’ve seen you spit on the course, and we’ve seen you throw tantrums like chucking your clubs around. Are you willing to cut out all those tantrums this week and respect the home of golf?”

Woods said, “I’m trying to become a better player and a better person, yes.”

The questions probed at a crucial and unresolved question about Woods: Why should it require a conscious effort for him to be courteous and responsive to the people who pay to watch him play?

Woods’s scandal may have been the result of addiction, but it was also an expression of supreme self-absorption. Long before it broke, his behavior toward others was less than commendable, in a variety of small ways, from his rudeness on the course to his grudging autograph-signing. In a recent interview with Golf Digest, his former coach Hank Haney described a pattern of petty discourtesies, of unacknowledged e-mails, unreturned calls. Woods often has treated his galleries the same. Spectators have been nuisances, their requests impositions.

As Phil Mickelson points out, the game of golf is meant to be an open, accessible one. The proximity of spectators to players, with only a thin rope separating them, gives it a unique intimacy, as well as a sense of mutual participation.

It’s unfair to ask Woods to be someone he isn’t — he will never have Mickelson’s personal ease or reflexive generosity — but surely it’s not too much to ask that he make a signal change in perception.

The hope here is that the Woods who plays at St. Andrews is a more available player, one who gives as well as takes, and who understands his reciprocity with the audience. St. Andrews is, after all, a public course. It sits right in the middle of this splendid ancient town, a thousand-year old village on the grassy headlands of the North Sea.