The greatest moment of Rocco Mediate's career will give him the opportunity to erase one of the grimmest.

Rocco Mediate (left) jokes with Tiger Woods after Woods won the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego. After an 18-hole playoff, Woods needed to win a sudden-death hole to put away the tenacious 45-year-old Mediate. (Associated Press)

With a career-defining epic match with Tiger Woods at the 2008 U.S. Open, Mediate earned a chance to return to the Masters Tournament.

"I never thought I'd be back," said the 46-year-old Mediate. "I didn't think I was going to ever play that competitive again. I just want to go back and play it again."

Everyone who remembers the way Mediate went head-to-head with the world's No. 1 golfer at Torrey Pines may have forgotten what happened to him in 2006 at Augusta National Golf Club. It was a very different kind of courage that got Mediate through the final round at that Masters.

He could have been in the final pairing with Phil Mickelson that Sunday had Mediate's back not buckled on him in the 15th fairway in Saturday's third round. He struggled in and made double bogey on the 18th hole to fall two shots behind the leader.

"I went into the (physiotherapy) trailer, and they gave me a few pills, and I asked, 'Can you give me five hours?' " Mediate said. "He kind of looked at me and said, 'I don't know about that.' "

Despite the pain, Mediate went out Sunday with birdies on Nos. 6, 7 and 8 and gained a share of the lead with Mickelson. Then, as he hit an approach shot that rattled off the pin on the ninth hole, his back gave out again.

"It's unbelievable that I even played, and here I am with a chance to win the golf tournament and I can hardly get up to the 10th tee," Mediate said. "It was just a nightmare."

The nightmare was only beginning. After a bogey on 11, Mediate got to the 12th tee hoping he could just get his 8-iron to carry 140 yards. But his back stood him up again, and the ball fell into Rae's Creek. He hit two more into the water before escaping with a 10 on the par-3. The CBS cameras were mercifully turned away.

"I really thought I was going to run out of balls," Mediate said. "I didn't think I was ever going to get it over the water. Because if I hit a wedge over into the back bunker, I'd still be there."

He made two more bogeys the rest of the way, shot 46 on the back and finished tied for 36th.

"People kind of pulled me through," he said. "I shot 80 the last day, and on the 18th green it was a standing ovation.

"It wasn't so crushing because I made a 10 or made nine bogeys on the back. It was because I couldn't play anymore. If I would have done that it would have been very frustrating."

Mediate assumed that was the beginning of the end to his relevance on the major stages, until he met physical therapist Cindi Hilfman in February 2007 and she transformed his back into something he no longer had to fight.

"If Cin would have been there in '06, I might have some kind of green jacket on me," he said. "Cause I wouldn't have had that problem. I would have been able to contend on the back nine. Would I have won? I don't know. But I would have given it a better shot."

Mediate put up a fight against Woods last June in California. Woods had to rally for birdie on the final hole of both regulation and the 18-hole playoff to extend the match long enough to put Mediate away.

Mediate calls it the highlight of his career -- even if he left with the runner-up medal instead of the U.S. Open trophy.

"It was the greatest day ever for me on a golf course," he said of the Monday morning playoff attended by 25,000 fans. "Obviously I would have liked to win, but I got to see what I could do with all I've learned. People were absolutely expecting me to get destroyed. I didn't. I knew I could win."

The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.

"I still get 20 people a day come up to me and say something or send me letters," he said. "It went way beyond golf."

That was the case in January, when a letter arrived through his sponsor Callaway from police Lt. John Ray in Longview, Texas. Ray's daughter, Allison, had been killed in a car accident last May, the week of her high school graduation.

"The guy doesn't know anything about golf and doesn't know me, nothing," Mediate said. "But he found himself watching the United States Open a couple of weeks later, after all of this insanity from Allison dying."

It took the officer six months to get his thoughts together well enough to share them with Mediate and what his effort and the way he handled it meant to him in his grief.

"What he learned from that is how to lose but not be beaten," Mediate said. "I found that hard to believe."

Mediate will try to carry that lesson with him to Augusta. Does the Masters owe him?

"Golf doesn't owe me anything," he said.