At hole No 1, a woman balanced herself skilfully atop a narrow picket fence to crane over the crowds for a glimpse. At No 7, people lined the bridge looking from a distance like fishermen.
At No 9 the traffic briefly clogged, at No 13 it massed four-deep behind the ropes and at No 17 the top row of the grandstand at No 18 pivoted to gaze directly down at the tee.
A push chair toppled on a hillside in the rush at No 5 but luckily contained no baby at the time.
Marshals got workouts.
Yet as the tripling of the world's top three male golfers proved a hit yesterday at Emirates Golf Club in Dubai, one strand of it proved most instructive, for while No 1 Lee Westwood and No 2 Martin Kaymer are famous, No 3 Tiger Woods is very, very famous, and great fame trumps fame in the allure division.
So the applause at the No 1 tee during the introductions came out throaty for Westwood and Kaymer but throatiest for Woods. A man at the ropes on No 6 pledged:"Love you, Tiger."
A man walking from the No 18 tee marvelled to his mates that they had stood just one metre away from Woods, a distance clearly preferable to two metres.
Three dapper men in business suits scurried toward the walkway between Nos 8 and 9 so they could be close-up.
A moving blob of humans followed Woods from No 18 to the driving range, yearning for autographs as a mother urged her son to burrow in and Woods signed something that resembled a wrapped present, holding it aloft as he walked while he waited for its owner to retrieve it.
And all along the way, spectators flagrantly violated the on-course camera rule, photographing Woods repeatedly because, apparently, it is not enough to have an Internet chock-a-block with millions of Woods photographs taken by professionals.
"You just accept that when you play with Tiger," Westwood said. "it's going to create a lot of interest. Some people have been on the golf course before. Some people haven't."
The only audible derision about Woods along the windy-afternoon way came on No 4 just after Woods's galling lip-out of a wee par putt, after which a far-off fan muttered: "Go back home!"
While Woods might have agreed as he walked alongside the water toward No 5 looking positively lonely, the population sampling at the Dubai Desert Classic clearly wants the scandal-splattered Woods to soar back to being, well, Woods. It followed him faithfully at a time when following him entails a form of zig-zagging.
He wows and then flubs, or flubs and then wows. Or, as Westwood put it: "You know, it isn't fair to comment on his game because he's trying to change a lot of things."
He birdied No 6 magnificently then had to holler, "Turn hard," at his tee shot on No 7, which refused to turn hard and dunked.
He gathered some steam with birdies on Nos 10 and 11, then double-bogeyed No 12 with a chip from the back of the green so weak that he started walking right after he struck it and as it wheezed its paltry way.
He putted poorly early on, then seemed to heal right after that garish lip-out. "I mean, I had three easy looks and three bad putts," he said.
"They were not bad reads. They were just terrible putts. And then for some reason, I settled down and I hit pure putts all day."
The reason? "I have no idea," he said.
One last meander helped forge a joviality perhaps uncommon for a 71, a finish after which he joked repeatedly with reporters, including a thank-you for waiting through his rapid trip to a portable toilet.
That mood did not seem likely after his approach from 80 yards on No 17, an atrocity that flew over the pin to the back of the green and earned from its author the description "awful".
"Awful," he repeated. "It's something that I'm still working on, technique" - with his swing changes - "and unfortunately sometimes I think about technique rather than feel, and that one was a perfect example of that."
All the retooling wreaks a struggle in the wind with "controlling trajectory" or, as he often puts it, "traj," yet his traj excelled suddenly on the par-5 No 18, where he stood mid-fairway approaching an approach.
Five photographers lay on bellies behind him, ready for action, and he turned and addressed them with a gentle instruction about waiting until "after contact" for snapping.
"Thank you," he said, then turned around and blasted a beaut to the green that set up the eagle putt and loosed a roar from a crowd that evidently hopes this man will shore up his traj.