Everyone’s agreed. This week we’re going to get a Masters for the ages.
The world’s top players are on or very near the top of their form, ready to joust with each other in great style amidst the alluring and impossible greeness of Augusta.
We’ve more realistic, quality contenders than at any time in the last 20 years, Jordan, Jason, Rory, Rickie, Adam, Justin, Dustin et al. Doesn’t anyone get named Joe or John anymore?
But we’re spoiled for choice, a far cry from the time when mostly you just tipped Tiger or Phil and shrugged when Trevor Immelman won.
That’s a sharp reminder that the golfing gods know no script. There is always a story at the Masters, it’s just not necessarily a particularly good one.
Since Augusta National reined in the ridiculous anti-golf set-up they seemed to adopt to try and alienate the players and spectators – as it was when Zach Johnson and Immelman merely outlasted the field to win – there’s been some pretty good Masters.
The play-offs that saw Angel Cabrera and Bubba Watson win their first jackets and Adam Scott his first major were pretty compelling stuff.
Charl Schwartzel’s four birdies to finish and win by two from Day and Scott in 2011 ranks among the most under-appreciated feats in major championship history.
But let’s be honest, the last two have been not much of a contest. Bubba won his second jacket going away from a callow Jordan Spieth two years ago and then Jordan, a year older and wiser, basically lapped the field last year.
Spieth and Bubba represent the Masters specialist. This event, unlike any other major, allows a golfer to get his feet under the table by being at the same venue each year, although Augusta do try and vary a few things to surprise people.
The whole set-up suits Watson’s game, and it’s only the mental side that needs attention. He’s shown enough signs – second place at Doral, as he did in both the two years he won at Augusta – to suggest he’s switched on this year.
Spieth is -23 for the last two years, which is enough to draw anyone’s attention. It’s going to be a good measurement of where he is, whether a reaction to last year’s beanfeast is due and whether he’s tuckered out from all the things he’s asked to do and seems unable to say no to.
Rory McIlroy, we are told by so many good judges, is the true best player in the world, and is made for Augusta. He has to win there sometime, we are assured.
I buy into both of these opinions to some degree, but not without reservations. Rory clearly has tools that his rivals don’t have, but putting them together in the same manner as Jason Day seems to do almost habitually is another matter.
As for Rory being made for Augusta, his best finish was backing into fourth last year. Sure, his -12 would have won a few Masters down the years, but Spieth’s winning score was -18, and any comparison at Augusta out of the same calendar year is not really advisable.
If it all comes together for Rory, he could win. You’d like to think it will one year, and maybe this one. But Greg Norman and Ernie Els were “made for Augusta” and both of them don’t have squeeze space in the tiny champions’ locker room.
Day, apparently able to do no wrong at present other, is well capable of rendering the others as helpless and winning his second major in succession. If he does, expect darkness to have fallen when he’s helped into the Green Jacket by Jordan.
I like Adam Scott, who has kept his powder dry since his early March surge to successive wins. I also like Louis Oosthuizen, who probably should have won the hole before Bubba’s escape from the trees in 2012.
But the golfing gods are contrary, and I’d not be surprised if we got a winner from the ranks this year. I’d have a couple on Brandt Snedeker or Charley Hoffman if I were a betting man.
AUGUSTA’S WINDOW DRESSING
Just the sight of a few Green Jackets is enough to turn most of golf to the equivalent of a besotted teenager. Take the reaction to Augusta National’s “Drive, Chip and Putt” event for kids this weekend.
It’s a welcome addition to ANGC’s professed intention to do good for the game. But the reaction is as if they’re the only club ever to have run a junior event.
The R&A has run the Junior Open since 2000. Furthermore they’ve allowed accompanied Under-16s into the Open free for a decade…don’t see ANGC following suit there, do you?
If ANGC was actually sincere about growing the game, how about starting an event for one half of the population?
A Masters for women would immediately be regarded as the world championship in their game. Fitting it in the schedule is surely not beyond the wit of the Green Jackets.
ANGC opened their doors to women with great fanfare in 2013, admitting Condoleeza Rice and Darla Moore. So far just ONE other female has been invited to join. The R&A, in contrast, has 20 women members.
Having the likes of the brilliant Lydia Ko, a double major champion at 18, on the premises would show Augusta is properly good for all of golf.
