AUGUSTA, Ga. — We wait nearly nine months for this every year.
The day the “Champion Golfer of the Year” is crowned at the British Open and hoists the Claret Jug in July, all eyes in the golf world turn to April at Augusta National, where the next major championship begins.
As agonizing as the wait can be through the long winter, that wait is always worth it.
That cannot be stated more emphatically than for this week’s Masters, where storylines are as abundant as the masses of Georgia pines and blooming azaleas are around the fabled golf course.
Scottie Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 ranked player, will be trying to win his third Masters in the past four years. If he does, he would be just the second player ever to do so — the other being Jack Nicklaus, who won in 1963, ’65 and ’66.
Rory McIlroy is making his 11th attempt at completing the career Grand Slam and winning a first green jacket. If he wins, he would become just the sixth player in history to complete the career Grand Slam.
Tiger Woods is the only player to have done it in the past 59 years. McIlroy is one of 12 players who’s won three of the four legs of the modern Slams.
If Xander Schauffele wins, he will have won three of the past four major championships, having won the PGA Championship and British Open in 2024.
Then there’s the compelling curiosity about how the LIV Golf players will perform. Save for a couple exceptions, this week will be the first time we’ve seen the prominent players from LIV compete against the top players from the PGA Tour.
There, too, are other ancillary storylines to this week that will capture imagination.
A sentimental one includes this being the final Masters for 67-year-old Bernhard Langer, a two-time winner of the green jacket playing in his 41st Masters.
It, too, could possibly turn into a Masters tournament farewell for 65-year-old Fred Couples, who’s playing for the 40th time at Augusta.
There’s also the intrigue surrounding Angel Cabrera’s return to Augusta after spending two years in an Argentinian prison for domestic abuse.
As the 2009 Masters champion, Cabrera is an invitee into the field, as uncomfortable as that may be for some of the Green Jacketed members and the patrons.
When you boil down all of these compelling storylines, the stars of the show this week figure to be McIlroy and Scheffler.
As ESPN analyst Curtis Strange said this week: “I’m looking forward to the Rory-Scottie show.”
For Scheffler, who won in 2022 and 2024, Augusta National is his happy place, his comfort zone. It might as well be his back yard.
For McIlroy, Augusta National has been a chamber of horrors, the site of his most devastating defeats.
Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee this week called Augusta National McIlroy’s “nemesis.”
“It brings out the worst golf in Rory annually that we see almost every year,” Chamblee said. “He annually underperforms there. There are things about that golf course that have been very problematic for him.”
Chamblee points out, though, that “from a competitive standpoint,” McIlroy, who’s fresh off winning the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Players Championship this year, “has never gone into the Masters playing better or sharper” than he is this week.
Another trend in his is that none of the other top players in the world come into the week in the kind of form he’s in.
Scheffler hasn’t won yet this year, Collin Morikawa had a couple of close but disappointing finishes at Bay Hill and TPC, and Schauffele is coming off an oblique injury that set him back.
Also, none of the top LIV Golf players — Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson or Cam Smith — has been in particularly good form, either.
“I’m certainly not going to discount them, but they’re not quite on their games,” Golf Channel analyst and McIlroy confidant Paul McGinley said. “So, that would buoy [McIlroy] a little bit as well.”
Scheffler, even though the start of his season delayed because of a cooking accident in which he cut his hand, doesn’t seem to need a lot of buoying.
He goes merrily about his way without being adversely affected by anything.
“For me, he’s still the favorite next week,” McGinley said. “I think he’s got a game that’s really suited to winning around there. He’s a very, very measured player, and measured players win around Augusta.”
Chamblee agreed.
“To the degree when I [say] the golf course doesn’t necessarily fit Rory, doesn’t necessarily fit Bryson, doesn’t even necessarily fit Collin Morikawa, it fits Scottie like a Savile Row suit,” Chamblee said. “It’s his happy place.”
