Spring is here and the major championship season is upon us. The LPGA Tour is in Palm Desert this weekend for the playing of the ANA Championship at Mission Hills Country Club, the women’s tour’s first major of the year. For longtime golf fans, the ANA used to be called the Dinah Shore. Next Thursday, the men kick off their grand slam season with the commencement of the 81st version of the Masters from the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.
Some years there is much to report about the Masters as the powers that be tweak the course by lengthening it, putting in more trees, growing some degree of rough or altering a tee box so that the dogleg holes are more angular. This time around there will be no profound differences in the layout of Augusta National. It will continue to play to a par of 72 and will stretch out to a yardage of 7,435 yards.
Unlike the other majors, it is often difficult to pinpoint what style of golfer will don the Masters green jacket come a week from Sunday evening. Obviously the top golfers of the era have shown the ability to win multiple Masters titles as evidenced by the fact that Jack Nicklaus has won the tournament a record-setting six times while Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods have recorded four victories. With Tiger effectively on injured reserve and perhaps on the verge of closing out his illustrious 20-year career, it is time for the next generation of golfing stars to ascend to the top of the golfing world.
The Alister Mackenzie-designed greens are nothing short of diabolical at Augusta National. The greens are extremely large with multiple undulations. There are correct portions of the green to place your iron shot and there are incorrect tiers of the greens that can lead to 60-foot putts with 30 feet of break. Sometimes a great putter will prevail at the Masters, two-time champion Ben Crenshaw being a classic example of the putting genius prevailing regardless of his lack of driving distance. Zach Johnson, who won in 2007 while laying up to wedge range on all the par-5s, is another great example. Yet regardless of the difficulty of the putting surfaces, sometimes great iron players who aren’t necessarily great putters end up in possession of the green jacket. In the modern era, Bernhard Langer has won two Masters and Vijay Singh has captured one. Neither man could be considered a putting guru, but both Langer and Singh were brilliant iron masters in their prime and were able to land their approach shots onto the correct quadrant of the greens to set up short and manageable birdie putts.
Of course, as is often the case in golf, you do have one-hit wonders who just so happen to put together a four-round stretch to prevail at the Masters. If it happened the week before, they’d be the Houston Open champ. Perhaps Danny Willett, last year’s champion, will be one of those cases alongside past Masters winners Trevor Immelman in 2008 and Charl Schwartzel in 2011. Even during the heyday of Palmer, Nicklaus and Gary Player, three greats who won eight of 10 Masters from 1958 through 1967, you still had Art Wall and Gay Brewer each winning a green jacket.
While it’s difficult to prognosticate a tournament winner with fields of 100 top-notch golfers, there are a handful of modern-era professionals who stand a very good chance of becoming the 2017 Masters champion. First and foremost is the top-ranked golfer in the world, namely Dustin Johnson. Johnson is on a three-for-three winning streak following back-to-back-to-back victories at the Los Angeles Open, the World Golf Championship in Mexico, and the World Golf Match Play. Dustin has the power to prevail at Augusta and his wedge game is much improved. He kind of reminds me of Fred Couples in 1992 when he ran off some early wins and won the Masters because he was the best golfer on the planet during that stretch.
Hideki Matsuyama also has three PGA Tour wins this season and all of his victories were against strong fields. He has two runner-up finishes as well. Hideki showed his hand last year when he finished strong with a last-round 66. He has finished top five and top seven during the past two Masters. The 2011 low amateur at the Masters has the game to be its next champion.
Rory McIlory needs just a Masters victory to complete the career grand slam so that he can join the likes of Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tiger Woods atop the game’s version of Mount Rushmore. Rory once held the lead with only the final nine ahead of him at Augusta. He crashed and burned back in 2011 and then two months later rolled to an eight-stroke win at the U.S. Open. He now owns four majors, but it’s been more than two years since his 2014 PGA Championship win. Yet when he’s on his game, Rory is the best golfer out there. We’ll have to wait to see which Rory shows up next week at Augusta National.
Jordan Spieth has played in just three Masters and he has a win and a pair of runner-ups finishes. Yet last year’s final-nine follies still has to sting. Or maybe not. Perhaps Jordan is just as mentally tough as Dustin Johnson and will prevail one year after his demise on the 12th hole at Augusta. Plus there’s no arguing that Spieth is nothing short of the second coming of Ben Crenshaw on the greens. He does seem to be building up to this year’s Masters.
And then there’s the 40-something duo of Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson. Both played brilliantly at last year’s British Open. Stenson is a dynamic iron player who could be a Vijay Singh-type champion while Phil already has won three Masters titles and still has the creativity to deal with Augusta’s difficult greens. Jack Nicklaus did win a green jacket as a 46-year-old.
As far as my choice in the world famous Casey Cates’ Masters Pool, my dark horse pick really isn’t much of a dark horse. I’m looking at some real possibilities for Thomas Pieters of Belgium. When he last saw Pieters on golf’s center stage, he was finishing off a 4-0 record for Team Europe at last year’s Ryder Cup. He played collegiately at Illinois and won the Big Ten and the NCAA Championship, so he’s no stranger to American-style golf. He could have a breakthrough moment next weekend at Augusta National.
The Masters tees it up for the 81st time next Thursday in Augusta, Georgia. The new breed is ready to dominate the leader board at the Masters, but we should be aware of those 40-somethings who can still prevail at the majors.
