Getting ready for the tournament

Before the start of play, interviews and bonhomie...

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday are practice days for the final jousting for the Holy Grail of golf that begins today.

After arriving in Augusta on Tuesday, I received my credentials from the most impressive media centre I've seen. It is like a large auditorium with hundreds of workstations. Statistical data is continuously fed to scribes and screens show various aspects of the play.

Many golf correspondents know each other. Everyone is talking golf. In the press lounge, complimentary food and drinks are freely available and great bonhomie exists.

At the interview centre, Tiger Woods is in great demand, more so because 2007 is the 10th anniversary of his having won his first Masters where he broke 20 records and tied six others.

People are expecting a huge burst of creative play by Tiger, which will take him further ahead of Phil Mickelson. Between these two a great rivalry has emerged because the last five Masters crowns have been shared between them "" three by Tiger and two by Phil. It is reminiscent of the great rivalry between Palmer and Nicklaus/Hogan and Nelson/Snead and Demaret, over the decades. 
 

CHARTING THE COURSE
HOLE	NAME
1	Tea Olive
2	Pink Dogwood
3	Flowering Peach
4	Flowering Crab Apple
5	Magnolia
6	Juniper
7	Pampas
8	Yellow Jasmine
9	Carolina Cherry
10	Camellia
11	White Dogwood
12	Golden Bell
13	Azalea
14	Chinese Fir
15	Firethorn
16	Red Bud
17	Nan Dina
18	Holly

Tiger, Phil, Furyk, Els and others have all expressed these are the toughest greens because misplaced shots can easily have you putting from such strange angles that you can slip 10-15 feet past the pin and easily make three putts. That is why there are so many multiple time winners (44 out of 70 tournaments; Nicklaus six, Tiger and Palmer four each) as, over the years, they learn where to place their shots.

Uncertain weather plays a tremendous part (as I write, there is lightning, thunder and some rain outside). If dry, the ball will run further and the second shot to the green becomes easier to place; however, if wet, softer fairways reduce the length to drive, but because the greens dry off very fast here, they remain firm. Therefore, one is putting long irons to difficult pin positions which could increase the scores considerably. Despite this, all the players feel, and I have personally seen, the course is in perfect condition.

Tiger Woods feels there are many young players coming up, such as Casey, Stenson, Scott and others who could win, and he has much respect for them, including for Jeev.

He feels his contribution to the growth of this game has been to widen the base of the pyramid, enabling many more people to easily enter the game. The winners circle will be very different in the next 15-20 years. Furthermore, equipment technology and course design and redesign has altered dramatically.

Locally, there is magic in the air as Arnold Palmer has now agreed to become the honorary starter, which means he will kick off the tournament with a drive off the first tee with a drive at 8:00 am today, as Gene Sarazen/Sam Snead and others did for many years. He has earned this honour by his signal contribution to golf and having participated in more than 50 tournaments, winning four. He regaled us all with the story of how Arnie's Army came to be.

Apparently in the early '50s and '60s, soldiers in uniform would do the scoring on all the score boards over the golf course. As Arnie was winning the 1961 Masters, they changed the scores with such a flourish that this phrase got coined, and it stuck; it caused a significant awareness of the game all over North America at that time and helped create the legend of Arnold Palmer.

Lots of people around here are beginning to say, "You know what? I like golf more than any other sport."