sport news The 88th Masters is set to be a showdown for the ages with stone-cold Scottie ... trends now
One way or another it is expected to get biblical out there. When the 88th Masters commences, the forecasts speak of thunderstorms in the morning and a placid man of faith wrapped in green come Sunday afternoon.
At a point in time when golf cannot agree on much of anything, you would be hard pushed to find anyone on the grounds here at Augusta National who challenges the notion that Scottie Scheffler is the heavy favourite.
They feel it is his year, just as it was in 2022. But with Scheffler the conversation tends to broaden out from such confined margins, because why limit it to his year when we could talk more about it being his era?
Naturally, those discussions might be best shelved until some shots have actually been fired in this tournament, for which there are no guarantees that many will be played at all.
But at the outset of this wonderful championship, in this most contradictory of places, it would be unwise to place strict limits on a 27-year-old Texan whose gentle manner is one hell of a mask for a stone-cold sporting killer. He is the wrecking ball with an aw-shucks smile; a preacher of God's work whose game could suck the belief out of the field.
Scottie Scheffler is the red-hot favourite to win the 88th Masters and the calmest man in town
To go by the statistics, his play from tee to green is the best golf has known since Tiger Woods
That he has won on two of his past three PGA Tour starts and finished runner-up in the other gives immediacy to the hype. But it is the manner of his performances that has built a vast aura within the sport, just as it might be said his understated personality - he said 'gosh' or 'golly' four times in his press conference on Tuesday - has limited the spread of his appeal beyond it.
It would be necessary to offer a reminder at this stage that Scheffler has won only one major. But to go by the statistics his play from tee to green is the best golf has known since Tiger Woods.
It has been so good that he could carry a weakness as pronounced as his putting for 18 months and barely left the world No 1 spot the entire time. Now that his play on the greens seems to have been fixed via a switch from blade to mallet, it is natural to wonder who might stop him.
His placing alongside Rory McIlroy for the first two rounds will be utterly fascinating. Few can live with McIlroy when he is at his best, but that doesn't apply to
