The Masters on HooperstarGolfer.blogspot.co.uk April 8

Welcome to The Masters on HooperstarGolfer.blogspot.co.uk

A unique series of blogs taking you inside the history of Golf''s First Major and looking ahead to the 2013 Masters, as well as providing updates on the play and reports from each day of the first major of the golf season.

I hope you enjoy the series which will publish articles each day between April 1 and 15 EXCLUSIVELY on www.HooperstarGolfer.blogspot.co.uk

All feedback is appreciated.

Enjoy.

Matt.

It would be easy for the golfing public to forget which member of the field at Augusta is the most recent major champion and that should this person win The Masters he will have won two consecutive majors and three legs of the Grand Slam at the age of 23. Talk of struggles with new equipment, loss of form or personal problems have surrounded this individual ever since he missed the cut in Abu Dhabi, but for this individual golf is all about four tournaments – the Majors, beginning this week at Augusta National Golf Club with The Masters Tournament.

Whilst he may have lost his world number one ranking to a resurgent Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy is still the number one golfer in Europe and is by far the outstanding golfer in a crop of players which represent the best chance of a European winner since the 1980's. There can be little doubt that Rory has had a strange start to the year at best, missing the cut in Abu Dhabi following the lavish announcement as a Nike Athlete and then crashing out in the first round of the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship before a controversial withdrawal at The Honda Classic. But at the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Doral Rory showed signs of coming back to the standard he set in 2012 with a final round 65 to finish in the top ten, all-be-it several shots off Tiger's winning score, following an inconsistent first couple of days at the Shell Houston Open his caddie, JP Fitzgerald, convinced him to add another tournament prior to The Masters and the Valero Texas Open would welcome the world number two.

 

Four birdies and four bogeys on Thursday had McIlroy sitting four strokes off the lead but once again with one eye on the cut mark, in the second round however he birdied the final three holes to post a 67 and move into contention. Following a 1-under-par 71 the Ulsterman was positioned four strokes behind leader Billy Horschel, the two had locked horns in the 2007 Walker Cup as amateurs and with a place in The Masters at stake for Horschel the young American certainly had a target on his back. Four birdies and a bogey on the front nine put him into the thick of the battle but the surging Martin Laird knew it was win or bust if he wanted to drive down Magnolia Lane and in a flawless round of 63 setting a new course record the Scot edged the PGA Champion by 2 strokes to claim a third PGA Tour title. For Rory it wasn't the dramatic headline grabbing victory but it was another week of improved golf and he looks more than ready to go to Augusta for a serious crack at history.

No European Golfer has ever won three different Major Championships even the likes of Seve and Faldo specialized in The Masters and Open, and most recently Padraig Harrington has won three majors but only in two different tournaments, for Rory there is a real chance of joining the legends of golf this week in Europe and around the world, at the tender age of 23. Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh have all won 3 or more major titles but for Els it has been two US Opens and two Opens, Mickelson has claimed 3 Masters and a PGA and the Fijian Vijay Singh has won two PGA Championships and one green jacket. Rory can become the first European golfer in the era of the four majors to win the last and first majors of each season and only the second after Harrington to win back-to-back major titles; he can also become the first golfer other than Tiger Woods to win three of the four major championships since Tom Watson when he won the 1982 US Open at Pebble Beach.

Make no mistake Augusta and Rory fit like a glove, but it has so far been a love-hate relationship between the two.

McIlroy made his Masters debut in 2009 at the age of 19 and finished in a tie for twentieth place, a respectable start for a non-American in his first crack at Golf's First Major. He followed this with a missed cut in 2010 but he would fare significantly better 12 months later as he dominated the opening three rounds before a final round meltdown saw him finish in a tie for fifteenth. And then last year he started well, coming into the weekend just one stroke off Fred Couples and Jason Dufner's leading mark of 5-under, he was tied with Sergio Garcia, Louis Oosthuizen, Bubba Watson and Lee Westwood, seemingly showing he had banished the demons of 2011. But then he played poorly over the weekend to slump to a tie for fortieth place and 16 shots off the winning score. The wide open fairways and the premium on quality ball-striking make Augusta the perfect stage for the Northern Irishman to perform and it is surely only a matter of time before he adds the green jacket to the US Open trophy and the Wanamaker Trophy.

Both Nicklaus and Seve won The Masters at the age of 23 and there is no question that despite the shaky first four tournaments of 2013 Rory has found some confidence and must be one of the favourites for the title at Augusta, especially with much more focus on the World Number One Tiger Woods. Just because Rory is our leading candidate though should not overshadow the wealth of talent we have at our disposal this week in Georgia, with one man continuing his annual quest at breaking through in the Majors.

Lee John Westwood has won 38 official worldwide titles including 22 on the European Tour and has a superb record in the Majors, finishing in the top three of The Masters, US Open, Open Championship and PGA Championship in the last five years but he is still waiting for the win that many agree would crown a stellar career with wins in five continents. In 2010 he held the 54-hole lead and finished second to Phil Mickelson, his score of 13-under-par would have won 67 of the 75 Masters Tournaments and in 2011 he finished in a tie for 11^th before coming third last year, just 2 strokes out of the play-off. His record of nine top five finishes in the majors is even better than Colin Montgomerie, but for Westwood he is still fit enough to continue competing into his forties, and if he manages to make the breakthrough soon it would not surprise me in the least if he was to collect a second and a third.

The move to America has enabled him to practice for longer and more often during the winter and for that reason alone I make Lee Westwood the favourite this week. It is the easy option to go for Tiger Woods.

Westwood has the best recent form of any contender at Augusta and having slipped out of the world's top ten the only remaining goal is a Major title, all of the ranking achievements have been done by Westwood so only a Major will now do for the Englishman.

Two other Englishmen with good records around Augusta National are very close friends; Justin Rose and Ian Poulter once had an epic battle for the British Masters at Woburn as youngsters on the European Tour, it would not be a surprise to see either of them or both contending this week. Rose has become a force at the very top of golf and having won a European Tour Order of Merit, a PGA Tour Play-off tournament, Jack Nicklaus's Memorial Tournament and a World Golf Championship the next step is clearly to claim one of golf's great titles. In 2004 and 2007 Rose made great starts to The Masters, posting rounds of 67 and 71 to hold the 18 and 36 hole lead before fading in 2004 and again in 2007 held the first round lead with a 69 and went into the final round in the final group just one off the lead before trouble at 17 ended his challenge.

Rose is very different on and off the course to his pal Poulter, who will be hoping to be as inspired at Augusta as he was in the Ryder Cup, but talk of his strokeplay record being inferior to his match play record should stop right now. Poulter is the only Englishman to win two World Golf Championships and has won 14 worldwide titles including tournaments in America, Europe, Asia and Australasia, and his Masters record shows signs of a potential future champion. The Arsenal-mad Poulter has never missed the cut at Augusta and the last three appearances have included two top ten finishes, his superb short game and status as the best pressure putter in the game surely make him a contender on any golf course at any time.

Completing the set of England's Masters contenders is Luke Donald, the former World Number One doesn't have the major championship record of Lee Westwood but has finished in the top ten at Augusta three times including most recently at the 2011 Masters where he was one of 8 contenders on a wild final day. A Seve-esque short game has been the bedrock on which Donald's rise to the top of the game has been built and if he is to win at Augusta it may be in much the same way Mike Weir and Zach Johnson achieved victory.

Surely another contender for Europe must be Graeme McDowell. The 2010 US Open champion has recorded a top twenty finish at Augusta and his game is suited to major championship standard courses and without being a prolific winner McDowell enjoyed a decent summer with top five finishes at the US Open and Open in 2012, serving as notice of his major championship pedigree. Leaving the UK now and the rest of Europe has several contenders, including the 2010 PGA Champion Martin Kaymer from Germany, Spain's Sergio Garcia, Italy's Francesco Molinari and Belgium's Nicolas Colsaerts, all of whom have the variety of skills to bring Augusta to its knees.

Kaymer was boosted immeasurably by his Ryder Cup winning performance at Medinah last September and consequently went on to win at Sun City in the Nedbank Golf Challenge in December. Two years ago he tried to change his swing in order to compete at Augusta, but the fashionably fading German has the game to win on any course, and if Jack Nicklaus can win six times fading it then Kaymer can surely add a green jacket to his Wanamaker Trophy. Sergio Garcia has long been a contender in the Majors without making the breakthrough, the closest he has come to winning is the 2007 Open at Carnoustie where Padraig Harrington edged him in a four-hole play-off. His form over the last 16 months though and increased confidence on the greens have made him a more regular contender and with his prodigious driving and iron play Augusta is always a course where the disciple of the great Seve Ballesteros will feature. Italy's Francesco Molinari may be an outsider but in many ways he has a similar game to Garcia and Westwood, with unerring accuracy off the tee and with his irons, but struggling on the greens. The former World Golf Champion clinched the Ryder Cup in his match with Tiger Woods and knows he can go toe-to-toe with the best and win. Nicolas Colsaerts has been talked about in the last 12 months as a contender for a big title, with his immense power off the tee and his performance at the Ryder Cup didn't do anything to dispel the theory that Colsaerts can replace Flory Van Donck as the greatest Belgian golfer of all-time and maybe go one step better than Van Donck did and win a Major Championship.

Padraig Harrington ended Europe's major drought with a win at the 2007 Open Championship, becoming the first European Major Champion of the 21^st century, Graeme McDowell ended 40 years of pain at the US Open with a narrow win at the 2010 championship at Pebble Beach and Harrington became the first European winner of the PGA Championship in the strokeplay era in 2008. Europe's best long for another era of success at Augusta to rival that of Seve, Langer, Lyle, Woosnam, Faldo and Olazabal and as many as nine or maybe more will harbour serious hopes of adding their names to the six Masters of European Golf this week.

Tomorrow on 

The Masters on HooperstarGolfer.blogspot.co.uk

 – 8 years and counting, can Tiger Woods claim a fifth green jacket or will another American triumph?