Young gun Lucas Herbert has one eye on the Masters and the other on The Players Championship heading into golf's unofficial fifth major starting on Friday in Florida.
Herbert will be making his debut in both after qualifying for two of the year's most prestigious events with victory at the PGA Tour's Bermuda Championship last October.
That breakthrough followed his Irish Open victory in July, making Herbert the first Australian since former world No.1 Adam Scott in 2008 to win on both the PGA Tour and European Tour in the same year.
While aiming for a top-10 at TPC Sawgrass after finishing seventh at last week's Arnold Palmer Invitational, the twin-tour star is already plotting his Masters assault.
In a calculated bid to avoid being starstruck fodder when the season's first major starts on April 6, Herbert will make a special trip to Augusta National three weeks before his dream Masters debut.
Herbert feels it's best to experience the magic of Magnolia Lane and everything that follows on his first visit to golf's wonderland well before turning up and trying to compete for the famed Green Jacket.
"We're going next week. We're going to play twice next week," Herbert said on the eve of The Players, adding fellow Australian Masters debutant Min Woo Lee was likely to tag along for the reconnaissance mission.
"Yeah, just want to get it out of the way, the whole Augusta wow factor and just be able to really take it in, seeing everything that goes on.
"Whether it be the clubhouse, whether it be the scoreboards that are up, whether it just be Augusta itself, those massive big trees that you sort of see on TV.
"If I can kind of get a lot of that out of the way two weeks out from the event, then when we do get there we're still soaking it in, but at least we've done the majority of that and we can get into preparing properly to play the tournament."
Herbert enters The Players Championship full of confidence after shooting a final-round-best four-under 68 on Sunday, when only four players beat par.
"I wasn't surprised to finish in the top 10 at Bay Hill," the 26-year-old said.
"It's a decent reflection where my game is at.
"I feel like I played really nicely at Phoenix and really nicely at Honda and missed both cuts; just didn't quite get a couple of breaks.
"But I knew that my game was there."
