AUGUSTA, Ga. — This could be a Masters unlike any other.
For the first time, members of a rogue golf tour will play for a green jacket at Augusta National Golf Course, which long has considered itself a staid keeper of golf's most hallowed traditions.
Scottie Scheffler will try to become the fourth player to successfully defend his Masters championship.
Rain is threatening to wash away weekend rounds, presenting at least the remote possibility that the Masters could finish on a Monday for the first time since 1983.
Tiger Woods is here with his limp, and Phil Mickelson without his patented braggadocio.
Augusta National has lengthened its signature 13th hole, turning the beauty into something resembling a beast.
The two issues dominating many conversations this week — the proposed rollback of the golf ball and the presence of LIV golfers — have little to do with the green jacket.
On Thursday morning, golf itself will reclaim one of the world's most picturesque stages, with three clear favorites trying to overcome personal and historical challenges to win the season's first major.
Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm are the world's three top-ranking players, and there is dramatic drop, in statistics and perception, from No. 3 to the rest of the field.
Scheffler, the world No. 1, has a chance to separate himself from even McIlroy and Rahm. McIlroy is trying, for the ninth time, to win the major that would give him a career grand slam. Rahm, long considered the most likely player to dominate the PGA Tour, has won just one major, the 2021 U.S. Open.
McIlroy has admitted to emotional swings regarding and during the Masters. Rahm is known for his fiery temperament on the course, which may not serve him well on a course known to test nerve and patience.
Scheffler has been aided in his rise by his calm demeanor. After his third round in 2022, he spoke at length in the interview room, sounding like he was impervious to nerves.
By Sunday night, wearing the green jacket, he was admitting that he had cried that morning, that he didn't know whether he deserved to win at Augusta National, providing a reminder that emotions roil whether we see them or not.
Asked about the pressure of playing for the green jacket, Scheffler said, "Just because it's the Masters and it is what it is, and it's such a special tournament that I think we build it up so much in our heads. When I show up this week, there's just more going on. That's really just all there is to it."
Scheffler is trying to join Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Nick Faldo as players who have successfully defended a Masters title. Fitting for someone who eats at Chipotle and drives a 2012 Yukon with 190,000 miles on it, he downplays any projections of greatness.
"Legacy is not really why I play," he said. "Any time you can get mentioned in the same breath as a Tiger and a Jack and a Nick Faldo is really special, but it's not a motivating factor for me to come out here and play.
"Legacy is just a complicated thing. In a hundred years I'm going to be forgotten and it's not a big deal."
Woods and Nicklaus will be remembered as long as golf is played. Can anyone else in this field reach that level?
Rahm, with his power off the tee and greenside finesse, has the talent. McIlroy is proof that talent isn't enough. Each of the top three players appreciate golf history, and the difficulty of making it.
Can this trio become golf's next Big Three?
"I would say you can say that if we can do it for at least five, or five-plus, years, like so many of those players did," Rahm said. "Even when Tiger was on his run in the 2000s, Phil and Vijay [Singh] still managed to win [many] times themselves in that time frame.
"So I think for us to be compared to something like that, we have a very long way to go. This could be the start. But still a long way to go."
