The Masters starts tomorrow in Augusta, Georgia. I would dearly love to say that an Australian has a chance of winning, but it doesn’t seem likely. As it stands, no Australian has ever won the Masters with Greg Norman finishing second three times. In 1986, he lost out to a red-hot Jack Nicklaus; in 1987, Larry Mize chipped in from an almost impossible location; and in 1996, with a 6 shot lead heading in to the final round, he self-destructed with one of the biggest chokes in professional sports and lost to Nick Faldo.

Adam Scott has the best game of any of the Australians in the field, but he has never performed well at the Masters and I don’t expect this year to be any different. Robert Allenby generally has good opening rounds here, but I don’t expect him to be in contention once the weekend rounds are underway. If I had to pick any of the Australians to have a good showing at the Masters, it would be Stuart Appleby. He has a nice game and has already won once on tour this year.

It’s hard to look past Tiger Woods, though. He’ll want to win this one for his father, Earl, who is ailing from the effects of cancer. I don’t expect anyone to come close to Tiger this weekend, and I’m picking him to repeat last years victory and collect his fifth green jacket.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Golf. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.