AROUND THE GREENS
Masters offers numerous plot lines in 68th edition

By Bill Kwon

Tiger Woods, seeking his fourth Masters jacket, is always a gallery and betting favorite at Augusta, Ga. Associated Press

Adam Scott, who won The Players Championship, is one of seven Australians to keep an eye on in The Masters. AP library photo • Sept. 1, 2004

This week's 68th Masters is so replete with storylines that it figures to come down to yet another memorable Sunday finish:

• Will Tiger Woods finally end his "slump" in the majors and don his fourth green jacket?
• Will Phil Mickelson end an 0-for-41 showing as a pro in golf's four major championships to shed, finally, the dubious distinction of being the best player never to win a major?
• Will Mike Weir become only the fourth player to win back-to-back Masters, joining Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Nick Faldo in that rare company of champions who can put on their own green jackets?
• Will John Daly, who already can be acclaimed as the golf story of the year by winning the Buick Invitational in early February, clinch that honor with an even more improbable victory?
• Will young Adam Scott do something that Greg Norman, his boyhood idol while growing up in Australia, never did by winning golf's most cherished tournament?

For the next four days, we'll all be watching with rapt attention to see the outcome.

Tiger, of course, is the favorite. He always is, in any tournament he enters. But one can sense his frustration in failing to win in his past six starts in the majors and that his personal pursuit of Nicklaus' record of 18 major victories remains stalled at eight.

There's no cheering in the press tent, but I'm rooting for Tiger to win the first major of the year. The PGA Grand Slam of Golf at the Po'ipu Bay Resort on Kaua'i just wasn't the same without him last year.

Then let the Ben Curtises and Shaun Micheels of the golf world sneak into the winner's circles in the remaining three majors.

Victories by Mickelson and Daly also would be great for golf.

However, my hunch pick is Scott, the 23-year-old Australian who played so well in the Mercedes Championships at Kapalua earlier this year that his victory in the Players Championships was no surprise.

I came away impressed with Scott, who closed with 5-under-par 68s in the final two rounds to finish seventh at Kapalua's Plantation Course in January.

"We're certainly out here. There's 17 of us out on the (PGA) tour this year. We expect a few Australians to win this year," Scott said at the time.

Scott is one of three Australians winning on the PGA Tour this season. Stuart Appleby captured the Mercedes Championships and Craig Parry the Ford Championship at Doral.

There are seven Australians in the 94-player field at Augusta this week. The others are Robert Allenby, Peter Lonard, Stephen Leaney and Nick Flanagan, the reigning U.S. Amateur champion.

If you want odds, the best bet would be that an Australian will win the 2004 Masters. It would be a first for Australia, just as Weir was the first Canadian to win the Masters last year.

As far as Las Vegas betting odds are concerned, Woods is the favorite at 5-2 with Vijay Singh next at 5-1. Ernie Els and David Love III are 6-1, Weir 9-2. Scott looks awfully attractive at 30-1.

Picking a winner in a golf tournament, though, is a crapshoot, even with a limited field like the Masters. More so in 2004, a season of parity that even the late NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle would have loved.

In the first 14 PGA tournaments of the year, there have been 14 different winners, although not a record as yet, according to the PGA Tour office.

So, it's very likely that the 2004 Masters champion will be the year's first multiple winner. By this time last year, there were already four multiple winners with Woods winning three times.

It could mean a record field for the Mercedes Championships next January, according to tournament director Gary Planos.

"It's unbelievable," Planos said about the tour's parity to date. "When we got to 14 winners, we were already up to the Kemper (FBR Capital) Open. We're two months ahead of last year's pace."

The more, the merrier, said Planos, pointing out that the record Mercedes field since the season-opening tournament of champions moved to Kapalua in 1999 was set two years ago with 38 players.

"Looks like we'll have a big pro-am," he said.

Bill Kwon can be reached at bkwon@aloha.net.