2008 Masters Preview

Everywhere you look, people are previewing the Masters. Granted, my sports world is currently dominated by my excitement for the Frozen four. So, I won't get into too many of the regular issues about the tournament, the players, or the course. I'll keep it short and sweet with what I think will happen at the Masters.

What Will Happen at the 2008 Masters

1) Tiger Woods will post a top five, but he'll come up short because of cold putting late.

2) The winner will either be a repeat champion or a big surprise (maybe a foreigner).

3) People will continue to complain (and rightly so) about the abundance of trees down the right side of the 11th fairway.

4) Someone will make a back-nine charge to win on Sunday.

5) People will complain (and wrongly so) about why old guys like Gary Player, Ray Floyd, Sandy Lyle, etc. should stay home like Nick Faldo because they have no chance of winning.

6) The winning score will be -8 or better. The weather forecast looks pretty good, so there will be plenty of fireworks, but not too many to make the Masters committee go back to planting more trees

Tiger vs. the Field

People always wanna talk about Tiger vs. the field so I suppose I better for a bit.

In all my years of watching golf I have never seen a golfer look more motivated, poised and outright determined to win than Tiger has this season. Expect that determination to increase for Masters week. Even though I think it's a little hokey and people talk about it a lot I think that you can expect it to truly be Tiger vs. the field. Vegas has Tiger at 6/5 with the next closest Phil Mickelson at 10/1. As a poor college student I'm not overly concerned with the betting scene (although I'd love to put down a few thousand on Ben Curtis at 250/1.

The Nitty Gritty
Here's what I actually see as far as players in the tournament

Won’t Win: Ernie Els
Could Win: Tiger Woods, Geoff Ogilvy, Phil Mickelson
Sleepers: Vaughn Taylor, Justin Rose, Mike Weir

If anyone is going to play spoiler to Tiger this week it would have to be Geoff Ogilvy. Geoff is coming off a win (ending Tiger’s streak at the WGC-CA) and T2 finish in his last two starts and already has a major title to his name (the 2006 U.S. Open). His two shot victory over Tiger three weeks ago will no doubt serve as additional motivation for Tiger, but Ogilvy will not back down from the challenge. Look for him to be in the hunt come Sunday.