Masters
Masters week is upon us and the week has already been in the full swing. The players have been taking to the course and the practice ground all week and the stage is set to start the great event. The pairings were announced on Tuesday and there are a few real stand-out partnerships. Not- least Jamie Donaldson, a PGC member, has been named with Tiger and Jimmy Walker in one of the last groups out, so you can expect Jamie to have a huge crowd following him round. I'm sure he's used to that by now but he needs to make sure to concentrate solely on his own game rather than concentrate on what Tiger's doing. Most of the talk in the last few days has been about Tiger, whether or not his back will hold up, what his short game is going to be like. All eyes will be on this group on the first day.
All of the Tiger talk has taken some of the media interest away from Rory McIlroy, but when it was announced that he would be playing with American favourite Phil Mickelson you can be sure he won't be going under the radar. In selected other groups, Bubba Watson will begin the defence of his crown in the company of Justin Rose and Gunn Yang. Jason Day partners Sergio Garcia and Rickie Fowler, while Ian Poulter will be joined by Keegan Bradley and Patrick Reed. Elsewhere, Adam Scott, Dustin Johnson and Antonio Murdaca are playing together, with last year's runner-up Jordan Spieth partnering Henrik Stenson and Billy Horschel.
Masters Sweepstake
As usual we've taken the top 50 players in the world rankings and assigned each one to a member who has decided to take part. If someone out of the top 50 wins then whoever got the player in 2nd will win. So for example if Tiger wins and Rory comes 2nd then E. McGrath will win first place prize.
The Prizes are as follows:
1st - Callaway XR Driver
2nd - Nike 2.0 Hybrid
3rd - Nike VR Pro 60 Degree Lob Wedge
Our Picks
As usual we are picking our favourites to win it and who our money is on. Now, we both think Rory is going to win so we have decided to leave him out and chose from the rest of the pack.
Nick Chadwick (mid-week) - I have all of these down as EW bets and Rory to win it.
- Jordan Speith
- Dustin Johnson
- Bubba Watson
- Phil Mickelson
- Henrik Stenson
- Jason Day
Nick Summerfield
- Rickie Fowler
- Gary Woodland
- Joost Luiten
- Bernd Weisberger
- Jamie Donaldson
- Jason Day
- Adam Scott
We both think Tiger will miss the cut.
Captain/President
It was very nice to play in the Captain/President match at the weekend. The sun was shining and we were on the back tees for the first time in a while. The course played very long, which made for a very tough game. We had a great match, Captain and I vs President and Mark, there was only the odd hole in it all the way. Fortunately we had that odd hole coming off the 18th!! This also led the team from the front with an 8(1/2) - 5(1/2) victory.