2022 champion Scottie Scheffler has been in brilliant form this season, winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational by five shots and seven days later becoming the first player to win back-to-back Players Championship titles at Sawgrass.
Only a short missed birdie putt on the 72nd hole of the Houston Open cost Scheffler the chance of a third straight win and the world number one has rightly been made favourite for the 88th Masters at the kind of odds last seen for Tiger Woods at his prime.
Scheffler’s victory two years ago was helped by a yardage book given to him by Ben Crenshaw’s former caddie Carl Jackson, who worked at Augusta National for 54 years.
Crenshaw arranged a meeting between the pair as bad weather delayed the pre-tournament par-three contest and, four days later, Scheffler secured his first major title by three shots, despite four-putting the 72nd hole.
“I’m not going to expand too much on Carl’s secrets in front of people but it was my third Masters and I sat in the back of the caddie house with Carl,” Scheffler said.
“Ben had suggested that I just sit down with him for a few minutes and he gave me a yardage book that had some of where I think he called it grain is, where some of the slopes are.
“And it’s just a yardage book that has some arrows in it. (But) I’m not going to tell you where the arrows are pointing.
“It’s something that I’ll kind of review at night and I always look at it in the lead-up to the tournament just because there is kind of some weird stuff that goes on around the golf course.”
