The snow has thawed in the coldest parts of America and golfers all over world have turned their attention, with the coming of spring, to The Masters.

The early-season events out on the West Coast and in Florida have offered few clues to a likely winner but, last week in Houston, the defending champion Phil Mickelson took his first title since Augusta last year.

Like Jack Nicklaus, Severiano Ballesteros and Sam Snead before him, Mickelson and four time champion Tiger Woods have the ideal games for the hilly Georgia course designed in the 1930s by Scotsman Alister MacKenzie.

People in Australia inaccurately refer to some of our courses with pine trees, or a par five over a lake, as ‘Australia's Augusta' where those pretenders have nothing of the design questions MacKenzie posed over and over on his finest courses including Cypress Point, Crystal Downs and Royal Melbourne.

Royal Melbourne is ‘Australia's Augusta'. On both the east and west courses, the fairways were designed to be wide and their fearsome greens favoured the man who had worked out for himself where best to attack the hole and had then placed his drive in the ideal position.

Royal Melbourne came first, in 1926, seven years before MacKenzie and the great amateur Bobby Jones opened Augusta in the midst of the depression. The club struggled mightily in the early years as Jones and Clifford Roberts begged all over the United States for members and MacKenzie himself died in 1934 penniless and pleading for payment for his incredible design.

The course we see this week, however ,is one MacKenzie would barely recognize. The nines are reversed, a result of the lowest holes (the current 11th, 12th and 13th) on what is now the back nine taking the longest to recover from frosty nights early in the season.

His 16th hole is gone replaced by a Robert Trent-Jones par three and the previously driveable 7th hole is now a long and narrow par four up to a green designed by Perry Maxwell.

The original rugged, natural looking bunkers have been perfectly rounded off and brought into pristine condition which may sound like an admirable improvement but, to those who love the old look, it is simply an alteration.

In response to the reality of the modern power game, the tees have been stretched further and further back and rough has been allowed to creep onto the edges of MacKenzie's fairways - edges where in some cases he had designed as the ideal place from which to attack the flags.

Then someone with the power to alter decided one way to defend the course was to smother the edges of the 11th, 15th and 17th fairway with trees. What was once a wide open course in the fashion of Royal Melbourne now has the look in places of a narrow, restrictive golf course where the premium is on simply driving straight.

There is a subtle difference between straight driving and accurate driving and courses that ask for accurate driving are much more fun to play. The Old Course at St Andrews - MacKenzie's model and favourite - rewards those who can drive to position and, whilst there is space to drive, shots played from the wrong side of the fairways are infinitely more difficult.

Mickelson is hardly a straight driver but he has won three times now at Augusta because he plays with Ballesteros-type flair and they were the types of golfers MacKenzie aimed to encourage. There is no place for the faint of heart on his treacherous greens and it is almost always the seemingly nerveless who are rewarded at the end of the week.

No Australian has ever won at Augusta although there have been a few who missed the chance. Greg Norman was tormented as much as any man with the possible exception of Tom Weiskopf, a similarly tall, elegant, and powerful man who looked to have everything it took to win The Masters.

This year Aaron Baddeley has had the best of the early season results with a win in Los Angeles and a fourth place last week in Houston. Certainly he can putt as well as any man on the tour and, when he has faith in his game and what he is doing, few are as confident in their abilities.

The other hope is the Australian Open champion, Geoff Ogilvy. He went to America in January in good form but chopped up his finger on the coral in Hawaii and didn't play for a month.

Since he has been decent without being spectacular but his game is more than well suited to Augusta. He understands that to putt well there you must be prepared to three putt. No one holes putts there, or at Royal Melbourne, by dribbling the ball at the hole but that means running the ball with confidence at the hole and being prepared to have to hole something testing on the way back if you miss.

Mickelson is the best at that and his form last week makes him the overwhelming favourite. Woods has shown very little so far but the assumption is that he has aimed to have his swing ready for this week.

MacKenzie once visited a course and a member asked him what he thought of the improvements to the golf course. "You mean the alterations," said the old Scot.

Woods has altered his swing significantly since his astoundingly good seasons at the turn of the century.

The question is whether the alterations have equated to improvements.