Every Masters tournament is eagerly anticipated. The north-east of America is thawing out after the long winter that closes the golf courses for months at a time. The early-season PGA Tour forays to Hawaii, California, Arizona and Florida have given a sense of who is in form. For many it is the beginning of the golf season.

Never though has there been the anticipation, the speculation or the expectation of this Masters.

The greatest player ever to play the game comes back to the competition and resumes his quest to win the five major championships he needs to reach 19 and surpass the great Jack Nicklaus.

Tiger Woods comes back, one assumes, humiliated, embarrassed and fearful of the reaction of the world. This is not going to be an easy event to play well, let alone win. No one knows how he is playing. There is no form save the brilliant last round he played at Kingston Heath to win our Masters way back in November.

There is precedent for longer lay-offs however. Ben Hogan ran headlong into a bus in February of 1949 and feared he would never play again. His comeback event at the wonderful Riviera course in Los Angeles was almost a whole year later and he played well enough to tie with Sam Snead. He lost the playoff but he triumphed over a broken body. The reclusive, uncommunicative Hogan was, like Woods, respected but until that point not loved by the fans. After his accident he acknowledged how much the support of those who revered his play had encouraged him.

Woods will feel no such affection from the crowds. He will have to earn it back by answering the considered question from the press with more effort than he has in the past. He will have to earn it back by never again repeating the almost unbelievable spectacle we saw at Kingston Heath's 13th tee where he bounced his driver four rows back in to the crowd - and left the city without even an acknowledgement that he had been completely out of order.

He will never earn the affection back from the average golf watcher unless he adopts a little of the Arnold Palmer/Phil Mickelson approach to those who buy the tickets. Wayne Grady once watched Arnold Palmer sign autographs for more than an hour and asked him how he did it. ‘'You just have to stay there and sign them all,'' said Palmer. Mickelson does the same but Tiger long ago adopted a different approach.

Maybe he can win but it would be a serious surprise. The precision a player needs to play the little shots around the greens and the delicate touch and imagination demanded by the fearsome Alister MacKenzie-designed surfaces is finetuned in the competition in the lead-up tournaments. Tiger has not hit a shot worth anything to him in months - and he has lost the last few Masters by putting far below his average week-to-week standard.

Anyway that is enough of Woods.

Ernie Els is the man in form, winning at Doral and Bay Hill and, probably mercifully, not in Houston this week. Winning four in a row has most often proved to be too much for anyone although Byron Nelson won a staggering 11 straight in 1945. Woods, too, has won more than four in a row before but Nelson played in a different time and Woods is simply a different player from all the rest.

Mickelson has been in the top 10 at Augusta nine of the last 10 years and whilst he has not been great recently he will be ready to play.

The great mystery of Australian golf is why we have never had a winner at Augusta. MacKenzie built Royal Melbourne four years before he started work at Augusta and he essentially built the same golf course - except that he had a better site and one with abundant sand in Melbourne.

He gave players width to play into from the tee, he asked them to decide for themselves where best to drive the ball - as opposed to the regular tour where the officials dictate where best to drive by cutting narrow fairways bordered by thick grass - and he made fearsome greens where nerves were tested more severely than anywhere else in the world.

Geoff Ogilvy grew up just across the fence from Royal Melbourne and his towering irons, beautiful touch around the greens and somewhat unreliable driver are all perfectly suited to Augusta. He is our best chance despite missing the cut in Houston courtesy of a last hole double bogey that will have left him aggravated but given him a little more time at Augusta.

Adam Scott is showing signs of better results but his Australian Open win last December has not proved to be a sign that he was right back to his confident best. He was good in Houston but his major championship record is awful for a player of his talent. People point to the putter but it can't always be the putter. He must have hit the ball poorly at times as well but only he truly knows what goes on in these massive events.

A decade ago if someone had suggested Scott or Sergio Garcia would not have won a major championship by 2010 they would have been certified. Time is not exactly running out but the questions are piling up for both of them.

Robert Allenby was another ‘can't miss' when he all but won the Australian Open as an amateur in 1991 but he has barely been close in a big championship despite being one of the world's premier ball strikers. The implications are obvious - putter and temperament - and unlike Scott his time is running out.

Marc Leishman and Canadian Open champion, Nathan Green, are first timers and only Fuzzy Zoeller, in 1979, (aside from Horton Smith in the first Masters and Gene Sarazen in the second) unlocked the secrets in his opening appearance to Augusta.

Playing well would be a terrific week for both but Leishman does have a huge game that is more-than-suited to the course. John Senden is the other Australian and he too is more than capable. He has a beautiful looking swing but to do well he will need to master the greens. There in nothing like them in Queensland where he grew up but Greg Norman showed that was a handicap that could be overcome.

If Norman had won it might have made it easier for this generation but that awesome mountain is still there to climb.

With Woods underdone there will be many with higher hopes than normal. It will be a fascinating week.