From Sunday to Sunday, I have no doubt THIS week is anualy the greatest week in all of sports.  First we had the final round of the LPGA’s first major, the Kraft Nabisco (I still think the LPGA over-sold the naming rights).  Brittany Lincicome’s one woman wet t-shirt contest was followed by the NCAA men’s basketball championship game (I’m pretty sure the women had a game as well, but I’m equally sure that nobody outside of Connecticut cares).  Monday was also opening day for major league baseball.  Apart from being genuinely happy to have baseball again, for me anyway, no single event better symbolizes the beginning of spring than opening day.  With the first few games played and the Bronx Bummers having done no better than 1 of 3 against the worst the AL East has to offer, I’m again delighted to say…YANKEES SUCK!  GO SOX!

Of course, this is a golf blog (sort of), which means what matters most is the PGA’s first major of the year, the Mucinex Expectorant Championship.  Hold that thought – that’s just my cold talking.  It turns out the PGA has not sold out (at least not completely), and so, for now anyway, the Masters is still the Masters.  It’s certainly better for tradition’s sake but it does deprive me of the obvious “Campbell Coughs Up Lead” headline later this weekend.  Anyway, I’ve said before this will never to turn into another PGA blog, but this is the biggest tournament of the year, so one day in, here are my predictions.

Before yesterday, I would have picked Brandt Snedeker has my dark horse.  I like the way he handled the course last year, and I love his “hit it before you think about it” style of play.  He hasn’t played well this year, but I was willing to overlook all that because of his 08 performance.  Instead of picking a different dark horse, I’ll just admit (while hoping for a comeback) that I was probably wrong about this one.

As far as Tiger is concerned…The course is apparently playing much easier than it has over the last few years.  I’m thinking an easier course favors the field, so I’m going to pass on Tiger this year in favor of Nick Watney.  He’s been steady all year, and his performance at Doral leads me to believe he can handle whatever pressure the last few holes on Sunday at Augusta put on a youn golfer.  My best guess is that Tiger finishes somewhere in the 5-8 range.

As for the rest of the big names: Garcia – never a factor, but he probably won’t spit either.  Same for Mickelson and Harrington.  It’s not time for McIlroy.  Oglivy may make a run, but I think it’s going to be guys like Hunter Mahan near the top of the board.  I’m pulling for Jim Furyk to make it interesting as well.

So with that said, I’ll pass the rest of Masters weekend off to a few of my favorite golf blogs, all of which are providing much more tour detail than I ever will.  Tony over at HookedOnGolfBlog already has a ton of 2009 Masters content, and is updating his site almost constantly.  The Armchair Golf Blogger is doing the same.  As they have in years past, the entire team at The Sandtrap has their predictions up as well.

Finally, although not related to the Masters, for those of us who’ll actually be playing golf instead of just watching it, I wanted to direct you over to a series of posts Dave (the OrlandoGolfBlogger) has been working on lately.  Dave has been refining, and his last two posts have been real eye openers.  His post on chipping has me attempting a fundamental change to the way I approach simple chip shots.  My tendency has been to take a wedge and go right at the pin (or at least near the pin), so the notion of always trying to land the ball one pace onto the green and letting the roll do the rest is a bit foreign to me (my short game is mostly self-taught, which certainly explains a lot).  After reading Dave’s post, and getting a personal response to my follow up question from his instructor, I actually started to pay attention to the way the pros play similar shots.  No real surprise; there’s something to this 1 pace thing.  This weekend I’ll be trying it out for myself.  Old habits, particularly bad ones, die hard, but what’s the worst that could happen?

Earlier this week Dave also put up a post about pitching.  As with the chipping post, the info was very informative.  Almost as interesting to me, however, was the embeded video.  The demonstrations and explanations are spot on, but what really took me for the proverbial loop was realizing that the instructor, Jeff Yurkiewicz was a high school classmate of mine.  Small world.  Anyway, check out the video, and the entire series at OrlandoGolfBlogger.com.