Palmer is 1st off the tee
AUGUSTA, Ga. The Masters teed off with a ceremonial swing from Arnold Palmer.
The King whacked his ball down the right side of the fairway, then turned it over to 96 players competing for the green jacket on a sunny morning today at Augusta National.
The temperature was expected to warm into the 70s under clear blue skies, a striking change from the foul weather that's plagued the event the last two years.
Ian Woosnan of Wales, the 1991 champion, went out in the first group with Chez Reavie and Briny Baird.
Australia's Greg Norman is back in the year's first major for the first time since 2002, South Africa's Gary Player is competing at Augusta for the final time. Tiger Woods is playing in his first major since winning last summer's U.S. Open on a bum knee.
While Augusta National prides itself on hosting the most exclusive of the majors only 96 players will teed off in the opening round today there are some qualifiers who generate whispers of "How did HE get here?" when they're out on the course.
Ken Duke is No. 112 in the world rankings, Briny Baird checks in at 118 and Bubba Watson is 129. None has ever won on the PGA Tour. Heck, Watson didn't even have a victory in three years on the minor-league Nationwide Tour.
Then there's Billy Mayfair, ranked No. 131 and having a miserable season. He's missed the cut in six of his first nine events this year, and just two weeks ago he opened with an 80 at Bay Hill.
But all four will be playing in the first major of the year, rewarded for either consistency or good timing.
Duke made the top 30 on the 2008 money list one of the myriad standards used by the Masters while Baird, Watson and Mayfair took advantage of a volatile FedEx Cup points system that allowed them to make the Tour Championship.
"No ranking is fair," Baird said. "They try to do the best they can to make it fair. But you can't compare the PGA Tour to the European Tour to the Asian Tour to the Japanese Tour. None of it is fair. The BCS isn't fair in football, either."
Augusta National chairman Billy Payne said there are no plans to change the qualifying format, though the club constantly tinkers with the system.
"We are always comfortable with what we do until we change what we do," Payne quipped. "That's another way of saying ... we look at it every year. Post-Masters, we will spend a whole month looking at nothing but qualifications and whether we need to change it a little bit."
Speaking of changes, the PGA Tour has revamped the FedEx Cup format for the third year in a row, this one geared toward making sure the winner of the $10 million prize is decided at the Tour Championship.
Tiger Woods was so dominant during the inaugural year in 2007 that he skipped the opening playoff event and could have gone AWOL from the Tour Championship and still won. Last year, Vijay Singh won the first two playoff events, building such a large lead that he mathematically clinched the title before the final event, as long as he completed four rounds.
