Well, it’s here again folks. Rather like the Tuesday column, the Masters has that same sense of, well, sameness. With that soothing feeling of comfort you get with a pair of fur-lined baffies that have been warmed at the one-bar fire, the Augusta showpiece continues to be something of a cosy haven. Familiarity breeds contentment, after all.

Look over there, it’s an azalea blooming with the kind of florid hue you’d get after years of sturdy wine consumption. Peer down there, it’s Larry Mize knifing a 5-iron into the dogwoods. And what’s that sound coming from over yonder? Why, it’s someone trotting out those cherished old clichés that ‘Augusta favours those who can play a draw', 'the Masters doesn't begin until the back nine on Sunday' and '’the course is much hillier than it looks on the tele'. Throw in a few schmaltzy nods to the past and some timeless traditions, accompanied by some drifting, tinkling piano notes, and you have the tried and tested ingredients that makes the Masters fare the ultimate in golfing comfort food.

It’s been eight months since the last men’s major championship and the anticipation and level of excitement tends to leave eager observers drooling like bloodhounds peering into a butcher’s shop window. As one scribe scribbled, ‘the modern golf season never ends, but it does begin’.

And it promises to be quite a beginning. The global game these days has a formidable strength in depth that is deeper than a burial on the high seas. Jason Day, Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy are ranked one, two and three respectively in the world rankings and have gobbled up five of the last six major titles on offer. A three way shoot-out for the Green Jacket coming down the stretch on Sunday would be something created by the golfing gods but this unpredictable game, and Augusta in particular, doesn’t do easy scripts. Adam Scott, Bubba Watson, Rickie Fowler, Henrik Stenson, Justin Rose, maybe even a rejuvenated Phil Mickelson, will all be wanting to play a starring role in this guessing game.

Day, the 28-year-old Australian with the barnstorming power and majestic short game, has bounced up Magnolia Lane on the back of two successive tour wins. Only two players in the last 50 years – Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods – have claimed back-to-back victories heading into the Masters and ploughed on to claim the Green Jacket. It would be quite a hat-trick but Day will probably be aware that the last world No 1 to win the Masters was Woods back in 2002.

Day’s rousing run has certainly taken the spotlight away from the likes of Spieth, McIlroy, Scott, Fowler and the rest. They won’t mind that, of course. McIlroy has opted to give Wednesday’s traditional Par-3 competition a miss because he finds it a “bit of a distraction”. No wonder, but he’s only had himself to blame on that front in recent years. His caddie in the increasingly sickly celebrity and cutesy kiddywink-infused grin-athon was his then girlfriend Caroline Wozniacki – a woman drawn to the camera like a moth to a headlamp on full beam – before he got One Direction warbler Niall Horan to heave his bag round last year during a fevered, swooning, point-and-gawp fest.

There will be no such distractions this week. Last year McIlroy was 12 shots behind Spieth’s record-breaking halfway pace and despite closing with a 68 and a 66 for a 12-under tally, which has been bettered just four times since 2000, he still finished six behind the all-conquering Spieth. As he chases the career Grand Slam, McIlroy has yet to win in 2016 but if he gets into his rhythm, and plays with that swashbuckling abandon that has brought him four major titles, then there are not many who can live with him.

Nobody could live with Spieth last year, of course, as he stamped his authority on Augusta with a fearless and fearsome putting display that was simply magical.

He began 2016 with that eight-shot romp in Hawaii and everybody thought ‘yip, here we go again’. But as everybody knows, this game is a fickle old pursuit. A hectic global schedule at the turn of the year certainly didn’t aid Spieth as he competed here, there and everywhere and since that early success he has lost that bit of sharpness. A stumbling finale to Sunday’s Houston Open only added to his frustrations.

The first major of the year saw the remarkable Lydia Ko tighten her grip at the top of the women’s game with victory in Sunday’s ANA Inspiration. Now, it’s the men who will battle for supremacy. And it promises to be quite a battle at that.

So slip those baffies on and enjoy it.