And the Masters, like all the majors, is riddled with the kind of juicy, numerical tit bits that have had statisticians salivating like a Saint Bernard at a Zumba class.
506: the number of birdies that Jack Nicklaus, the six-time champion, made over the course of his Masters career.
77: the highest round by a champion, with Sam Snead in 1952 and Nick Faldo in 1989 posting that number during the third round of their ultimately successful campaigns.
63: the age of Tommy Aaron, who became the oldest player to make the cut back in 2000.
3: the number of players to have won the green jacket on their debut, namely Horton Smith (1934), Gene Sarazen (1935) and Fuzzy Zoeller (1979).
The list goes on. And to this order of merit we can add the figure 16: the number of years it's been since a player from the United Kingdom managed to snuggle himself into the most famous blazer in golf. The year was 1996 and that man was Faldo, the English knight who took full advantage of Greg Norman's flabbergasting final-day meltdown to plunder the last of his three Masters titles.
It's been a long drought but there is justified, optimism that the barren run will end on Sunday.
Luke Donald, Rory McIlroy, Lee Westwood, Justin Rose and Graeme McDowell are at the vanguard of this latest assault on Augusta. Of course, predicting the winner of a major championship remains a perilous business. The rank outsiders often eclipse those attracting the shortest odds and the heavy weight of expectation becomes an unbearable burden for those commanding favouritism from pundits, punters and bookies alike.
If you had stuck a lump of cash on Keegan Bradley, Darren Clarke, McIlroy and Charl Schwartzel winning the last four grand slam events in some optimistic accumulator, you'd be guzzling vintage Dom Perignon out of a Faberge egg for the rest of your days. Here's hoping then for a Lawrie, Laird and Lyle play-off for the green jacket?
Having risen, superbly, to the world No.1 position, Luke Donald's armoury contains all the weapons required for the Masters mission: accurate in his approach play, superb with the wedge and devastating with the putter. Of all the majors stages, Augusta is where the 34-year-old has performed best. He was tied third in 2005, shared tenth in 2010 and was joint fourth last year. Since he plunged his ball into the water on the 12th hole of the 2011 championship, an excursion which effectively ended his title ambitions, Donald has barely strayed from the path of success. And his achievements have come under the fiercest of pressure.
He beat Westwood in a play-off for the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth to move to the head of the global order, came up trumps at Disneyworld when he needed to win to secure the US Tour's money list, then triumphed again a fortnight ago at the Transitions Championship to reclaim the world No.1 spot after McIlroy had dunted him off his perch. Indeed, it is McIlroy upon whom the spotlight is shining. Donald may be the global leader but the return of the young Northern Irishman to Augusta, and in particular to its 10th tee, is generating an almighty kerfuffle. His wayward drive on that hole, into an area of the course that most folk never knew existed, set in motion a gruesome capitulation that was as painful on the eye as a flying shard of glass. His closing 80, having led by four, was up there in terms of gore with Norman's collapse of '96 when the Australian's six-stroke overnight lead went up in the smoke of a ghastly 78.
McIlroy went on to destroy the field in the US Open a couple of months later and Norman himself is confident the 22-year-old will this week trample back into the ground any lingering ghosts.
"I really put Rory as a high favourite going into Augusta, no question about it," said the two-time Open champion. "He is putting beautifully, his short game is great, he has the perfect ball flight for Augusta. Now he has to manage his expectations .
"Tom Watson told me a quote one time: 'You bite the snake's head off and the snake's dead forever.'
"Every top player has been there. I don't care who you name, whether it's Arnold Palmer or myself or Seve Ballesteros or Tom Watson, we have all experienced a little bit of a meltdown. It's how you react to it."
Westwood, runner-up in 2010 having led going into the closing round, is searching, like Donald, for a maiden major crown. His record of six top-three finishes in the four grand slam contests since 2008, and the weaknesses in his short game, have all been well documented. This will be his 56th attempt at major glory but, as each event passes, the harder it becomes.
McDowell, the US Open champion of 2010, showed glimpses of a return to form by finishing second behind Tiger Woods in last month's Arnold Palmer Invitational. A closing 77 in last weekend's Shell Houston Open, however, did little for morale and the Portrush man knows Augusta National is not his happiest of hunting grounds, having made the cut just once in four appearances. It is Rose, buoyed by the biggest victory of his career, in the WGC Cadillac Championship last month, who is attracting considerable attention. In seven Masters outings, the world No.9 has led three times after the first round and once at halfway. In 2007, a calamitous double bogey on the 17th hole on the Sunday, when he was just a shot off the lead, scuppered his chances and he slithered back into a share of fifth. With four US Tour wins to his name over the past 20 months, though, Rose is in full bloom.
The stats show that UK golfers command the top-three places in the world rankings. Hopefully the numbers will add up to success come Sunday night.
