AAH, the lore of the Masters.

Who can fail to be moved by the story of the Eisenhower tree, the only bit of wood named after a president until George Bush Jr came along.

Like the last vestiges of Dubya's rationality, the tree is no longer with us but it remains in the legend of the Masters, a tournament that thrives in the thick soil of myth, legend and cliché.

There is so much wrong about the Masters. Their attitude to race relations was once on a par with Alf Garnett after a few ales. Their attitude to women could be summarised with the observation that the officials at Augusta National once believed ladies should not only be allowed to join after Dubya won the Nobel Prize for Science.

Their protestations about equality could once only be described as a preferred lie.

But now there signs that the club is heading towards the 21st century. Thankfully, the clichés remain. For those of us who have watched the Masters on the telly for decades, it gives us the chance to play Augusta bingo.

One makes up cards with well-worn phrases and waits for the commentators to spout them. Azaleas, peach cobbler, Amen Corner, Crow's Nest, starts on back nine on a Sunday, Norman, chip in, Nicklaus, oldest....bingo!

The special prize goes every year to the golfer who points out that the course is much hillier than it seems on the telly. This is presumably an echo of the comments made by Sir Edmund Hillary as Tiger Tensing removed the flag on an elevated green to allow the mountaineer to drill home a tricky six footer. "Everest is much hillier than it seems on the telly," he muttered later.

But this all adds to the gaiety of the Masters. It is the tournament that provides drama by always being the same.

First, Fred Couples always leads for a few days as if he is chief mourner leading in a hearse. This morbid reference is made eerily acute when one watches the old boys take so many shots around the course it is as if they want their money's worth. There was once nothing better than watching Gary Player march into a bunker while scratching his head as if he had just spent a semester in a Glasgow primary school in nit season. There was something oddly consoling about seeing greats rack up the sort of scores that one compiles in the weekly medal the day after one has decided at the stag night to take more shots than John Wayne in the Alamo.

After Couples leaves the leaderboard with that sort of walk that suggest his one iron has been deposited where only a proctologist could find it, the tournament then has the obligatory drama around Amen Corner. This is followed by a denouement that almost certainly involves someone sinking a putt that heads towards a pool of water before - in the manner of a nervous bather - suddenly taking fright, jumping 45 degrees to the left and hiding in the hole.

The more traditional version of the Masters involves a play-off. This is won by everyone bar Greg Norman.

All of the above is best enjoyed on the telly, of course, hilly or not.

The unalloyed joy of Augusta for many of us is that we do not believe it really exists. It is for us a construct of telly with its verbal cliches and its scenes that seem to be constructed by an unseen army of gardeners and technicians.

Thus the veteran of the telly Masters can not only traverse around the course with an easy familiarity but predict what the commentators will say and what an overhit ball will do on greens so slick they want to go into advertising.

This admirably traditional tournament in the sense of setplays can occasionally indulge in the gaudily dramatic. There was Nicklaus winning it at an age where he should have had more sense than to be playing golf on a hot Sunday. There were the regular eruptions of Tiger Woods who was going to win 25 Masters en route to 100 majors before he was 25. There was also Seve. And Sandy. And Woosy.

But there was also Rory. Young Mr McIlroy shot 80 in the final round when leading the Masters in 2011. He shocked telly veterans by hitting the ball into areas one never knew existed. There was a television shot at one point of Rory striking the ball from behind a chalet that reeked not of Augusta 2011 but Butlins 1970.

The Northern Irishman had the sort of round that ends careers. Yet he came back as if he had merely cocked up in a Sunday stroll with the mates.

The Masters then can be contrived. It can be venerated for the wrong reasons. It can be the deposit bank for recycled cliché.

But for the television viewer it remains wonderfully impervious to these flaws. This observer one hopes that when Couples slips off the leaderboard, it is wee Rory who comes through to win.

In sporting terms he will have climbed a mountain, but one hopes he does not tell us how hilly Augusta is.