The 88th Masters is set to be a showdown for the ages with stone-cold Scottie Scheffler the man to beat... but Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy won't go down without a fight

One way or another it is expected to get biblical out there. When the 88th Masters commences, the forecasts speak of thunderstorms in the morning and a placid man of faith wrapped in green come Sunday afternoon.

At a point in time when golf cannot agree on much of anything, you would be hard pushed to find anyone on the grounds here at Augusta National who challenges the notion that Scottie Scheffler is the heavy favourite.

They feel it is his year, just as it was in 2022. But with Scheffler the conversation tends to broaden out from such confined margins, because why limit it to his year when we could talk more about it being his era?

Naturally, those discussions might be best shelved until some shots have actually been fired in this tournament, for which there are no guarantees that many will be played at all.

But at the outset of this wonderful championship, in this most contradictory of places, it would be unwise to place strict limits on a 27-year-old Texan whose gentle manner is one hell of a mask for a stone-cold sporting killer. He is the wrecking ball with an aw-shucks smile; a preacher of God's work whose game could suck the belief out of the field.

That he has won on two of his past three PGA Tour starts and finished runner-up in the other gives immediacy to the hype. But it is the manner of his performances that has built a vast aura within the sport, just as it might be said his understated personality - he said 'gosh' or 'golly' four times in his press conference on Tuesday - has limited the spread of his appeal beyond it.

It would be necessary to offer a reminder at this stage that Scheffler has won only one major. But to go by the statistics his play from tee to green is the best golf has known since Tiger Woods.

It has been so good that he could carry a weakness as pronounced as his putting for 18 months and barely left the world No 1 spot the entire time. Now that his play on the greens seems to have been fixed via a switch from blade to mallet, it is natural to wonder who might stop him.

His placing alongside Rory McIlroy for the first two rounds will be utterly fascinating. Few can live with McIlroy when he is at his best, but that doesn't apply to Scheffler. Where he has raced past McIlroy is in his consistency.

Consider this sequence of numbers a moment for Scheffler's past 11 tournament placings: 2nd, 1st, 1st, 10th, 3rd, 6th, 17th, 5th, 1st, 6th, 2nd. That is an astonishing level to sustain and it speaks to an unflappable man who knows when to take risks and when to rein it in.

In many ways McIlroy has been the opposite - thrills by the bucketload and many sporting deaths through misadventure. The Northern Irishman has pledged to play 'boring golf' as a means of finally winning the one major keeping him from a career slam, but that will be a fight against his instincts.

Scheffler is far more comfortable in resisting temptation, which is a perfect trait for this course. From such a perspective, it might even be the case that his presence is a good influence on a playing partner who too often saves his best golf here for when he has already fallen from contention.

If he can stick with Scheffler until the weekend, he could be in business, though that comes with the old questions around McIlroy's Augusta scar tissue.

To see those two navigate the tournament will be intriguing, though McIlroy will surely only be a danger if his wedge game and confidence have been fixed by his recent trip to see Butch Harmon.

It seems more likely that the greatest threat to Scheffler will come from Jon Rahm, who has been his closest rival in the past two years.

Rahm has been in a bullish mood this week and wishes to prove that joining LIV has dulled none of his spark. That would be impossible because he is a deeply competitive beast. A ball of fire compared to the ice of Scheffler. 

But it is legitimate to query both his form - he has finished no higher than third on the LIV circuit this season - and the suitability of the environment in which he has prepared. That applies as much to golf on resort courses as a means of tuning up for Augusta as it does the 54-hole format compared to 72.

Given the strength of his game, it would be madness to bet against him, and the same goes for his LIV colleague Brooks Koepka, whose five majors point to the ultimate big-game hunter.

More than Rahm, McIlroy and Scheffler, Koepka has been the most impactful player of the post-Woods era when it comes to the big four tournaments and held the 54-hole lead here last year before a dreadful final day.

To watch Scheffler is to see a player who could feasibly catch up and one day pass Koepka, if that isn't too bold a thing to think in a capricious game. Indeed, his own playing partner is proof that a winning touch can fade, and ditto the emergence of the incredible Ludvig Aberg is a warning that the next big thing is never far away.

For now, before the storm rolls in, the calmest man in town is also very much the man to beat. We might be saying that for a long while.