Official First Masters Blog of 2006 (or is it last of 2005?)

The first invitations have gone out (thank you, SI.Com!) Here are my early picks on, oh heck, a bunch of interesting elements:

Five New Guys Who Should Not Unpack:
Clay Ogden, Edoardo Molinari, Kevin Marsh, Dillon Dougherty, and Brian McElhinney (All right, that wasn’t fair. They’re all amateurs.)

Five New Pro Guys Who Should Not Unpack:
Jason Bohn, Lucas Glover, Vaughn Taylor, Carl Petterson, and Bart Bryant.

Five Old Guys Who Should Not Pull A Billy Casper:
Seve, Gay Brewer, Jr., Arnold, Doug Ford, and Billy Casper (in case he forgot last year.)

Linguists’ Pairing Of The Year:
Edoardo Molinari and Jose Maria Olazabal–That’s a 17-to-14 Vowel-To-Consonant ratio. Beats Welsh!

Best Couple To Go Out Last Thursday AND Friday:
Ben Crane and Bernhard Langer

The I’m-Not-On-Tour-But-I-Won-The-Masters Award:
Larry Mize

The Tim-Henman-Of-Golf Award (otherwise known as the New Monty)
Luke Donald

The It-Seems-Like-Yesterday Award:
Shawn Micheel, Rich Beem, Todd Hamilton, Ben Curtis, Mike Weir and David Duval (and Duval has one more year!)

The I-Don’t-Wanna-Be-Lehman Award (meaning, I want to win!):
Chris DiMarco (runner-Up: Lehman)

Short Guys Who Ain’t Got A Chance:
Scott Verplank, Justin Leonard, Zach Johnson, Ted Purdy and David Toms

Long Young Guys Who Got A Chance:
Adam Scott, Sean O’Hair, Trevor Immelman, Sergio Garcia, and Ryan Moore

Middle-Aged, Multi-Ethnic Guys With Swedish Wives Who Got A Chance: Ummmm, wait a second, I’ll think of one.