Fuzzy Zoeller once described the walk to Augusta National’s first tee as, “the greatest natural laxative in the world.” He obviously didn’t see the opening hole jitters during The Herald sports desk’s spring outing at Pumpherston.

Anyway, that stomach-churning Masters moment didn’t do Zoeller any harm. In 1979, he won the green jacket on his debut in the opening major of the year to become just the third player in the tournament’s history to achieve such a feat. Nobody has managed it since.

Major championship golf tends to dish up more storylines than an entire series of Jackanory. Ahead of the 88th edition of the Masters, all and sundry are pondering and pontificating over all sorts of potential twists and turns in the plot.

Scottie Scheffler will do this, Rory McIlroy might do that, Tiger Woods could do a bit of the other and Jon Rahm and his fellow  LIV rebels may just outdo them all.

The possibility, meanwhile, of a debutant doing a Fuzzy Zoeller and winning this week is another significant part of the Masters narrative. In Ludvig Aberg, the thrilling young Swede, and the upwardly mobile US Open champion, Wyndham Clark, there’s considerable intrigue about the 45-year wait for a rookie winner coming to an end.

Predictions in golf, of course, tend to be a fool’s errand. This fool, therefore, won’t be predicting anything here. We are merely mulling over the prospect of a dazzling debutant putting on a shimmering show.

Hopefully, both Aberg and Clark get off to a better start than the bold Marty Fleckman back in 1969.

His opening drive on the first hole of his maiden Masters appearance was sliced over the scoreboard and flew past the media centre towards Washington Road. “Is that out-of-bounds?,” said Fleckman with a gasp of anxiety. “I don’t know,” the starter replied. “No one has ever hit it over there.”

Never before has there been two Masters rookies in the top-10 of the world rankings. Clark currently sits fourth while Aberg is perched in ninth.

The old observation of the great Gene Sarazen certainly rings true for this pair. “You don’t come to Augusta to find your game, you come here because you’ve got one,” said the 1935 Masters champion.

Since winning last year’s US Open, which was such a bolt from the blue even the blue itself was left startled, Clark has kept the foot to the floor. 

He won another PGA Tour title at Quail Hollow, played in the Ryder Cup and then started 2024 by beating Aberg to the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am title before finishing second to the aforementioned Scheffler in the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship.

No wonder he’s chipper. Asked about emulating Zoeller’s epic effort all those years ago, Clark smiled and said: “Yeah, I mean, stats like that are meant to be broken. I know it’s a tall task. It’s a challenging golf course. There’s a bunch of good golfers. But I like my chances. I really like myself on this golf course.”

Aberg, meanwhile, has enjoyed the kind of breakneck ascent you’d see at Cape Canaveral. The 24-year-old turned professional only last summer but has already won on both the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour and has a Ryder Cup appearance on his cv. Remarkably, this week’s Masters is his first appearance in any major championship.

“All I'm trying to do is just embrace all the nerves and all the excitement that I feel,” said Aberg. “At the same time, I know my capabilities and I know my qualities and that that's probably going to be good enough to compete.”

That competition promises to be fierce. Scheffler, the world No 1, boasts current form that’s hotter than the debate on wood burning stoves.

When he won the Masters in 2022, he could afford the luxury of a four-putt on the final hole. Last year, Rahm started his assault with a four-putt on the very first hole. He still won by four shots after a quite imperious display.

Only three players, namely Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods, have earned back-to-back green jackets. Plying his trade on LIV’s 54-hole circus – he’s not finished lower than eighth in his five outings on the breakaway circuit – may make it harder to fully contextualise his form but the Spaniard appears to be in decent fettle.

In a jam-packed modern era, the golf season never really ends. The Masters, though, remains its true beginning. Fore, please…