State of golf's Major nation - it's the course, stupid...

You could fill half-a-dozen posts with why The Players should be the fifth Major.

Here's one on why it could yet become the year's first.

If the grandeur of history underpins the reputation of the British and US Opens, the two Majors that bookend each season are all about the course. The recent rise in stock of the PGA Championship is due, I believe, in no small part to the tournament returning to courses of genuine quality, while the venue for the first Major of the year, like charity, covers a multitude of sins.

The Masters' field might be a closed shop; its host club might jar somewhat with modern social mores, but any reservations have traditionally withered to irrelevance once Georgian shadows shimmer across those familiar strands of emerald and white, the flowers are aflame behind the 13th green and an April Sunday afternoon rejoices with boundless possibility, thanks to the one Major each year that has traditionally hated long grass.

We may put our clocks forward a few days beforehand and baseball and cricket seasons may have already cleared their throats but nothing signals the arrival of summer like Masters weekend.

Tinker unfavourably with the Augusta National golf course and you hack at the tournament's very soul.

Not that I'm ready to damn the new-look Augusta just yet. If journalists routinely boarded aircraft as flimsy as some of the bandwagons upon which they gleefully leap, the average staff turnover in my line of work would be measured in days rather than months. Two dull Masters do not a sea-change make.

But I am concerned. Iconic moment for me at this year's tournament came when one commentator pointed out that the chance of Larry Mize's 1987 heroics being repeated had lurched from slim to non-existent, thanks to one side of the green being raised at the 11th.

Why would you mute so resonant a part of your history as this? I heard alarm bells at that point and anyone at Augusta National who watched The Players last weekend could be forgiven if he heard some too.

They do things differently at Sawgrass. They get their bitchin' out of the way nice and early, for starters. Scornfully dismissed as "90 percent horse manure and 10 percent luck" when it first hosted this event in 1982, Pete Dye's course now seems to get more respect with each passing year. In my opinion, it's merited.

I play an excellent reproduction of the course on my PC and offhand, I can't think of a hole that bores me. Augusta, on the other hand, has three visual flat spots in its back nine. The 14th, 17th and 18th might be great to play, for all I know, but none of them stir my blood as a spectator.

Maybe someone can statistically shoot me down in flames here but 17 and 18 in particular rarely provide spectacular viewing, in my experience. I find them doughty, unyielding holes to watch, where par seems too often pre-ordained and meekly accepted.

At Sawgrass, things are slightly different, water lacing the last three holes with opportunity and ruin. The 16th is the kind of par-5 Augusta's 13th once was and those who fashionably sneer at 17 overlook the simple fact that for this event and at this point in the round, it is perfect. Just about anywhere else, I grant you, the concept is rubbish.

And while I quibble slightly with the suggestion that the 18th is golf's toughest closing hole, it undoubtedly keeps the world best golfers on a tightrope to the bitter end.

So this is where we're at now. Someone asks "Augusta National vs. TPC Sawgrass - which is the better venue?" and the point is genuinely debated, whereas once it might have been laughed out of court.

We have Augusta National, for so long on the side of enterprising play, now seemingly moving away from it in a bid to stop one man out of ninety, while Sawgrass, once wicked uncle to Tour pros everywhere, now compassionately waters its greens on the players' behalf to counter a daunting wind. Whatever happened to "Star Wars golf, designed by Darth Vader"?

It is a reminder that everything can change and frequently does. That a tournament whose comparative youth is perpetually held against it by people apparently under the impression that Augusta National was born at the age of 50, is now 34 years old and will only get older. That sometimes when we least expect it, an emotional tipping point is reached where the unthinkable becomes accepted fact.

It will be a tragedy if The Masters' star dims and I don't wish it for one moment. At the same time, however, I'm pleased that the words "The Players will never be a major – and shouldn’t be..." are accompanied by Ian Andrew's name and not my own.