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Masters Preview: It's Harmon's Gang v 'God' as sun breaks out over Augusta

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Bill Elliott reports from Augusta as the countdown begins to tee-off time

Good news...the sun has just come out at Augusta National. Its arrival coincided rather spookily with Tiger Woods' arrival at the course today, adding further evidence to those who believe The Great One is in touch with something that eludes the rest of us mere mortals.

I watched Tiger perform yesterday at his press conference, 45 minutes of carefully controlled plaudits and blandishments. Tiger is a lot of things but exciting to listen to he isn't. Still he is not here as a stand-up comic act, he is here to win this Masters and get his 2008 Grand Slam Roadshow off and running.

After all his comments to date this year - "Sure the Slam is easily do-able, all you have to do is to win four tournaments" he says - to fall at this first hurdle would not only be irritating, it would be embarrassing. Even more relevantly it would mean that never again would he be able to pull this mind-trick on his main rivals and, believe me, it is a mind-trick.

It will be no surprise to you that, like most so-called experts, I think Woods will win this Masters but it will not be easy. It never is. At least the weather this year promises to be kinder than the last few Masters and so at last we should get to see the revamped course as its owners intended it to be played. At nearly 7,500 yards it is now almost ridiculously long but its main weapon remains the greens.

These are always super slick and with such severe sloping that at times putting moves close to being impossible. I played Augusta three years ago and I can assure you that even 40 years of playing golf did not prepare me for these babies...think trying to putt on a snooker table while blindfolded. And standing on one leg.

Despite his length, it is Woods' putting that probably will win him this Masters. Here, it always is the short game that counts. Length off the tee is good but a man must be able to chip, pitch and putt or disaster beckons. Look at Ernie Els for example. The Big Easy is nowhere near the player he was and mostly this is down to a decline in his putting. Oh sure, Tiger has messed up his confidence generally but it is his inability to turn the 10 to 20 foot putts into birdies that causes him most anguish.

Now Ernie has turned to coach Butch Harmon to reignite the old magic. It almost certainly is a smart move.

"I just need a little something and, hopefully, Butch can provide it, " he told me when we chatted in the clubhouse this morning. The really interesting thing, however, is that Harmon now has charge of Els, Phil Mickelson and Adam Scott.

From here on in, for a while at least, Harmon's Gang represents the Anti-Tiger Brigade and as Harmon once coached Woods no-one is better placed to try to place some real pressure on the Great One. Interesting character Harmon and a man who owes his pre-eminent position in world golf to Greg Norman. The Shark discovered the coach when he working in deepest Texas nearly 20 years ago and within a year of joining forces Greg was back up to No.1 in the world.

Their relationship eventually fell apart as these things tend to do in the golf world but by then Harmon was off and running and closing in on David Leadbetter in a bid to become the best-known guru on the planet. Recently he has also established a reputation as a TV analyst of some power and persuasion even if wit does not come too readily to him.

It is too early for him to have done any real reconstructive work on Ernie, of course, and, privately at least, Els is going into this Masters more hopeful than he is convinced he can at last win a Green Jacket. Last year he felt the opposite, blowing his own trumpet every chance he got, claiming he was striping it in practice and then going out to miss the halfway cut.

Oh, by the way, Boo Weekley will be wearing army camouflage golf shoes this week. This is not important information obviously but I just felt you'd like to know...