Rory McIlroy has been a Masters champion in the making ever since he chipped balls into a washing machine on live television, aged eight, dressed in Tiger Nike, Player black.
Twenty-one years later, he's presented with what appears to be a golden opportunity to earn the Green Jacket which would complete a career grand slam still some weeks shy of his 30th birthday.
Golden opportunities in golf are still more miss than hit, and it's the acceptance of this fact that makes McIlroy all the more dangerous - not just here but in the months and years ahead. He's done everything he needs to prepare well, from winning his biggest title in five years to reading what we might term self-help books, but if it isn't enough, so be it.
In full flight, there's no sight quite like McIlroy, and it would be a shame were he not to conquer this resplendent golf course. It would also be a surprise. McIlroy and Augusta National are a match made in heaven and he's awfully hard to leave out of any staking plan, particularly with so many places to play with.
There are no negatives that I can give you, not even the putter. Work with Brad Faxon, again more mental than physical, appears to have helped enormously and he doesn't need to make everything to win this. As ever, the challenge at Augusta leans more towards approach play, the making of a major champion more iron than whatever goes into the head of that TaylorMade Spider he's grown so comfortable with.
All other departments in the McIlroy game are firing. His strokes-gained: ball-striking return in 2019 is 2.1 shots per round, enough to lead 2017 Masters champion Sergio Garcia by almost half a shot. There is no gap between other players anywhere close to this - one is simply out on his own.
In approach-play terms he sits ninth among the assembled field, a balanced attack starting on the tee and continuing all the way to the green. It's self-evident that McIlroy has played outstanding golf so far this year, but the numbers point towards something more - the idea that he is in fact at his peak.
And he is, by any measure, the most likely winner of The Masters. I just don't quite think he's a bet, not with eight or 10 places each-way. Odds of 7/1 are about as short as you'll see for a major championship and require the sort of total faith which this unforgiving tournament doesn't allow for.
Instead, my headline vote goes to Rickie Fowler, who can extend the run of first-time major winners here to half a decade by finally breaking his duck.
Fowler is the ultimate nearly-man in the eyes of some, but that's a mantle Garcia shed, and he isn't alone: Dustin Johnson, Adam Scott, even Phil Mickelson have been cast in the role. It's not always as simple as McIlroy, Brooks Koepka and Jordan Spieth have made it look; no two career paths are identical.
I certainly believe that Fowler has it within to become a major champion, and he did everything but win this event last year. Indeed, his 14-under total would have won 75 of the previous 81 editions, and even from a strokes-gained perspective - i.e. to use the field scoring average as an adjuster - he was good enough to win 41 of them.
Quite simply, he bumped into an opponent at the height of his powers, who also happens to be a fearless front-runner while revelling in the role of villain. Of all the players to throw punches at Patrick Reed in last year's Masters Tournament, it was only Fowler who truly threatened to knock him out of a Green Jacket.
That could be really significant one year on. At last, Fowler left Augusta knowing he'd done all that he could've done, which includes a world-class birdie at the 72nd hole to prove much to both us and to himself.
He did the same in Phoenix earlier this year, defying bad weather, bad luck and, yes, bad play to cling on grimly after a gruelling final round - played in the sort of cool, windy conditions which some are forecasting this week. There are parallels between that event and Fowler's major heartaches and whereas at Augusta it was the performance that felt significant, here it was the outcome.
Since then, Fowler's gaze has been locked on The Masters. He's skipped the Match Play once more and, as he likes to, has played in the event which immediately precedes the season's first major. That it was the Texas Open rather than Houston is not a positive, but it means Fowler's ho-hum performance is in no way a negative.
In fact it goes down as encouraging. Playing with new shafts in his irons, Fowler gained strokes on approach for the fourth event in succession and as we saw with that victory in Phoenix, as well as in the Honda Classic two years ago, anything positive in this department makes one of the sport's most potent putters a real threat.
Here at Augusta, there is simply nobody in the field who I would rather have putting for me. It then becomes a question of setting up opportunities, and with his best two driving performances this year having come in the Phoenix Open and then last week, there are reasons to be positive from an overall ball-striking perspective.
Fowler almost won the Honda Classic, too, and with form across the opening months of the year so vital in unearthing a Masters champion, it's his profile which makes the most appeal. I really like both his scheduling and the ebb and flow of his performances.
If his plan was to bag and win and then get ready for this, it's a case of so far, so good. Now it's a case of whether he can execute the final phase and I don't think he's ever been better equipped.