AUGUSTA -- The 90th Masters Tournament begins Thursday. Practice rounds start today. Augusta National Golf Club does not traffic in the concept of uncertainty during Masters week. The azaleas bloom on schedule. The greens are prepared to the specifications that have not changed in any meaningful way in decades. The patrons -- Augusta's preferred terminology, never "fans" -- return to the same reserved spots they have occupied for years, in some cases generations.

Outside these grounds, April has been chaotic. NCAA championships decided by 28 points. An NBA regular season concluding with Detroit of all programs holding the Eastern Conference's top seed. The broader world offering its usual abundance of emergencies. Augusta National's particular genius is its insistence that none of this penetrates. The gates open. The course is there. The tournament begins when it is scheduled to begin.

Rory McIlroy returns as defending champion for the first time in his career. He completed the career Grand Slam here last April, winning in a playoff over Justin Rose to become the sixth golfer in history to hold all four major championships. [1] He spent Sunday walking the course with his father, Gerry, exercising the defending champion's privilege of a practice round before official practice rounds begin. McIlroy is now attempting what only three golfers have done in the modern era: win consecutive Masters titles. [2]

The Field

Scottie Scheffler arrives as the world number one, a two-time Masters champion, and the figure about whom Augusta's analytical community has the most interesting thing to say: his approach play in 2026 is 1.24 strokes worse per round than it was in 2025. Augusta National is an approach golf course. The premium shots are the ones that must find specific quadrants of specific greens to allow manageable putts. Scheffler won here in 2022 and 2024 on the quality of that precise skill. The question -- purely statistical, and statistics are not destiny at Augusta -- is whether the decline is temporary or real.

Bryson DeChambeau, Tommy Fleetwood, Collin Morikawa, and Viktor Hovland round out the field's most-watched names. The tournament is 91 players deep, a field that includes past champions, major winners, and the qualifiers whose presence on these grounds is itself evidence of accomplishment.

Tiger Woods will not be in the field. His participation in major championships has become an annual question answered annually in the negative.

What Monday Means

The practice rounds are the week's most deceptive hours. Players walk the course studying pin positions and wind patterns and reading the undulations on greens that move in directions the eye suggests are impossible until the putt confirms it. Pairings form around friendship and mutual study -- McIlroy played with his father; others pair with coaches, rivals, or longtime partners who know their games well enough to provide useful reads.

The Par 3 Contest is Wednesday. It is the Masters' annual concession to lightness -- trick shots, celebrity appearances, the traditional indulgence before Thursday's mood shifts to work. The gallery cheers for the moments that will not determine anything that matters and enjoys them for exactly that reason.

Tournament play begins Thursday at Augusta National. The 90th Masters will answer the usual questions: whether McIlroy can sustain what last year's victory started, whether Scheffler can overcome the form-line caution that the statistics generate, whether the course will produce a winner from the field's deep middle or deliver the storyline that always seems to materialize here regardless of how the week began.

Augusta pretends the world is fine. On this particular Monday, the pretense requires more effort than usual. But the course is prepared, the gates are open, and the tournament begins when it is scheduled to begin.

-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos