Keith Duggan Sideline CutI am not sure which player I want to win this year's Masters. The obvious choice is, of course, Padraig Harrington, a guy I have never met but who has come across as ridiculously likeable and down to earth in any interview I have read or heard.

If Tiger is the embodiment of perfection, then Harrington is golf's Everyman who wears his heart on his sleeve.

But given the choice, I would reserve the British Open as Harrington's first Major, and wish for one of those insanely volatile and windblown weekends in Scotland that destroy all but the most durable temperaments. A Major victory in those circumstances would be a greater reflection on Harrington's stoic resourcefulness and patience and quiet obsession with the game than a breakthrough in the scented and gentrified citadel of Georgian snobbery.

For the more I see and learn and hear of the Masters, the more suspicious I get. The myth-machine has become too loud and insistent. There is too much nonsense about tradition, too much pandering to the absurd group of men who run Augusta, too much written about Amen Corner.

For one week in April, the sport's reporting fraternity turns into an Andrew Marvell appreciation society: just how spectacular can a bunch of azaleas be? The idea of the amateur playing guests rooming together in quaint lodges is wholesome and attractive and conjures up the notion of the boys spending the eve of the great tournament sipping cocoa and flicking through a photo album featuring the halcyon days of Arnie Palmer. The thing is, any one of these amateurs would gladly bind old Arnie up and lock him in a (solid-mahogany, hand-carved, antique) Augusta broom cupboard in exchange for making the cut.

And if Arnie turns up at the gates of Augusta with his clubs on his back next year (admittedly improbable), they just might have to do that. Doing anything for 50 successive years has to be considered a feat, but the Palmer nostalgia has become a little, well, old. And behind the profuse outpouring of tributes paid to the great man, it is possible to detect a tiny but high-pitched note of impatience.

Stevie Ryder has interviewed every moving thing in Augusta - including the azaleas - as to what Arnie means to golf. They are going to struggle to find anything more to say in honour of Arnie when he finally triple bogeys his way to the great clubhouse in the sky.

But by the looks of the old-timer, still handsome, silver-haired, Florida-tanned and hearty of girth, that is not going to be any time soon. Longevity being what it is, Arnie might still be swinging a club when Tiger is starting out on the Champions Tour.

There is a definite sense that underneath the tribute, everybody is hoping that the Big A will get the message and tune in on television next April. If the oldster does show up at the gates in 2005 for another 36 holes of slow nostalgia, there is a distinct probability that Hootie and the boys will smuggle him through the kitchen entrance and set him the task of sticking cherries in the grapefruits for the weekend.

But the sight of Arnie reliving the glories of the black and white epoch (that is, the film was B&W but its subjects were strictly W) while legends like Watson and Faldo vouch, with teary eyes, that the best thing about golf is Arnie's all-round Arnieness, suits the Masters. The Arnie Factor reinforces the values which the tournament organisers feel their course represents: tradition, respect, class, breeding and individuality. It is the course of champions, and, more than any other sports tournament, the Masters perpetuates the memory of its former winners.

There is an element of American society which yearns for the cachet of European heritage and the sheer centuries that the old countries can call upon. The Masters and all its archaic customs and fussy formalities seem to hark after the authentic sense of past and origin that the British courses acquired naturally. The Masters may not be all that old a tournament, but it sure can wheel out the oldest golfers.

Almost everybody buys into the Masters contention that they are the holders of golf's unrivalled paradise. Even the bird life manages to sound self-satisfied, chirping away in the pines.

The one glorious exception to the general reverence has been John Daly, who chain-smoked and grunted his way around Augusta on Thursday with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball. Although his scores were poignantly erratic, he has already claimed the moment of the tournament by clocking poor Don Blincoe on the back of the head with a drive and then inquiring if his stricken and dazed companion had had enough whiskey the night before.

Far from the log cabins and contemplative vistas of the famous course, Daly's trailer home is reportedly parked nightly by a Hooter's bar in the neon reality of downtown Augusta. His behaviour and lifestyle may be distasteful to some, but at least it is true to his personality.

And because of that, because there is a vulnerable and empathetic and loud streak in Daly, he wins public hearts in a way that golf, by its nature, rarely manages.

Sometimes, watching men like Phil Mickelson play a tournament and then react to yet another narrow loss with such evenness is like watching a hologram. Mickelson, pleasant and hushed and wealthy beyond comprehension, is just the type of young man that the organisers of the Masters would like to anoint as one of their own. The year could not be better, with Tiger Woods in the midst of an existential struggle that will surely pass and make him stronger. But there is something hollow about Mickelson, and it is tempting to conclude that Woods's struggles are down to the fact that he had no credible rival to step out from the pack to challenge him. It is like he is getting himself into a fix just to create a new set of challenges. With Woods fighting himself this season, there is no Arnie in the full bloom of youth, no single towering figure. The field is open.

In one way, it would be moving and weird if an Irish man were to win the Masters tomorrow night. It would be hailed as one of those great Irish sporting moments that are sprung on us out of the blue every so often.

Reviewers have been speculating upon Harrington's chances in a tone that reads more of hope than expectation, but it seems a Harrington win would be universally popular. And the great thing about Harrington is that you can be fairly sure he would, in is own solid and decent way, remain as true to his life course as John Daly is to his.

Just the sound of Harrington's voice as he made his acceptance speech would make Augusta feel a bit less like some manufactured golfing heaven and more like somewhere real. His presence among the elite rulers of golf's most smug and prissy tournament would make it a bit more likeable. Maybe Harrington is just what Augusta needs.