The Masters was always the most romantic of the majors.
The British Open - 'Open Championship' is the official title but always sounded too pompous to this writer - is the only other one which comes close.
The other two majors, the ones which were never on terrestrial television, didn't have anything like the same cachet. Or at least they didn't on this side of the Atlantic.
Well, perhaps the US Open had some. It was always the tournament most cited in golf movies and an added USP was that the courses were usually set as extremely difficult. Sometimes almost sadistically difficult - like at Winged Foot in 2006. A double-bogey on the 18th there was the equivalent of a par on a normal hole, as Phil Mickelson and Colin Montgomerie can attest.
But the PGA Championship always stood out - if that's not too ironic a word usage - as the most nondescript of majors. Like it was randomly selected for elevation to the status of 'major' amid competition from the Players Championship and a smattering of other competitions which now sometime bear the title 'fifth major'.
The fact that the PGA was so often won by relative nonentities from the States - bland Mormons from Utah or Tin Cup sluggers from Idaho, perhaps, or squeaky clean college boys with a load of roman numerals after their name - didn't help its profile on this side of the pond.
No European won the title for over seven decades until Padraig Harrington got the job done during his hot streak in 2008. The last European to win it before Harrington was wounded in the First World War.
But the Masters is different. A major apart, with it's great advantage being that it is held at the same venue every year.
There's no other golf course in the world where armchair fans could describe every hole on the back nine.
Amen corner, Eisenhower tree, the butler cabin, the green jacket, Fred Couples leading again after Day 1, Hootie Johnson and his good friend Jim Nantz... there's no other major with the same list of repetitive, beloved and quirky traditions.
(Of course, Hootie has since ascended to the great butler cabin in the sky, and even his successor Billy Payne has stepped away, being replaced as chairman last year by Fred Ridley).
And the most romantic major deserves a romantic winner.
We'd feel shortchanged otherwise. 2017 spoiled us in that regard.
Sergio Garcia was not always the most popular man on the island, chiefly because of his late noughties rivalry with Padraig Harrington and his perceived sour grapes after he lost those battles.
But his play-off victory over Justin Rose provided the Masters with one of its most thrilling finales and ultimately, one of its most popular winners.
The trajectory of Garcia's career suggested he was one of those slightly erratic talents whose fragile temperament would forever betray him. A player with a great future behind him who seemed to have missed the boat as regards major titles and who was destined to become known as an underachiever.
Not only that but his own past utterances on the subject indicated he was resigned to agreeing with that gloomy hypothesis.
That he could re-write the script at the age of 37 - not a massively advanced age for a golfer but advanced enough for one seeking their first major - provided us with a wonderfully romantic sporting moment.
How could that be repeated this week? Who are the romantics' picks amid this week's field?
Well, not Garcia anyway. Two in a row is not romantic in the slightest. Two in a row is boring and the victors are usually far more smug and assured as they trot up the 72nd hole the second time around.
Nor do relative unknowns make romantic winners. Golf being the way it is, it's reasonably common for some prior nonentity to charge past a packed field and burn it up on the final day to take the title. There's little novelty value in that and golf fans haven't built up any kind of picture or relationship with the golfer in question.
The 2003 and 2004 British Open victories of Ben Curtis and Todd Hamilton were sensational, life-changing moments for them but elicited shoulder shrugs from most of the viewing public.
For much the same reason, young-ish winners aren't much better, especially if they're new to the upper echelons of the game. You need to have earned your spurs and hung around a while.
No, it has to be an old-timer. Someone who has prior, and ideally bitter, experience of the tension of a major Sunday. Somebody who's been in the mix and who's become well known to the great golfing public. One of the cast of regulars who is often found hanging around the top of the leaderboard - although crucially not at the top of it by Sunday.
There was an impossible romance to Greg Norman's ultimately doomed quest to his paws on the green jacket.
However, there is another possibly more romantic storyline. That of the past champion whose great days seemed to be part of history. Think Nicklaus winning around Augusta in 1986, or even Watson almost winning in Turnberry in '09. Or, to leap across sports, Ali winning the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974.
In 'When We Were Kings', one can hear both the emotion and the sense of wonder in Norman Mailer's voice as he says of Ali, "we couldn't believe it - he was champion again!"
Who could provide the romance this week?
McIlroy is the only Irish golfer present in Augusta this week, perhaps a throwback to the 1990s, when only Ronan Rafferty and Darren Clarke managed to earn an invite. (No player from the island featured in the field between 1993 and 1997.)
Hollywood's finest has to win the Masters and blew it in rather traumatic fashion back in 2011, when he still had no majors in his trophy cabinet.
But there remains a casual presumption that McIlroy has plenty of time in hand to achieve it. True sporting romance probably requires greater urgency. Had Garcia blown his chance last year, the natural assumption was that he'd probably never win one.
Other romantic favourites? Phil Mickelson is part of the furniture around Augusta and the course appeared built for his game.
Most years, he hovered around the top of the leaderboard, the TV cameras tracking his every move and twitch. That would usually end once he blew it on the 15th on the final day after ill-advisedly going for the green and smashing his fairway wood in the oft-forgotten pond at the back of the green.
Then, midway through his career, he started winning and then added a couple more to happily seal place among the greats.
He is also closer to 50 than 40. At 47, he would be an older winner than Nicklaus in '86. He recently broke his five-year winless streak with a stunning win in the WGC event in Mexico, to the delight of fans everywhere.
But for pure storyline, and we must bear in mind that he remains a divisive character, it would be hard to look beyond Woods.
As we've alluded to before, Tiger wasn't always popular during his pre-lapserian days when he was accumulating trophies with robotic and often joyless efficiency.
But don't underestimate what a sustained period on one's backside can do to the sympathies of the crowd. There is a beauty to a good Indian summer.
Speaking to the press today, Woods denied that a victory this week would represent the greatest comeback in the history of golf.
"As far as greatest comebacks, I think that one of the greatest comebacks in all of sport is the gentleman who won here, Mr (Ben) Hogan. I mean, he got hit by a bus and came back and won major championships.
"The pain he had to endure, the things he had to do just to play and just how hard it was for him to walk, and he ended up walking 36 holes (in one day) and winning a US Open."
That is a comeback, for sure.
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