In a striking announcement, Stratek Global secured a R9 billion investment for its innovative small modular reactor project in South Africa. Despite potential advancements in nuclear technology with their HTMR-100 reactor, the deal drew scepticism from energy analyst Chris Yelland. He provocatively labelled the massive investment a possible “pump-and-dump” scam, suggesting deceit intended to inflate stock prices. This accusation introduces significant controversy amidst what might be a pivotal development in sustainable energy.

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By Ivo Vegter

When Stratek Global announced a partnership to raise R9 billion in private investment Chris Yelland promptly suggested they were running a ‘pump-and-dump’ scam.

When BizNews aired a video interview announcing that a local nuclear reactor design company had signed an arrangement to raise R9 billion in funding with a private investor to help build a small modular reactor in South Africa, the response from one energy analyst was startlingly hostile.

The interview featured Dr. Kelvin Kemm, the chairman and CEO of Stratek Global, as well as Stephen Edkins and Warren La Fleur of Koya Capital, which bills itself as a ‘deep tech advisory firm based in Johannesburg’ that ‘champions the commercialisation of African innovations for global impact’.

Stratek has been casting about for funding for its HTMR-100 small modular reactor design – which produces 100MW of process heat or 35MW of electricity – for several years. It now seems to be on the brink of securing a healthy tranche to continue the commercialisation of the design and produce a first-of-a-kind, operational reactor.

This press release summarises the announcement. It also attracted coverage here, here, and here.

Yet not all reactions were positive.

Seething

‘I must say that it has crossed my mind that this is some kind of financial scam,’ seethed Chris Yelland, an energy analyst and MD at EE Publishing. ‘I mean, just provide R9bn of investment, and away we go. Ja, well, no fine. Breaking ground by the end of the year???? O lordy me, good grief. Is the financial and investment community and the public really so naive?’

He became positively conspiratorial: ‘Could this be another “pump-and-dump” scheme targeting micro- and small-cap stocks to naive investors to boost and then offload a stock’s or security’s price based on false, misleading, or greatly exaggerated statements?’

And later: ‘The nuclear industry is its own worst enemy if it fails to call out this bull manure for what it really is.’

Shiny future

Let’s step back a little. Nuclear energy is contested on many grounds.

It shouldn’t be, of course. It represents the glorious, shiny future of yesteryear, with a clean environment and plentiful, cheap energy supporting universal prosperity and happy families, which we all imagined when we were young.

It represents what the late Robert McCall painted inThe Prologue and the Promise, his epic 6x18m mural (now missing, presumed destroyed) for the Horizons pavilion at Walt Disney’s EPCOT Center in Orlando, Florida in 1983.

I was 12. This was supposed to be my future.

It has been thwarted by a perverse combination of irrational public fears stoked by eco-lefties in Hollywood, opposition from environmentalists (while nuclear energy is the safest and most renewable clean energy and is key to meeting climate objectives), and extraordinarily expensive safety regulations (though nuclear is among the safest sources of energy on the planet).

Four decades later, there are only 436 nuclear reactors in operation in 32 countries – both base-load and load-following – producing less than 10% of the world’s electricity.

Meanwhile, energy prices are rising, not least because of idealistic and heavily subsidised attempts to build out large quantities of wind and solar power. Despite this, there are still large numbers of coal-fired power stations under construction.

Nuclear renaissance

Yet there are signs of a nuclear renaissance, thanks to a new generation of nuclear reactors that are inherently safe, smaller, less costly to build. The US, Russia, and China are fighting over who gets to build them.

China already has a small modular reactor in operation: a high-temperature gas-cooled pebble-bed reactor at its Shidao Bay Nuclear Power Plant. Russia has one on a ship.

The United States is throwing billions of dollars at nuclear power, in the hope of tripling its nuclear power generation to 300GW by 2050.

India hopes to produce 100GW of nuclear electricity by 2047, up from only 8GW today.

Numerous African countries are working towards building their first nuclear power stations, including Kenya, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ghana, Uganda, and Nigeria.

South Africa’s draft Integrated Resource Plan 2023 contains a scenario in which 2 500MW of nuclear is built before 2035, another 1 925MW by 2040, and a further 10 075MW by 2050, for a total build over the next quarter century of 14 500MW.

South African dream

South Africa has a history with nuclear power, of course. It has long operated the only nuclear power plant on the African continent, and also conducted pioneering research into a pebble-bed modular reactor (PBMR) – research which was shelved by the government in 2009, when the poorly-educated and corrupt Jacob Zuma became president.

The private sector has kept the dream alive, however.

Stratek Global, a group of engineers under the leadership of Kemm, formerly the CEO of the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (NECSA), built on a simplified version of the PBMR to design a small modular reactor they call the HTMR-100.

Being a high-temperature gas-cooled pebble-bed reactor, it is very similar, in principle, to the design that is currently operational in China.

Pump and dump?

Yelland, when pressed, declined to offer any sort of evidence or reasoning for suggesting that the Stratek deal might be a scam. This, I would have thought, is really the minimum necessary for making public claims insinuating malfeasance.

I asked him how a ‘pump-and-dump’ would even work if nobody was selling shares to the public, but he declined to answer.

He merely said: ‘I make no excuses for my skepticism and cynicism in respect of all the ridiculous hype and hogwash that I have read, heard and seen in press releases, phony interviews and conspiracy websites over the last 25 years on the subject of (paper) designs of 4th, 5th and 6th generation pebble bed small modular nuclear reactors. 😂😂😂Wake up, Ivo!’

It seems, therefore, that he is skeptical of all claims about all new-generation nuclear reactors.

About turn

This is, perhaps, not surprising. After being generally in favour of nuclear energy, Yelland abruptly changed his mind in 2016, based on an analysis of levelised cost of electricity, which he considered to be too high to justify a nuclear build programme.

In an interview in 2017, he admitted that he used to be pro-nuclear, that he felt that the cost of renewables had fallen so sharply that nuclear, which until a mere two or three years earlier had been the least-cost zero-carbon technology for South Africa, was now more expensive than ‘a blend of wind, solar PV, gas and pumped storage’.

Skepticism

Yelland is, of course, entitled to be skeptical of Stratek’s claims. He is entitled to be skeptical of nuclear power, for that matter.

I don’t know if Stratek’s design is ready for commercialisation and has resolved the technical difficulties that still plagued the PBMR when it was mothballed in 2009.

I don’t know if R9 billion is too little, enough, or too much.

I don’t know if Stratek’s design is cost-competitive for a first-of-a-kind reactor, or if future iterations can become competitive with renewables for the kinds of decentralised, small-scale generation applications to which small modular reactors are best suited.

I know Stratek doesn’t have a build permit, and probably lacks several other bits of regulatory paperwork that it will need to actually start building their reactor. I don’t know if it is in a position to get them.

Koya Capital, however, has just spent nine months doing due diligence on the deal. I anticipate that they would know a lot more about these questions than I or Yelland do. It is, after all, their money on the table. It is their skin in the game.

Skepticism is one thing but suggesting that investors are being taken for a ride by a bunch of scam artists really requires more evidence than Yelland is willing to provide. He made no factual claims, merely resorting to vitriolic mudslinging.

Perhaps having committed so whole-heartedly to a wind-and-solar utopia, he finds it hard to watch the dream collide with reality and face the threat of competition.

Private risk capital

It isn’t as if Stratek is begging the public for money or is asking the government for money. This is private risk capital at stake.

That alone is cause for celebration. For governments to risk huge amounts of capital on risky projects that may or may not succeed is a burden on the taxpayer.

If private investors are willing to come to the party and invest substantial amounts into bringing new-generation nuclear designs to market, however, then the nuclear industry really does appear to be due for a renaissance.

Competitive innovation by private-sector risktakers is the answer to solving our energy problems. The more competition there is in that market, the better for the consumer.

Some of the designs will probably fail. Some of the companies may go under. That is the nature of private-sector innovation. But out of that competitive struggle will rise those innovators who do succeed and can offer the best possible solutions at the best possible price.

That market-based process is a far more reliable road to success than government planning, technocratic prognostication by experts, or the self-confessed cynicism of analysts like Yelland.

If nuclear energy is finally starting to attract private investment, perhaps today’s younger generations may yet get to live in the future that we were promised in more optimistic times.

Read also:

• FFM podcast ep22: Navigating bond yields and energy markets; Resilient Rand; Spar; R5k still to play for
• 🔒Nuclear Fusion breakthrough sparks optimism and investments for clean energy future
• South African farmers embrace nuclear solution amid blackout crisis – Francois Rossouw (SAAI)

This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission

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The first of the year’s four major golf tournaments, the Masters is a fixture of the spring sporting calendar, timed to come to a head when the azaleas are in full bloom in Georgia.

When does the Masters start?

This year’s tournament runs from Thursday, April 11 to Sunday, April 14.

Officially, there are three days of practice and build-up to the opening round. This year, however, Tiger Woods turned up on Sunday as he bids for an unlikely sixth Masters title.

The traditional Par 3 contest is on Wednesday, April 10, featuring the families of some of golf’s top players. There have been 107 holes in one made at the Par 3 contest since it was inaugurated in 1960.

How can I watch the Masters on TV?

In the UK, the Masters is broadcast exclusively on Sky Sports Golf.

Free-to-air coverage is also broadcast on the Masters website, where viewers can watch every individual shot a few minutes after it happens and also catch rolling coverage of select groups and holes.

Radio coverage of the tournament in the UK will be on Talksport.

In previous years the Masters has been shown on free-to-air television in the UK, either live or as highlights. Last year, however, the BBC cut ties with the tournament completely.

Alternatively, you can bookmark this page and return to follow the tournament on our live blog, with commentary and analysis from Augusta National.

Where is the Masters played?

The Masters is the only one of golf’s four majors that is played at the same course each year.

Augusta National Golf Club is in the north east of Georgia, close to the border with South Carolina. Augusta National is one of the most exclusive golf clubs in the world. There are understood to be only about 300 members, among them Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. The only way to play the course is by invitation of a member.

There is a more pernicious side to the club’s exclusivity, though. Augusta did not permit an African American member until 1990, while there were no female members until 2012 when Condoleezza Rice joined.

What is the Masters prize money?

This year’s total purse is expected to be $18 million (£14.2 million), the same as it was last year. The winner takes $3,240,000 (£2.51 million) with incrementally less prize money for each of the top 50 finishers.

The winner also get a replica of the official trophy (which never leaves the club). The champion golfer also receives a gold medal and, most coveted of all, a green jacket.

There are also trophies for finishing second, being the leading amateur golfer, recording the lowest score of the day, hitting a hole in one, hitting an eagle and hitting a double eagle.

How do players qualify for the Masters?

Technically speaking, players receive an invitation to play in the Masters. Unlike the US Open or the Open Championship, there is no ‘open’ qualification process.

There are 20 different ways to make sure an envelope from Augusta drops through your letterbox. The simplest way is to be in the top 50 of the world rankings on January 1.

All previous Masters champions can play, should they choose to take up the invitation, as well as those players who finished in the top 12 of the previous year’s tournament.

Any player who won a fully-sanctioned PGA Tour event the previous season will also book their place for Augusta. The same goes for any player who achieved a top-four finish in any of the previous season’s majors, while major winners secure their Masters berth for five years.

Any player in the world’s top 50 the week before the Masters will also be invited. The Masters also reserves the right to invite wildcard players.

The rest of the field is made up of the winners of the amateur game’s most distinguished events. The Masters is a smaller field than the other three majors, with around 90 players usually in attendance.

At this year’s tournament there will be only five or six British golfers (depending on whether Danny Willett is well enough recovered after shoulder surgery). James Corrigan explains why so few UK players now make it to Augusta.

Yes, but in lower numbers than last year. The main problem for LIV golfers is that tournaments on the breakaway circuit do not offer world ranking points, which are the route by which most players qualify for the Masters (see above).

The LIV golfers who will be at the 2024 Masters are Bryson DeChambeau (because he won the 2020 US Open), Cam Smith (who won the 2023 Open Championship), Brooks Koepka (who won the PGA Championship in 2019), Jon Rahm, Patrick Reed, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Charl Schwartzel, Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson (who are all previous Masters champions), Tyrrell Hatton and Adrian Meronk (who were in the world’s top 50 earlier this year) and Joaquin Niemann (who received a special invitation).

Will Tiger Woods be playing?

Yep. The five-times champion turned up at Augusta to start practising on Sunday and played an earlier practice round over the Easter weekend.

Woods continues to recover from the 2021 car crash that almost cost his right leg but his withdrawal from the second round of the LA Open in February – his first official event in 10 months – led to doubts he would appear at the season’s first major.

How do you get tickets for the Masters?

If you want at ticket for this year’s tournament, you’re well out of time. Tickets go on sale the previous year, and the application deadline expires in June. Tickets are allocated by ballot, with applicants told in July whether they have been successful.

A ticket for one of the three days of practice costs $100 (£78.00) . A ticket for one of the tournament days is $140 (£110).

The full list of Masters winners

What are the tee times?

The tee times for rounds one and two will be announced in the week of the tournament itself.

For the opening round, the first group are likely to tee off at 8am local time (1pm UK time) with the final group starting at 2pm (7pm UK time). That means the last finishers will probably be out on course until 7pm (midnight UK time).

What are the latest odds?

• Scottie Scheffler 7/2

• Rory McIlroy 9/1

• Jon Rahm 10/1

• Brooks Koepka 12/1

• Jordan Spieth 18/1

• Xander Schauffele 16/1

• Ludvig Aberg 20/1

• Viktor Hovland 25/1

• Wyndham Clark 28/1

• Tiger Woods 125/1

Odds correct to April 9, 2024

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GLENDALE, Ariz. — The lovable maniac who rebuilt UConn into a juggernaut refused to allow his team to relax.

Dan Hurley exhorted the Huskies to keep pushing for more even though their place in history was already cemented.

He screamed for defensive pressure after an Alex Karaban corner 3-pointer put UConn up 14. He got down in a defensive stance and bellowed “Get a stop!” after a Cam Spencer bucket extended the lead to 18. When his defense dared to allow Purdue to score, Hurley shouted “Don’t let up! Don’t let up!”

UConn never let up, not during its 75-60 takedown of Zach Edey and Purdue in Monday’s NCAA championship game, not at any point during a dominant title defense. A team full of talented players with an insatiable desire to win mowed through every opponent in its path en route to a second straight championship and the program’s sixth since 1999.

Only a year ago, the UConn team led by Jordan Hawkins, Andre Jackson Adama Sanogo trounced its six NCAA tournament opponents by 20 points per game. The team that was supposed to be the team after the team proved to be even more unbeatable, winning six NCAA tournament games by a record-setting 23.3 points apiece.

UConn joins Florida in 2006 and 2007 and Duke in 1991 and 1992 as the only programs to repeat since the demise of John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty almost five decades ago. All five Florida starters bypassed the NBA Draft to return to chase a second championship. Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill were among the four Duke starters who did the same.

What UConn has accomplished this season is a different and even more audacious feat. Hurley didn’t have the luxury of bringing his team back intact in a quest for a repeat. Five of last season’s top eight players moved on after the Huskies ripped through the NCAA tournament with startling ease.

When Hurley was asked if he had engineered the greatest two-year run in modern men’s college basketball history, he first would only admit that it’s “up there.”

“I can’t say anything about Duke because I’m going to piss my brother off,” he said with a smile. “I guess I can say stuff about Florida. But I love Billy Donovan. So I’m in a bad spot.”

Moments later, Hurley finally admitted the obvious.

Said Hurley, “It’s the best two-year run, I think, in a very, very long time.”

Step 1: Stay hungry

UConn’s path to college basketball’s first repeat championship in 17 years began last April almost as soon as the confetti got swept up.

Once the celebrations began to slow and the departing players began NBA Draft preparations, Hurley and his staff examined who was left. They made plans to build around UConn’s three returning standouts: floor-spacing four man Alex Karaban, playmaking point guard Tristen Newton and defensive buzzsaw Donovan Clingan.

Hurley earmarked one remaining starting spot for incoming freshman wing Stephon Castle, the rare McDonald’s All-American whose unselfishness and team-first mentality stood out as much as his talent. The UConn staff filled the other vacant starting spot via the portal, landing sought-after Rutgers sharpshooter Cam Spencer, a kindred spirit to Hurley, the rare player as passionate and driven as he is.

The result was a roster that featured a perfect mix of NCAA tournament-hardened veterans and hungry newcomers. As Hurley said recently, “As soon as we saw how good Cam was and Steph, I think we knew we had a starting five that was going to be as good as what anyone had in the sport.”

What kept Hurley up at night during the offseason wasn’t whether UConn was talented enough. To him the enemy was complacency. He read books on leadership and peppered coaching colleagues with questions about how to help his players remain driven the year after ascending to college basketball’s mountaintop.

Returning players who had already experienced Hurley’s legendarily grueling practices and workouts assumed they had an idea of what was coming last summer. Then, says Karaban with a smile, Hurley “turned it up to another level.”

On the sideline at UConn practices were a set of cardboard posters representing every trophy that the Huskies could win during the upcoming season. Those posters took a beating from Hurley kicking them down or firing projectiles at them whenever he felt his team didn’t practice up to its capabilities.

“He was being extra intense,” Karaban said. “He really gave us a warning on how he was going to approach the season. If you were satisfied with what we did last year, he wasn’t going to tolerate that.”

In October, UConn played a closed-door scrimmage against a Virginia team unranked in the AP preseason Top 25. The first half was an early glimpse of the Huskies at the top of their game. The reigning champs outscored Tony Bennett’s team by 10-plus points.

The second half was a different story. Virginia, in Hurley’s words, “smashed” a UConn team that was feeling a little too satisfied with itself, outscoring the Huskies so convincingly that it left Hurley wondering if his team was actually any good.

In a film session the next day, Hurley tore into his returning players for their lack of leadership. The way Karaban remembers it, “He ripped me. He ripped Tristen. He told us that we’ve got to do way better if we wanted to have some success this year. Not even all the success we wanted, just some success.”

Message delivered. Loud and clear.

Step 2: Run it back

UConn stormed through the regular season, dropping only three games along the way and steamrolling everyone else. One loss came against Seton Hall when Clingan only played 14 minutes due to injury. The other two came when Kansas and Creighton shot the lights out from 3-point range.

When fans and media were heaping praise on UConn, Hurley would keep his players sharp by reminding them that wasn’t always the case. He constantly brought up that the Huskies were projected third in the Big East preseason poll and had five teams picked ahead of them in the AP preseason Top 25.

“For a lot of the year, we’ve used the external slights, the perceived slights, all those things, the world’s against us mentality,” Hurley said. “I think that gets you through the regular season, the Big East grind.”

It got UConn the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament and paved the way for this run. The Huskies dismantled Illinois in the Elite Eight with a 30-0 run. Alabama shot 8-for-11 from 3-point range in the first half in the national semifinals … and still trailed.

In Monday’s title game, UConn faced the strongest NCAA tournament opponent it has faced the past two seasons, a Purdue team that might have won the title some other years. This was Hurley versus Painter, Clingan versus Edey, the rare winner-take-all matchup between college basketball’s two best teams.

The intriguing clash swung in UConn’s favor in part because of the defensive strategy that Hurley devised. Hell-bent on not allowing Edey’s supporting cast to beat the Huskies from behind the arc, Hurley had Clingan defend the 7-foot-4 Purdue giant by himself as best he could and instructed his perimeter players to erase the Boilermakers’ 3-point shooters.

Edey had a heroic 37 and 10, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Purdue didn’t even attempt its third 3-pointer until a full-court heave at the halftime buzzer. The nation’s No. 2 3-point shooting team finished 1 of 7 from behind the arc, the fewest attempts by any team in the national title game since 1995 UCLA.

“Coming into the game we really felt like if we were able to take the other guys out of the game and really guard the 3-point line, we were willing to concede 25 or 27 from Edey,” UConn assistant coach Luke Murray said. “Their offensive efficiency goes off the charts when those other guys step up and make shots, so that was our game plan.”

Or as Newton put it, “Edey only shoots twos. He doesn’t shoot threes. If he makes 15 twos like he did today, that’s 30. Where are the rest of the points going to come from?”

Without more support for Edey, Purdue never could catch up. UConn led by six at halftime, by double figures five minutes into the second half and by as many as 18. Newton led the Huskies with 20 points to earn the Final Four’s most outstanding player award. Castle, Spencer and Clingan joined Newton on the five-member all-NCAA tournament team.

It wasn’t until the final minute that Hurley at last relaxed, that he stopped pleading with the referees for phantom foul calls and begging his players for more defensive intensity. When Hurley sent in UConn’s benchwarmers, he chest-bumped Murray, gestured to the UConn crowd for more noise and hugged each of his starters one-by-one as they came off the floor.

An hour later, during his postgame news conference, Hurley was already looking ahead and eyeing a potential dynasty.

“I mean, s***,” he said, “we’re going to try to replicate it again. We’re going to maintain a championship culture. We’re bringing in some very talented high school freshmen. Our returning players, through player development, will take a big jump. We’ll strategically add through the portal.

“I don’t think that we’re going anywhere.”

Asked to choose a favourite Champions Dinner in 35 years of wearing the Green Jacket, Sir Nick Faldo plumps without hesitation for his own. “My fish and chips,” he says, almost salivating at the memory of his 1997 meal, which he paired with tomato soup. “I flew in the fillets from Harry Ramsden’s with these big chips. I had the Sarson’s vinegar as well. It was very successful. Everybody loved that.”

His pride is self-evident. And yet, given that he also introduced his American guests that night to the dubious fluoro-green delights of mushy peas, it seems about as plausible a boast as the time he claimed Peter Jacobson had called him the funniest Englishman since John Cleese.

At 66, Faldo remains impervious to self-doubt. And on the subject of his worst dinner with his fellow Masters winners, he is equally emphatic. “Oh, it was Bubba Watson, wasn’t it? When we had Chuck E Cheese: the little hamburger, with a little corn and a little ice cream. I think we had a milkshake, too, instead of a chianti.”

Disdainful as this might sound, it should be said that Faldo was equally withering at the time, describing Watson’s 2013 offering as a McDonald’s-style “Happy Meal”. So much for Anglo-American relations. To think, Watson has even said how much he is looking forward to the latest gathering on Tuesday night at Augusta’s clubhouse, free of the awkward questions that followed his defection to LIV. Now he might be tempted to ask why Faldo is portraying him as some redneck without a palate.

Faldo, in idyllic semi-retirement at his ranch in Montana, offers his opinions more rarely than during his 16 years as lead golf analyst on CBS. He was an often fearless commentator in that period, memorably torching a “useless” Sergio García for a “bad attitude” at the 2008 Ryder Cup, which he had lost as captain. For his return behind the microphone this week on Sky Sports, he gives little sense of wanting to hold back, especially on all matters LIV. He has been a consistent critic of the Saudi-bankrolled breakaway, once calling it “meaningless”. The same scepticism rushes to the surface when he starts talking about Jon Rahm.

The Spaniard might be the defending champion but his preparation, since jumping ship to LIV last December for £450 million, has been modest. Where Rahm headed to Augusta last time on the back of three PGA Tour victories in three months, he has yet to win in four 54-hole events this year, against far more limited opposition. “I’m not too sure – apart from one reason – why he went to LIV,” Faldo says, with a knowing grin.

“Being a competitor, it can’t be deemed the same, can it? These events are on resort courses, without the atmosphere or intensity. At the Masters, you’re thrown in at the deep end, and it’s always good to have played under full intensity. That’s what the best players are doing: picking the right events, testing themselves, having the majors as their priority. I bet he watched the Players Championship last month, when Scottie Scheffler came through, and thought: ‘I wish I was one of them.’”

There is an alternative explanation of why Faldo is downplaying Rahm’s chances. After all, he still belongs to perhaps the most exclusive club in golf, as one of only three people ever to win back-to-back Green Jackets, a feat he accomplished in 1990. The other two are Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Rahm, for his part, admitted recently to missing the ability to defend the titles he won at Riviera, La Quinta and Kapalua, adding extra piquancy to his Augusta defence. But his quest for consecutive triumphs is one Faldo hopes will be thwarted. “Oh, I hope he misses defending. I like my little club of three. I was second to Jack, having been inspired by Jack. Then Tiger is obviously in every record book. I’m not pulling against him, but I’d like it to stay at three.”

Rory McIlroy’s one desire, by contrast, is to break his Masters hex. Closing in on a decade since his Open triumph at Hoylake delivered a third leg of the career Grand Slam, the four-time major champion is still waiting to prevail on the course that most suits his metronomic driving and towering iron play. It is one of the truly mystifying fallow periods in golf, and Faldo is not shy of administering some tough love.

“Rory’s short irons are his major issue,” he says. “He’s one of the greatest drivers of the ball, and then he stands up with a wedge and we all cringe. If Butch Harmon can help him with that, then that’s probably all he needs to do.” McIlroy, reliant on his swing coach Michael Bannon since he was eight years old, has been seeking a second opinion from Harmon – the guru behind Woods’ first eight major wins – on how to eradicate the flaws in his approach play.

But with McIlroy and the Masters, there is psychological scar tissue, too. He was so disgusted by his missed cut last year that he scarpered without saying a word to journalists, incapable of discussing the subject until several weeks later. “The problem is that time has gone by,” Faldo explains. “It has been nearly 10 years since his last major. It is the trust factor, self-belief, whatever you want to call it. He has asked himself, ‘Can I re-set, forget the past and who I am?’ But it’s not that easy.

“Everybody says, ‘I wish I could play like I was 18 again.’ But can you delete all the negativity you have seen and felt. That feeling is probably worse than what you are seeing. Can he start again fresh? Maybe there is a way – I wouldn’t put it past him. He has pulled himself off all the policy boards, trying just to be a golfer again. And 35 is still a great age to be at. He is fit, one of the technically strongest players ever. So he could yet find a way. The mental part is the one.”

Faldo was sharply critical of McIlroy’s decision last April to allow a TV reporter to interview him during the first round as he strode up the ninth fairway, accusing him of not focusing on the task at hand. Time, clearly, has not softened that verdict. “I thought, ‘You’re kidding me, the Masters?’ That is one of the most beautiful things about the tournament: inside the ropes, it’s just you, your caddie and the other players. Suddenly to bring other people in? You need 100 per cent concentration. You have a window as an athlete – just look after yourself. You have tons of time once you have stopped playing to do all the other stuff.”

Faldo’s selfishness, it was often said, was his superpower. Could he even have dreamt of six major titles without his capacity for playing the loner, for retreating into such a bubble of concentration on the course that he was labelled a cold fish? The affable Rory is cut from different cloth, with a more giving and gregarious nature. But Faldo’s analysis leaves little doubt that if McIlroy is ever to earn an invitation to those Champions Dinner soirees, he urgently needs to start putting himself first.

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AUGUSTA, Ga. — Every Tuesday of Masters week, Verne Lundquist commandeers one of the CBS golf carts — one of the very few allowed on the course at Augusta National Golf Club — and tours the course backward. He starts at the 18th hole, site of so many legendary memories, reunions and heartbreaks. He descends the steep hill away from the clubhouse, rolling past the famous par-3 16th where his calls still echo in the pines. He cruises through Amen Corner, and then back up the steep 10th in the direction of the clubhouse.

Lundquist knows this course as well as anyone, and he knows the 16th and 17th — where both Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus charged to victory, and where Lundquist himself narrated their triumphs — better than anyone. This year will mark the end of Lundquist’s 40-year run commenting for CBS at Augusta National, bringing to an end a career that’s included commentary of two of the most memorable shots in the history of the game.

“It will be emotional,” Lundquist said of his final calls. “This is the best-run tournament in captivity, and it is the best golf course, in my view, in America if not the world.”

For generations of Masters fans, Lundquist’s rich voice is as much a part of Augusta as the azaleas and pimento cheese. He’s spent the majority of his days at Augusta posted deep in the second nine, watching tournaments come together — and fall apart — on the 16th and 17th greens. His calls — understated yet warm, exuberant without being self-consciously showy — are part of the fabric of the sport.

“His calls are truly legendary,” says Jim Nantz, Lundquist’s CBS partner. “Augusta is a place that comes to life every April, and it’s not just because it’s a gathering of the greatest players in the world. There’s a golf competition, but it’s a week of history and voices. They come back. We hear them again.”

Perhaps no voice in the history of the Masters is as famous as Lundquist’s call on the 17th hole in 1986, when Jack Nicklaus claimed the lead en route to the most unexpected and beloved victory of all time:

And then there’s Woods’ magnificent chip on 16 in 2005, another unforgettable moment that Lundquist punctuated with “Oh wow! In your life have you seen anything like that?”:

The answer: No, not before and not since.

Lundquist has been asked for years which call he prefers, and he’s got an answer that rivals the Jack-or-Tiger question as a whole. “They are 1A and 1B,” Lundquist said. “I lean towards Jack Nicklaus in ‘86. Probably more so because of the fact that Jack is six months older than me, and I tend to remind him every chance that I get.”

Verne isn’t quite so spry anymore, and climbing the ladder into the booth above 16 is probably too much of a challenge. But he’ll be ready for the moment, wherever he’s watching.

“I’ll be emotional,” he said. “There’s a spot on my left thigh that I’ll be pinching to make sure I don’t shed a tear on the air. It’s been a great run.”

“Verne’s going to always have a home with Augusta,” Nantz said. “He’s going to be a part of Augusta forever. Those calls that he made, they’re going to be played back 50, 100, 200 years from now.”