It simply doesn’t get any better than this Augusta Gazette photo of Long John Daly catching a quick smoke while hitting balls on the Augusta National driving range before his first round Thursday at The Masters Tournament.
By the way, 31 year-old Texan Chad Campbell — he of the Hoganesque swing and one of the best ball-strikers on Tour — is leading The Masters by three at six under after the first two rounds. Campbell is not well-known by casual followers of professional golf, but he has quietly become an elite Tour player since joining the Tour in 2001. He soared to seventh on the Tour money list by 2003 when he finished second at the PGA Championship and won the season-ending Tour Championship by shooting an incredible 61 in the third round at Houston’s Champions Golf Club. In nine tournaments this season, Campbell has one victory (the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic) and one runner-up finish, is sixth on the Tour money list and is currently 20th in the World Golf ranking. WaPo’s Thomas Boswell profiles Campbell here.
For those interested in the mechanics of the golf swing, Campbell’s swing is from the Ben Hogan school of the classic one-plane swing, which is fundamentally different from a two-plane swing, such as that of Daly or Fred Couples, who is currently tied for second at The Masters. As Houstonian Jim Hardy explained in his groundbreaking golf swing book The Plane Truth for Golfers (McGraw-Hill 2005) published last year, the one-plane swing is harder physically on the player, but easier to repeat consistently, while the two-plane swing is easier on the player physically, but requires more timing and hip action that is harder to repeat consistently.
Inasmuch as the swings of the contending players at the Masters are fairly evenly divided between one and two-plane swingers, It will be interesting to watch how these two fundamentally different swings hold up under the intense pressure of the weekend at Augusta National.
Meanwhile, this John Feinstein article reports on the remarkable one-under-par Masters performance through 36 holes of 54 year-old Austin native and resident, Ben Crenshaw:

[T]he Masters is frequently about memories, whether it is Jack Nicklaus charging up the leader board Sunday in 1998 at the age of 58 or Arnold Palmer simply walking up the 18th fairway to say goodbye — on more than one occasion. For two days, it has been Crenshaw turning back the clock and conjuring up warm memories.