The Masters 2012: Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy set for a spectacular clash of the titans in Augusta Thus can it all be pared down to this: a straight shoot-out for outright supremacy in golf's most Arcadian setting. McIlroy is right when he reminds us that there are over 90 other competitors with whom he must slug it out at Augusta, but his showdown with Woods has already acquired a billing of such breathlessness that it might be better suited to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The form of both protagonists would suggest the hyperbole is well-founded. Woods has his force field back in the wake of his seventh title at Bay Hill, where he demolished Graeme McDowell by five last weekend and emphasised that he could still dominate world-class fields in the fashion of old. Caddie Joe LaCava admitted that his employer was "pretty jacked," wishing that the Masters could have started the very next day. Little wonder, when Woods has started to recover the type of superiority that all but guaranteed a top-10 finish every time he teed it up. A breakdown of his Bay Hill statistics illustrated that he was back to his destructive best on the par-fives, reaching 12 under par for those holes alone, and that he hit 57 of 72 greens. Hank Haney, his former coach who has sparked such consternation by publishing The Big Miss, a highly indiscreet memoir of their six years working together, told me last week that the most appreciable improvement was in Woods" putting stroke. With good reason, too: on 38 consecutive greens in Orlando, his ex-pupil was putting for birdie. It is on Augusta's legendarily lethal greens that the Woods-McIlroy power struggle will be decided. Woods, quite simply, cannot afford any three-putts should he entertain visions of wearing his fifth green jacket next Sunday night. Without the four three-jacks that he recorded at Bay Hill, he could have won by 10, but the glassy putting surfaces of Masters week will not be anything like so forgiving. To pre-empt this danger, Woods needs to raise the level of his approach play still further, cutting out the type of 70-foot lag putts he has been leaving himself of late. Any such misjudgement on the notoriously slippery par-three 16th, and he could be walking off the hole with a double-bogey. In McIlroy's case, laser-like accuracy from the fairways is never a concern. Even from the rough, he is almost equally adept, vaulting to the top of the PGA Tour rankings in scrambling this season. Part of the explanation - besides his immaculate rhythm - is the 22 year-old's famously high ball flight, which should allow his second shots to land more softly on the fast-running greens. McIlroy, it transpires, is so unruffled about the impending tussle that he did not even watch Woods" performance at Bay Hill. Instead, he spent the four days with tennis star girlfriend Caroline Wozniacki at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami, before honing his shot-making at the Bear's Club in West Palm Beach, the Jack Nicklaus-owned establishment where he and Luke Donald have been given free rein of the practice range. "I saw he won by a few, so he must have played pretty well," McIlroy said, wryly. It's great for the game. It lifts everything up a level. His routines remain deliberately understated as Thursday approaches. McIlroy's parents, Gerry and Rosie, have accompanied him throughout the last month in Florida in an effort to keep him calm. Michael Bannon, the coach whom he has kept at his side since childhood, has also travelled from Bangor Golf Club in County Down to smooth out his swing as he returns to the scene of his greatest agony. Nightmarish reconstructions of his hook at the 10th will, McIlroy admits, obtrude in his peripheral vision once he mounts that tee again. This time, though, he possesses a degree of psychological strength to avert a repeat. "It would be great to challenge myself again and see if I am up to the test," he says. Woods, ominously, has few such grisly memories to trouble him. Indeed, so deep is his affinity with the Augusta layout that the four-time champion managed to finish fourth there in the last two years, even when his game looked shot to pieces on nearly every other course. So the scene is complete. Augusta's whitewashed clubhouse is burnished, its fairways manicured, its azaleas pruned. All that remains is for Woods and McIlroy, the headline attractions, to stride up Magnolia Drive and treat us to a duel for the ages.