The 79th Masters: Welcome to the Rory-Tiger Show

PGA Tour wins; 24; 9

Major titles; 6; 3

Masters titles; 1; 0

Age of 1st major win; 21; 22

Consecutive Tour wins; 6; 3

They both drove the same route down Magnolia Lane, major characters destined for the same first tee, two lives aimed in crossed directions.

Rory McIlroy, 25, opens the 79th Masters on Thursday in quest of his third consecutive major title with the chance to become the first European player to complete the career grand slam.

Tiger Woods, 39, enters his 20th Masters hoping to breath life into the corpse that his game has eventfully become.

There’s always a new plot line around the next dogleg at Augusta National, and this week has underscored a bunch. Bubba Watson’s quest to defend. Martin Kaymer’s ascension. Miguel Angel Jimenez’s annual spring hair festival.

And they’ll all be looking over their shoulders.

“There are several guys that are here this week that are thrilled that all the attention is on Rory getting ready for a grand slam and Tiger coming back,” Ireland’s Padraig Harrington said. “There’s at least four players who haven’t won majors: Henrick Stenson, D.J. (Dustin Johnson), Jason Day, Jordan Speith. There’s lot of guys that are getting in under the radar this week a lot easier than they normally would.

“So, yeah, there’s a lot of stories. But at the moment, it’s all about Tiger and Rory.”

They are sociable, if not friends. McIlroy recalled a practice round they played in November, three months before Woods’ most recent hiatus. Woods birdied six of the first seven holes.

“Was I concerned for him? I mean, not really,” McIlroy said. “It’s hard to be concerned for someone that’s already won 14 majors and 80 PGA Tour (actually 79) events and earned over a billion dollars in his career. I think he’s done OK.”

That broke up a Tuesday media gathering, but the advertisement that Nike produced this week, chronicling an adolescent McIlroy’s stalking his hero — yes, that was wee Rory’s character chipping into the family dryer — gets at the truth. If this is to be a crowning week for McIlroy, it must play out with Woods on the grounds. Better yet, with Woods actually in competition.

“I’m feeling older,” said Woods, who turns 40 in December “There’s no doubt about that.”

Not that everyone is buying that.

“When you’re talking about a world-class player, you just don’t know,” 2013 Masters champion Adam Scott said. “I’m sure (Woods) has high hopes. His comfort level around this golf course must be extremely high, and he returned off a break before here (2008 for knee surgery) and finished (top six in 2009), I believe. So with Tiger, anything possible.”

To trace their careers over their first 25 years describes all that McIlroy must traverse to match Wood’s rise to power. Before his 26th birthday, Woods had won six majors. He accomplished the career grand slam when he was still 24, completing the feat with the 2000 British Open in a run of four consecutive major titles won in a two-year span.

He was in the midst of a record 264-week installment as the world’s No. 1 player.

McIlroy, who turns 26 on May 5, has won four majors, joining Woods and Jack Nicklaus as the only men to win so many so young. Not only would a green jacket this week complete the career slam, but it would give him three majors in a row, which only Woods and Ben Hogan (1943) have done since the first Masters in 1934.

McIlroy has been ranked No. 1 for 75 weeks, the past 36 consecutively.

While Woods found a second home at Augusta National, winning four times here, his first coming when he was 21, the place remains a puzzle for McIlroy. His mortifying 2011 meltdown — squandering a 4-shot lead on Sunday playing chutes-and-ladders golf between the Peek and Berckman cabins off No. 10 fairway — might have damaged a lesser player. Nevertheless, his eight-place finish last year represented McIlroy’s best finish in six Masters starts.

“I think the first couple of years, I was thinking more about where not to hit it instead of where to hit it,” McIlroy said. “… That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned, just to try to get it out of your head where you are and what it means and just try to execute your shots like you normally do.”

Nowhere moreso than on the par-5s, where the big bats can win here and where McIlroy does not always gain ground. While winning last year, Watson played the par-5s in 8 under par. McIlroy played them even with six bogeys.

But while McIlroy can target good numbers, Woods will just try to make good swings, an ordeal of its own his last time out (WD with back pain at Torrey Pines after 11 holes) just nine weeks ago. After missing last year’s Masters, even after dawn-to-dusk practice sessions to re-groove his swing and the hip-hop dance routine to create a better rhythm, Woods seems well-collected this week, even appreciative.

“I just find it fascinating that they keep changing this place, it seems like every year, and it looks exactly the same, like it’s never been touched,” Woods said. “It’s fascinating.”

Kind of like the week.