ESPN Golf

It snowed at Sugarloaf last April. Not the ski resort in Maine, but the TPC course in Georgia, and that's not a good thing for a golf tournament held one week before the Masters. Still, the BellSouth Classic, shortened to 54 holes, yielded a strong winner (Phil Mickelson), who survived a five-man playoff involving the tour's best putter (Arjun Atwal) and a short-game maestro (José Maria Olazábal) as well as Rich Beem and Brandt Jobe.

They're all back this year in a surprisingly strong field that also includes David Toms, Retief Goosen and Padraig Harrington. I like them all, but three of the last five BellSouth winners didn't play The Masters the following week, and that's where I'm concentrating my attention.

Scott McCarron, who also has won twice here, is a possibility, but he hasn't made a cut since Scottsdale and that was a season-best T-55. Rookies Nicholas Thompson and Troy Matteson are good picks too, because they played their college golf at nearby Georgia Tech.

But I'll go with Tag Ridings, a journeyman who was T-14 and T-6 at Sugarloaf the last two years and was T-5 at Doral four weeks ago. Ridings may be flying under the radar now, but he's a bomber who putted well on the Greg Norman-designed course a year ago. The key stat for the Arkansas native: He made 18 of 26 putts (69.2 percent) from 10-15 feet the last two years. The tour average this year is 29.2 percent.