If Alaska had a Masters, it wouldn’t be happening this week, the same week as the real Masters. Easter Sunday is upon us and usually that means spring is pretty much here in Anchorage. Often, the Masters on TV, which happens Thursday through Sunday, serves as inspiration for us Alaskans to get out and start playing the day after the winner dons the green jacket.

This year, however, there is still a lot of snow on the ground and a forecast that includes temperatures below freezing for another week or more. I’m going to take the optimistic route on this one, though, and declare it all a sign of a special golf season ahead and deem it time to start writing about it.

My focus on this blog has always been to carry on a mission to find out who the best golfers in Alaska are. This year, that search will narrow and intensify. The rankings list that many have become accustomed to, has been reduced to just 10 places. The usual challenge matches are available for those who want to crack the list.

The Alaskan tournament schedule has evolved into a respectable one, worthy of my AGB Tour nickname. By July, a competitive golfer can find a tournament to play in nearly every week until the end of August and into the start of September. It’s a solid eight or 10 week window of pressure packed putts, if you are into that kind of thing.

I’ll be watching tournament results closely and weighing the results heavily, as they pertain to my top 10 list. As is usually the case, the list will fluctuate. Nobody has beaten Rob Nelson out of the No. 1 spot for quite some time and Nelson will become an amateur around mid-summer, so that will make things more interesting than ever.

I will be profiling the top 10 golfers throughout the summer, writing about them and about our golf culture as if I were writing to a massive, interested audience from outside Alaska. The discussion will start with a post about what makes Zach Perry such a good golfer and why he is currently sitting at No .10. The only hint I’ll offer is that Perry’s greatest asset is not a physical one.