Who will get the gold jacket ‘rub’ this year?

It is the gold jacket “rub”. Or maybe it’s the “Open injection”.

Whatever you call it, the fact Australia’s “Triple Crown” golf events have served as a stepping stone to greater success in recent years is indisputable.

In the last four years, a victory on our shores has provided a springboard for some of the game’s biggest names to launch to career-high achievements.

It began with Ian Poulter in 2011, when the eccentric Englishman lit up Victoria Golf Club to win the Australian Masters.

By the time he returned to Australia 12 months later, he was arguably the game’s most talked about player, having produced one of the greatest individual performances in Ryder Cup history to spark the “Miracle at Medinah”, as well as notching the biggest win of his career at World Golf Championship’s HSBC Champions.

Unfortunately for Poulter, his quest to retain the gold jacket at the 2012 Masters at Kingston Heath overlapped with Adam Scott’s mission to “turn a gold one into a green one”.

The Australian upstaged the defending champion in an epic final-day duel and then used the “rub” to become the first Australian to win at Augusta National in April of 2013.

When he returned home for his “Adam Scott” the following summer, the Queenslander was No.2 in the world having upstaged Tiger Woods to win The Barclays (a FedEx Cup play-off event) and preparing to take aim at the “Scotty Slam”.