My personal highlight of this sporting year? No contest. I watched Adam Scott master Augusta with friends in my local golf club on that magic Monday morning. Plan was to do the buffet breakfast, then head out to assault the course in a shotgun start, mending our broken Aussie hearts with a hit to try to make the pain go away. But things took a different turn when he sank the winning putt. We’d all been braced for another disaster. The place erupted. The club captain rang a bell over the din and shouted those magic words “free beer”, and so we toasted Adam with a glass or two of the frothy stuff at around 9.30 in the morning. Then played.

If you’ve ever attempted to build a vaguely repeating golf swing for yourself, you’ll know how many things can go wrong. Jeff Centenera provides a fascinating insight into this confounding aspect of a game in his piece “Masters Magic” in our December issue. Jeff won’t mind me referring to him as a bit of a golf geek, but this article isn’t for golfophiles only: it not only explains how Adam Scott won that tournament, it’ll make you watch the game through different eyes, with the sport well and truly front of mind this month. And Adam Scott headlining the whole show.

Scott is, predictably enough, our Worldbeater of the Year. What isn’t so predictable is the other nine in our annual naming of the Top Ten Australian Sportspeople for 2013. We spring a few surprises. Let us know what you think. We also get to know one of the more enigmatic figures in the Australian cricket team, Chris Rogers. It’s been something of a travesty that he’s had to wait so long to get his shot under a baggy green cap; the guy has been accumulating runs here and around the world at a prodigious rate for years. Robert Drane has been espousing his qualities for ages, and finally got to meet the man for his insightful profile, beginning on page 58.

Michael Blucher has been a friend of this magazine since its inception. A man with great experience in and around elite athletes, he’s finally written a book. I don’t mind quoting the blurb: “Over the past decade, there’s been a significant change in the relationship dynamic between our sporting heroes and the ticket-paying public. Once revered, our elite athletes now carry the dual burdens of high expectation and public scepticism, the indifference fuelled by the perception of inflated salaries and less than perfect behaviour. Fair or not fair?” We excerpt a fascinating chapter, “The Other Halves” on page 66.

- Graem Sims