The Masters has always been about tradition. About a timeless, 18-hole course that stayed the same even as everything else changed around it.

The green jacket. The Champions Dinner. Amen Corner. Tradition after tradition after tradition.

That’s the root of the mystique and thrill surrounding the Masters, which continues its week-long fanfare ahead of Thursday’s opening round. But the course and tournament will become a fascinating case study this weekend for the future of golf, for the contentious evolution of the sport as it reaches a critical juncture.

The PGA Tour and LIV Golf will intersect at a tournament for the first time, and amid all the lawsuits, torn relationships and inter-player feuds between the sport’s historical organization and its upstart, Saudi-backed league, the overlap becomes the overarching storyline to monitor.

The stakes will be high at Augusta Country Club, as always.

The biggest names in the sport — courtesy of an Augusta National decision in December — will be in the field, regardless of their association. There will still be the underlying stories and favorites to follow throughout the tournament, such as Scottie Scheffler aiming for his second consecutive green jacket and Tiger Woods answering questions about his golf future as a 47-year-old. Phil Mickelson, at 52 years old, returns to the Masters after not participating last year, which snapped his string of appearances at Augusta dating back to 1994.

Then there will be the recurring discussions about whether Greg Norman’s LIV golfers should be allowed to participate in the Masters or other majors, such as the U.S. Open or British Open.

The sport has endured a major shakeup since the 2022 Masters with most of the headlines dominated by golfers choosing to leave the PGA Tour and join LIV Golf. Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, Brooks Koepka and others abandoned their golf pedigree and opted for the upstart league.

Though the variety of opinions swirling around the tournament isn’t likely to overshadow the actual golf, that tension is what makes this edition of the event particularly relevant.

“Of course,” legendary golfer Tom Watson told The Post’s Ian O’Connor when asked whether LIV’s golfers should be allowed to participate. “Because they earned it. They earned their exemptions. The club didn’t change their exemptions, did they? That’s the way it should be.”

It’ll be interesting to see how the CBS broadcast handles the PGA-LIV storylines. While CBS Chairman Sean McManus said that “we’re not going to cover up or hide anything,” according to Sports Illustrated, LIV golfers were excluded from the Masters’ “featured groups,” whose rounds are streamed on the tournament’s website.

It also will be interesting to watch the ceremony unfold if a LIV golfer wins — with Scheffler, the 2022 champion, placing the green jacket on that new champion.

Or, the tournament might go smoothly. Golfers might avoid using press conferences as vehicles to jab personal decisions — to defect and chase the LIV Golf money or to cling to the PGA Tour tradition — of other competitors.

There’s a chance this will become the norm for golf’s future, that majors will always serve as the brief periods of awkward and strange overlap for the two associations. They would bridge their differences to keep the sport’s most historical tournaments intact.

Maybe the top pairing Sunday will feature one PGA Tour golfer and one LIV Golf member, and wouldn’t a Rory McIlroy-Dustin Johnson playoff make it seem as if much more were at stake than a Masters title? Woods and Mickelson, if both make the cut?

The long-term outlook will be determined at some point in the future. The rigidity between the two sides will continue long after the calendar year’s first major ends. This year’s Masters, the 87th edition, will just serve as the spark.

But for once, the traditions will feature an added twist.

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If everything went according to plan, Obi Toppin would’ve had his One Shining Moment — his chance at a place in NCAA Tournament history — a few years ago.

His Dayton Flyers were a top-10 team in the Associated Press poll for the final seven weeks of the regular season, positioning themselves as a possible No. 1 seed with Toppin the best player on the best team in program history. They went from unranked and without Atlantic-10 expectations in the preseason to a potential title contender by the time the regular season ended.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the 2020 NCAA Tournament. Everything was upended. Toppin’s final collegiate chapter finished with a what if attached to it.

But three years later, as another Cinderella-esque team in Florida Atlantic stole the spotlight that the Flyers once had a chance at securing themselves with a run to the Final Four, Toppin encountered a different type of March and April with the Knicks.

With Julius Randle injured and out for the rest of regular season, Toppin has started the past two games and produced two of his best outings this season.

In a pair of wins over the Cavaliers and Wizards, Toppin shot a combined 64 percent from the field while averaging 25 minutes per game. He contributed 21 points in the Knicks’ win Sunday against Washington.

It’s not nearly as poetic as a clip inserted into the NCAA Tournament’s post-championship montage and song with confetti falling inside Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium on the first Monday of April in 2020. He’s not averaging 20.0 points and 7.5 rebounds per game, shooting 39 percent from 3 or garnering anything close to the attention the New York native received when he burst onto the college basketball scene.

That chapter — and what if — of Toppin’s career will always lack a true, definitive conclusion.

But these next two weeks are the accumulation of clips — of highlights, stumbles and everything in between amid his first starts of 2022-23 — in a “Series of Moments That Could Shape Toppin’s Future” melody.

This time, it will come with a resolution, one that could become evident this year as part of the Knicks’ playoff run or following the 2023-24 season, when Toppin’s contract expires.

This time, it will have a true, definitive outcome.

Of course, every MLB team needs its ace to pitch like an ace. Every MLB team, in the wake of an injury, needs its ace to shoulder more of the rotation’s workload — stretching starts for that extra inning, providing the taxed bullpen an easier night once in a while.

That’s the case with Gerrit Cole and the Yankees in 2023, while Luis Severino (low-grade lat strain), Frankie Montas (shoulder) and Carlos Rodon (mild left forearm strain) recover from injuries.

Just look at the Rays, for example: Their starters had a 0.39 ERA through their first four games (and a 2.08 ERA through five), and they’re missing Tyler Glasnow, their second-best starter when healthy, as he recovers from an oblique injury.

Jeffrey Springs threw six hitless innings against the Tigers, and Drew Rasmussen followed that up with seven strikeouts — allowing just two hits — in six innings Monday night against the Rays.

It’s a stretch to ask the Yankees to match that Tampa Bay rotation with Jhony Brito and Clarke Schmidt serving as key members, though Brito provided some optimism in his MLB debut.

If Nestor Cortes ever takes a step back — which he seemed to avoid with a five-inning, one-run outing against the Phillies — that would make the Yankees’ situation even worse.

So the Yankees need Cole more than ever before.

The effectiveness of Rodon (and eventually Severino and perhaps Montas) when they return remains unknown, given their injury histories.

They need Cole’s 11-strikeout, three-hit Opening Day masterpiece to become a regular occurrence, with the notorious home run problem becoming an afterthought. They need Wednesday’s start at Yankee Stadium against Aaron Nola and the Phillies to be a second building block instead of a crushing reversal from the first one.

Cole made 33 starts in 2022, but he only went consecutive outings without allowing a homer five times. It happened seven times in 2021, his first full year in The Bronx. He hasn’t opened a campaign with two straight homerless starts since 2016.

The Yankees could use a reversal of that trend, given the state of their starting rotation.