With the calendars turned over to April it is time for one of the best weeks of the golfing year as Augusta National opens its doors to the stars of the world for the opening major of 2023 as The Masters gets played out from Thursday.
The history of this tournament is known all around the world and Scottie Scheffler added his name to the roll of honour when he donned the Green Jacket after winning his first major a year ago. He is back to defend in what could be described the best field of the year so far.
Recent Winners
2022 – Scottie Scheffler
2021 – Hideki Matsuyama
2020 – Dustin Johnson
2019 – Tiger Woods
2018 – Patrick Reed
2017 – Sergio Garcia
2016 – Danny Willett
2015 – Jordan Spieth
2014 – Bubba Watson
2013 – Adam Scott
The Course
If you are a big golf fan you will know all about Augusta National but anyone who may not be familiar with the track it is a par 72 which stretches to 7,510 yards and with rain in the area this week it is expected to play to a full yardage. The fairways are wide here and the rough never really too penal particularly with the greens being soft which they will be even allowing for the sub air system to dry them out a bit. The green are the feature of this course. They are big and have large slopes on them.
This has become a course for the bigger hitters and with rain around throughout the week that will not change here. If you are a statistics man then approach shots is the one although more and more often putting is becoming a key feature for the winner of the tournament. There are near enough no flat lies on this golf course so keep an eye on the players who can be creative and shape their shots as players will need to move the ball both ways at times.
The Field
The big thing about the field this week is it is the first time in 2023 that a split golfing world will come together as those who have defected to LIV Golf who have qualified will join the best of the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour for the opening major of the season. That narrative will be played out all week but to be fair it can’t be underplayed. It means we have all four major winners from 2022 in the field – the defending champion Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas, Matthew Fitzpatrick and Cameron Smith.
Former Masters winners are always invited back and that means we have icons like Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Jordan Spieth, Sergio Garcia, Bubba Watson and Hideki Matsuyama in the field as well as older champions such as Sandy Lyle, Vijay Singh, Jose Maria Olazabal and Fred Couples. We also have plenty of players such as Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Patrick Cantlay, Xander Schauffele and Collin Morikawa who will be looking to don the Green Jacket for the first time.
Market Leaders
We have joint favourites this week with Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy 7/1 to win the title. Anyone who reads regularly will know I am not one for taking defending champions to win the following year and that is especially the case here when the champion has the Champions Dinner and so many obligations to fulfil. McIlroy is going for the Grand Slam this week and while he might have normally had a good shot there is just too much PGA vs LIV stuff going on for me to be backing the PGA spokesperson at a short price.
Jon Rahm is the third favourite to win the tournament at 9/1. It is a bit of a surprise he hasn’t won this tournament yet. Spaniards have a good record around here with Seve, Olazabal and Garcia all having won in the past and there is an easy case to be made that Rahm suits this course better than all of them. The one thing which usually catches him out are the greens so the fact they are going to be much softer than usual and as such there won’t be as many breaks on them this might be the week he delivers a strong challenge.
The former winner Jordan Spieth is the only other player in the betting at shorter than 20/1 on the best prices. Spieth has a good record around here. He won in 2015 and has been second twice and third twice so five top three finishes in nine starts. Spieth would surely have won this in back-to-back years had he not come unstuck on the iconic 12th hole in the final round. If there is a negative on Spieth it is his form with the putter coming into the event. If he can sort that club out then the 16/1 on him could look very big as we head into the back nine on Sunday.
Patrick Cantlay is yet to win a major of any kind and he doesn’t really have the best record around here. He only has one top 10 in five starts and surprisingly only has three top 10s in majors full stop. There is clearly something about these events which don’t agree with him. Cantlay has three top 10 finishes in his last four starts but he was never really heavily in contention in any of those events. It feels like he has gone a little too quiet but maybe that will be no bad thing if it takes the expectation off him. I’ve no interest in him at 20/1 though.
Main Bets
Two main bets stand out to me this week. I took Jason Day in the WGC Match Play and I thought he looked like the winner in the opening four rounds but ran out of steam at the end of a busy Saturday. That was understandable given his fitness issues in the past but there won’t be any stamina problems here with stoppages likely throughout the week and it only being four rounds as opposed to the five in four days which he played in Austin. Day has four top 10 finishes around here and although he missed the last two cuts we can forgive him that because his body and game were in terrible shape. Both are much improved here though. Day has six top 10 finishes in 13 starts this season with four of them coming in elite events at Torrey Pines, Phoenix, Riviera and Bay Hill. He’s in brilliant form and looks set for a serious assault on this title.
The other bet which stands out is Dustin Johnson. Johnson knows how to win this tournament and he knows how to win it in soft, cooler conditions which is what we are expected to have certainly for the last three days of this event. There is the obvious how competitively sharp will he be but I don’t think Johnson is the kind of character who will be worried about all of that. He can play this course with his eyes shut and the softer conditions and his length around here make him extremely dangerous. His eye might have come off the ball since he went to LIV Golf but this is The Masters and no golfer needs extra motivation this week. In his last seven efforts here DJ has gone T6-T4-T10-T2-1-MC-T12 so apart from when he defended the title he has been in the top 12 for six straight years. That form counts for something and in these conditions I think he’s a huge threat.
Outsiders
Justin Rose probably wouldn’t have wanted to see the forecast we have got this week but his record here is impossible to ignore. It is a bit of a mystery how Rose has never won this tournament, coming so close the year that Sergio Garcia won the title. Rose is nearly always on the leaderboard in the first half of the tournament and the fact he carries winning form into the event this year should inspire him further. That win came at Pebble Beach which is never a bad tournament to win. He has six top 10 finishes at Augusta including a couple of runner up spots and another four top 20 finishes. He is a definite for the staking plan.
The other two outsiders are more shots in the dark but Abraham Ancer could be interested by the conditions this week. When the tournament was held in similar conditions in November 2020 the Mexican was T2 going into the final round which he made a bit of a mess of as he tried to go after Dustin Johnson rather than just playing for a position behind him. Ancer has won a couple of big events since then and although he too is now a LIV golfer he showed he can still be competitive when he won the Saudi International earlier in the season. Cameron Young was second that week while Lucas Herbert, Paul Casey, Marc Leishman, Mito Pereira, Joaquin Niemann and Matt Wolff were all in the top 10 so it was a decent field he beat. When he is on it Ancer is a quality iron player and firing into soft greens he could set up a lot of birdie chances. At the prices I’ll pay to see what he’s got in him.
The other player I’ll go with is even more of a shot in the dark in Cameron Champ. The hugely long hitter is in this tournament for the fourth time and he has a decent enough record here with finishes of T19-T26-T10 and I’m not massively surprised by that because the freedom there is off the tee here means that he can really let his driver go and then he’s hitting short irons into big greens. Those greens will be softer this year which should make his iron shots hold the greens a lot better which is important because his short game is a clear weakness. His form is nothing special but he doesn’t have a game built for consistency so I’m not too worried by that. In these conditions I’ll pay to see if Champ can be a threat again.
Tips
Back J.Day to win The Masters (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 26.00 with William Hill (1/5 1-8)
Back D.Johnson to win The Masters (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 26.00 with William Hill (1/5 1-8)
Back them here:
Back J.Rose to win The Masters (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 56.00 with Bet365 (1/5 1-8)
Back A.Ancer to win The Masters (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 111.00 with Bet365 (1/5 1-8)
Back C.Champ to win The Masters (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 251.00 with Bet365 (1/5 1-8)
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