We’re adding in an additional preview post for Masters week
In this post, I’m going to go over the plethora of winner’s trends. I try to note some of these every week to help guide us narrowing down possible options, but this event puts all the others to shame in available trends. As always, these should not be treated like a bible - however, if there is any week to do it, now would be the time.
We’re going to go through each trend one at a time and note who is eliminated from consideration at each one. We’ll start with long-term trends and then finish with those from the past decade alone. There are only 89 golfers in this field, so narrowing them down to a few is more possible than many weeks
Long Term Trends
Must be younger than 45
Only Jack Nicklaus has won this event after turning 45 (he was 46 when he won in 1986). So while it has happened, we can pretty safely assume that none of the this older crowd is going to beat the stars of today - pretty simple one to start us off.
This eliminates 7 guys right off the bat. Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Fred Couples, Mike Weir, Vijay Singh, Jose Maria Olazabal, and known idiot Zach Johnson can all be crossed off the list.
With that, we are already down to 82.
Must have played here twice or more
Only Fuzzy Zoeller has won The Masters on his first or second trip here, his was on his first. Even when Tiger won in 2005 at 21 years old, he was already playing in his third iteration of the event.
Our first trend eliminated one end of the age range, this one will tackle the other. Eliminated by this trend are a ton of guys, 31 of them to be exact! I won’t list out all 31 since many are not relevant, but the relevant guys now crossed off are Wyndham Clark, Ludvig Aberg, Sahith Theegala, Tom Kim, Akshay Bhatia, Stephan Jaeger, Nick Taylor, Cam Davis, Nicolai Hojgaard, and Mattieu Pavon.
Now, we’re already down to 51.
Must be Top 50 in the field in driving distance
Like we noted in the course preview, distance definitely matters here. Augusta National is not the ‘second shot’ course we often see, you need a fully rounded out game and good form.
I’m looking at distance from the past one year of data, so any LIV guys in the field have some stats to go off of since anyone from LIV played in at least one major last year. Shorter hitters we can cross off with this one include Hideki Matsuyama, Cam Smith, Collin Morikawa, Shane Lowry, Brian Harman, Sungjae, Patty Reed, Russ Henley, and Si Woo Kim. More were crossed off, but those were the headliners.
We now have 32 guys left in the pool.
Must be Top 50 in Around the Green play
Augusta requires greater around the green play than maybe any other course - part of the reason why course history correlations are so high is the creativity a lot of the scrambling play requires. Basically, we don’t want to bet on anyone who could face multiple blow-up holes due to suspect chipping and pitching.
I’m again including the past year of data to factor in LIV guy stats - we don’t have many of them left, but I still want to see if any of them make our series of cuts.
Eliminated from our list on this one are a few more bigger names: Rahm, Hovland, Zalatoris, Cam Young, Sam Burns, Corey Conners, Sepp Straka, EVR, Luke List, and Gary Woodland.
Continuing to get shorter and shorter on our list, we are down to 22.
Must be Top 50 in Avoiding 3-Putts
Home to the finest greens in the country, Augusta National will punish bad putters. We’ve seen awful putters contend (Zalatoris) and even win (Hideki), but both of them are less awful in terms of three-putting. They each just miss a lot of putts they should make, but those are often birdie chances squandered.
Caddies have called Augusta the most nuanced and challenging greens to read of any course we see on Tour, likely of any course period. If someone has been three-putting a lot, it’s best to skip betting them outright.
Our list is getting short, but we still eliminated a few on this one, including a few very big names: Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas, Tony Finau, Bryson, Fitzpatrick, Rickie Fowler, and Justin Rose. Scheffler and Rahm both have now dropped out.
Down to only 15.
Must be Top 50 in Par 5 Birdies-or-Better
The four Par 5’s are the only four holes that play under par at Augusta. While the Par 4’s are very long, these 5’s are gettable opportunities. If we can eliminate anyone who hasn’t been scoring on Par 5’s the past year, we are likely crossing guys off the list who can’t get low enough to actually win The Masters.
We’re not narrowing as many down at this stage. Still, we can cut out Jason Day, Tommy Fleetwood, Adam Scott, and Sergio Garcia.
Now we’re at 11.
Must have a Top 30 at Augusta in Last 3 Attempts
Our last longer-term trend in the list, no one has won here in decades that did not also have a Top 30 Masters finish in their last three trips to Augusta.
Only Max Homa drops out on this one.
Who Is Left Standing
Everything above is working towards narrowing the selections to the most well-rounded golfers who also have experience at Augusta. It’s not surprising then that the remaining names are mostly outstanding players:
Rory McIlroy
Brooks Koepka
Xander Schauffele
Joaquin Niemann
Patrick Cantlay
Jordan Spieth
Dustin Johnson
Tyrrell Hatton
Min Woo Lee
Keegan Bradley
Last Ten Year Trends
I’m now going to take that list of ten guys above and look over them against trends of the past decade for our Masters winners.
10/10 Have Been Top 30 OWGR
Pretty obvious one, elite golfers win the elite event. With the OWGR system updating every week, this also has a bit of current form baked in as well, which never hurts.
Rory McIlroy - 2
Brooks Koepka - 31
Xander Schauffele - 5
Joaquin Niemann - 91
Patrick Cantlay - 7
Jordan Spieth - 19
Dustin Johnson - 100+
Tyrrell Hatton - 17
Min Woo Lee - 32
Keegan Bradley - 18
This one falls apart a bit since the LIV guys are plummeting down the OWGR ranks. However, I am going to hold firm on the rules and cut them all.
Down to 6.
10/10 Had a Top 5 Finish in Current Season
This one looks closer at more recent form. It’s OK if our guy has not won this season, but we want to see that they have contended at the very least.
I have our list of guys remaining below with their best finish in the 2024 season listed:
Rory McIlroy - 19th
Xander Schauffele - 2nd
Patrick Cantlay - 4th
Jordan Spieth - 3rd
Tyrrell Hatton - 8th (LIV)
Keegan Bradley - 2nd
Rory is out, down to 5.
10/10 Had a Top 30 in One of Their Last Two Events
A more immediate view of current form, no one is going to ‘get right’ at Augusta, at least not enough to actually win this thing.
Same format as before, I have our options bulleted with their best finish in the last two events they played in:
Xander Schauffele - 2nd
Patrick Cantlay - 36th
Jordan Spieth - 10th
Tyrrell Hatton - 15th
Keegan Bradley - MC
Keegan is finally crossed off, he lasted a long time for someone whose odds are so long though, could be worth consideration. I am also going to remove Hatton since his best finish of 15th in fields less than half the size seems easy to math out.
After Jordan finished 10th last week, it’s down to only Spieth and Xander.
9/10 Had Two Top 15 Finishes in Last Three Events
Taking form a step further, we want the guys who are piling up good finishes recently. This one is going to be our final list of cuts from the trends:
Xander Schauffele - 25th, 2nd, 5th
Jordan Spieth - MC, MC, 10th
Final Survivors
After running everyone through all eleven trends detailed above, we are left with only one man standing: Xander Schauffele.
Anyone who has read these pages for more than a couple weeks knows that I often describe Xander as a loser. He is definitely one of the ten most talented golfers in the world, no question, but dude just does not win enough to be considered remotely close to the top tier of golfers. The thing is that everyone is a loser until they aren’t.
I can already guess that Xander will look great on the data tomorrow, he always does. From an intangibles point of view, it’s like Cantlay and Xander are the anti-Koepka. They both have comparable talent, maybe more talented, but have not been able to get over the final hump of winning major events. It will be hard for me to get there, but this exercise did point me towards thinking more seriously about backing Xander.
Congratulations to Xander Schauffele for winning the 2024 Masters.
Closing Thoughts
I hope you enjoyed the different format this week - it won’t be possible most events of the season though. For what it’s worth, Rahm did not fit all the trends last year, he missed on the last one around two Top 15 finishes in his last three - so as scientific as this seems, it can still be wrong.
We’ll be back tomorrow, but if anyone has questions or feedback for me in the meantime, would love to hear from any readers.
Best of luck with all your bets.
Matt / Ziggy