Attacking the Green!: 2026 Masters Stats Breakdown and Best Bets

Welcome back, golf fans! It is the happiest time of the year as the major championship season kicks off with a trip to Augusta National Golf Club for the 2026 Masters. A field of 91 players take aim at the famous green jacket awarded to the winner on Sunday afternoon.

We are coming off a huge Masters in 2025, which saw Rory McIlroy finally complete the career Grand Slam with his win. Seemingly every year we say, “It can’t get much better than last year… can it?” and somehow it does almost every time. Let’s dig into the course and some stats and trends to see if we can find this year’s winner and some other top prop bets to help us profit at the Masters.

The Course: Augusta National Golf Club

No course has been studied or analyzed as much as Augusta National Golf Club. It is a standard Par 72 setup with four Par 3’s, 10 Par 4’s, and four Par 5’s, and in total, it stretches out to 7,565 yards for 2026 on the official scorecard. While the scorecard says “standard setup,” we know that isn’t the case with ANGC, as it is one of the toughest and most unique tests on the PGA Tour, from both a physical and mental standpoint.

Off the tee, golfers see a huge runway as AGNC has the widest fairways on tour, which, for the most part, means bombs away. With that said, undulation plays a huge role across the property, and finding a flat landing spot is very rare. That fairway undulation also plays a huge role on approaches as players and caddies have to calculate even more into every iron shot. It doesn’t stop there either, as hitting the green becomes very difficult as the greens are also very undulated and have a tons of falloff around the edges. A precise iron game is very important as hitting the correct location and tier of the green can mean a birdie chance or a bogey, or worse. With a lower GIR rate because of the tough undulated greens means an elevated importance of a very tight short game.

Stats & Trends That Matter: Finding the 2026 Masters Champion

Top Stats:

• Course History – The most predictive tournament all season when looking at course history. Not only has there never been a player to win in his first trip to ANGC, but 25 of the last 27 winners had at least one Top 30 finish in a previous Masters appearance. Experience matters here more than any other course, and it gets a ton of weight in my model this week.
• Driving Distance – Not only is ANGC the 2nd longest course on tour behind Torrey Pines, it also has the widest fairways, as well. You can’t be wild, by any means, but distance off the tee can be a huge advantage at the Masters.
• Strokes Gained: Approach – Looking at all the strokes gained stats over the last five years, approach has had the highest correlation to success. The greens are slightly smaller than average, very fast, and undulated, increasing three-putt %. This can be avoided with a precise iron game.
• Strokes Gained: Short Game – Augusta produces one of the lowest GIR rates on tour with the undulation, fast greens, and false fronts. This means an elite short game is needed to contend. Getting up and down not only requires a strong scrambling effort, but also a top putting performance, as well. If you want to go further, include three-putt avoidance in your model this week.

Ludvig Aberg (+1750 Outright / +325 Top 5)

Aberg checks almost every box in my model this week and is one of the top favourites to win after Scottie Scheffler in a tier of his own. Through eight majors, Aberg has just two Top 10 finishes, but the kicker is that both have come here at The Masters. He comes into this year’s event with top form, with three straight Top 5’s. That form comes from an elite all-around game as he is 4th in SG: Tee to Green and 25th in SG: Putting over the last 12 rounds. He is also one of just three golfers to rank in the Top 25 in this field in SG: Approach, SG: Around the Green, and Driving Distance on the season. All signs point to another strong performance from one of the rising stars in the game, and if he can finish on Sunday, he should be contending!

Cameron Young (+2400 Outright / +400 Top 5)

Another rising star on the PGA Tour, and like Aberg, checks a ton of boxes this week and looks ready to win his first Masters and major championship. In terms of course history, he has experienced the high’s with back-to-back Top’s in 2023 and 2024 and the lows as he bookended those Top 10’s with missed cuts last year and in 2022. He comes in with elite form after a huge win at the Players Championship that came after back-to-back Top 10’s at the Genesis and Arnold Palmer Invitationals. He is long off the tee and is one of just three players, Aberg included, who are Top 25 in both driving distance and accuracy. Add in that he is also Top 20 in SG: Approach and Short Game, and he has the upside to win this week.

Xander Schaufelle (+1850 Outright / +305 Top 5)

I am stacking my outright bets at the top of the board behind the Scottie/Rahm/Rory tier, and Xander actually checks more boxes than the golfers above. First of all, outside of winning here, he has been terrific at Augusta, having finished Top-10 in three straight and five of his last seven trips to the Masters. After a slow start to the season with a missed cut at the Farmers Insurance Open and T41 at the WMPO, Xander has found his form. He has Top 5 finishes in two straight events(Valspar & Players Championship) and Top 10’s in three of his last four. During that stretch, he ranks 4th in SG: Approach, 21st in SG: Around the Green, and 18th in SG: Putting. Xander is also 2nd only to Scheffler in average finish over the last 16 majors, going back to the start of 2022. Look for Xander to contend for his first Masters in 2026.

Patrick Reed (+4400 Outright / +300 Top 10)

Not often do we see winners at the Masters come from outside the top players in the world, but Reed has already broken that trend once, back in 2018. Since then, the course history has been tremendous as he has five finishes of 12th or better in his last seven trips since the win. After leaving LIV Golf earlier this year, he has bet on himself by attempting to play his way through the DP World Tour in hopes of getting back on the PGA Tour later this year. After six events, that looks inevitable as he has already tallied two wins, a runner-up, and another Top 10 in his most recent event at the Joburg Open. He is above-average off the tee, has been elite with the irons, and has always been one of the better scramblers in the world. He is playing arguably the best golf of his career, so I like getting money on him once again this week.

Akshay Bhatia (+820 Top 5 / +355 Top 10)

Bhatia will be making his third Masters start, and while the course history doesn’t jump out at you(42nd, 35th), it is positive to see he made the cut in his first two trips around ANGC. He is coming in with excellent form, having made five straight cuts in some huge events, including a win at the API (Sig Event), T3 at the WMPO, T6 at Pebble Beach (Sig Event), T16 at the Genesis (Sig Event), and a T13 at the Players Championship. The success has been the result of some top iron play and putting as he ranks Top 10 in both SG: Approach and Putting. He is also 28th in SG: Around the Green, and while he is just average in distance off the tee, he is Top 10 in long iron proximity from 200+ yards. I don’t think he is ready to win here at Augusta, but he could finish in the Top 5 and Top 10 market this week.