It’s the most exciting time of the year as the golf world comes together for the first major championship of the 2025 season, the Masters. This year the field consists of 96 players coming from a wide range of qualifying methods. Here are a few of the qualifying criteria:
- Lifetime exemption for former Masters champions
- The previous five winners of each major championship
- The previous three Players Championship winners
- Top 12 & ties from 2024 Masters
- Top 4 & ties from the 2024 major championships
- 2024 tournament winners
- Top 50 in Official World Golf Rankings
- Top amateurs
There are 72 players from the PGA Tour, 12 from LIV Golf, one from the DP World Tour, five amateurs, and six past champions. The most surprising of all of those is probably the rapid decline of the DP World Tour with just one participant at this year’s Masters. The LIV Golf tour will also send the same 12 players as they did last year, including a special invite to Joaquin Niemann, who has been the best player in LIV in 2025 with two wins in four events.
One of the best things about the Masters is that it’s the only major championship of the four that takes place at the same course annually. This allows us to gather and analyze trends that can help us identify golfers best suited to compete for the green jacket. Let’s dig into a few of the trends that stand out the most. For these trends, I am concentrating on the last 10 years of data.
- Course History Trend
- Seven of the last 10 winners had at least one previous Top 5 at the Masters
- Current Form Win Trend
- Seven of the last 10 winners had a win earlier in the year
- Current Form Top Finishes Trend
- Nine of the last 10 winners had at least one Top 5 earlier in the season
- Six of those players had multiple Top 5s
- Each of the last three winners had five or more Top 5s
- Each of the last 10 winners had at least one Top 10 earlier in the season
- Eight of those players had multiple Top 10s
- Each of the last three winners had six or more Top 10s
- Steer Clear of First-Timers
- There has been no player to win in his first attempt at the Masters since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979
- Elite Tee to Green Trend
- Nine of the last 10 winners were Top 25 in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green entering the Masters
- Six of those players ranked Top-10
- Four of those players ranked Top-5
The overall odds look a little different this year, with Scheffler and Rory close together at the top and a group of six golfers lumped together not far behind in the odds. The main reason for this is the difference in form of the world’s #1 golfer, who has yet to win in 2025 after already tallying wins at the Players and Arnold Palmer Invitational before last season’s first major. Instead, it has been McIlroy entering the Masters in top form with two wins(Pebble Beach, Players) and no finish worse than 17th through five events.
Let’s jump in and take a look at the course, top stats, and some best bets for this week.
The Course: Augusta National Golf Club
Augusta National Golf Club is arguably the most beautiful and well-manicured golf course on the planet. It is a Par 72 and at 7,555 yards is the second-longest course on the PGA Tour behind only Torrey Pines. Combine that length with some of the wider fairways on tour, and Driving Distance becomes very important and can add an advantage. Creativity becomes very important at Augusta, as well, with almost no lies that will be flat outside of the tee boxes. The undulation and slope is everywhere from the fairway to the green. The greens not only have lots of undulation, they are also lightning fast and have runoffs everywhere. This puts a huge focus on the iron game and makes Strokes Gained: Approach one of my top stats of the week. With a lower greens in regulation rate due to all of that, another key stat is Scrambling and Strokes Gained: Around the Green. Players will consistently be forced to get up and down to save par and even bogey at times to stay on the leaderboard. Finally, Strokes Gained: Putting is always important to convert birdies, pars, etc but this week, I will also be looking at Three-Putt Avoidance.
Like a major championship should, it will test every facet of a golfer’s game, leaving practically no room for error if wanting to contend on Sunday for the Green Jacket!
With all that said, here are the Top 10 in my overall model for this week:
- Collin Morikawa
- Scottie Scheffler
- Rory McIlroy
- Justin Thomas
- Russell Henley
- Shane Lowry
- Robert Macintyre
- Patrick Cantlay
- Sepp Straka
- Hideki Matsuyama
Best Bets: The Masters
Collin Morikawa Outright (+1800)
The number has already dropped to around +1500 in a lot of spots, so if you’re betting Morikawa, it would be best to shop around. He is at the top of my bet card this week for a couple of reasons. First of all, I normally bet only 3-4 golfers a week and almost always have to cross off any golfer below 10-1, and the top-heavy board has Rory and Scheffler right in that zone. There is then a group bunched up in the next tier and that is where I will be starting.
More importantly, he tops my card checking almost every box, starting with his Masters history. Lack of experience got to him in his first trip back in 2020, where he finished 44th but he has gotten better over the years with no finish worse than 18th, with two Top 5 finishes and three straight Top 10s. While he has yet to win in 2025, the form has been terrific, finishing no worse than 17th through five events with two runner-ups and three Top 10 finishes. He leads the PGA Tour in SG: Tee to Green, is 12th in SG: Off the Tee, 1st in SG: Approach, and is a respectable 34th in SG: Around the Green.
Shane Lowry Outright (+4500) / Top 5 (+550) / Top 10 (+250)
For my second bet, I like traveling down the board where we find a ton of value in Shane Lowry who also checks almost every single box. He has been consistent here at Augusta, making five straight cuts, including four Top 25s and a 3rd place finish to check the course history trend. Like Morikawa, he doesn’t check the current form win trend but does check all the other current form trends. After missing the cut in his first event of the season at Torrey Pines, he has tallied a runner-up and three Top 10 finishes in six events. The stats tell the story as he is 4th on the PGA Tour in SG: Tee to Green, 6th in SG: Approach, and 24th in SG: Around the Green.
I will be betting the outright and then adding an each-way bet and Top 10. If your site doesn’t offer each-way bets, go ahead and bet the Top 5 at the same amount of units as the outright bet.
Patrick Reed Top 10 (+450) / Top 20 (+210)
As per @TheModelManiac on X, the Patrick Reed Top 20 bet has been the most profitable bet at the Masters over the last five years, and I am back on it in 2025. The Reed Top 20 has cashed in four of the last five years, and going back further he also adds the win in 2018 to make five of seven. It only makes sense to also add the Top 10 bet, as he has done that in four of those five. The form is tough to weigh from LIV Golf but he has finished Top-10 in two of his last three events coming in and has been terrific with the irons(+.430) and around the green(+.200).
