Of the four golf majors, The Masters is unique in many ways, but the most important is the venue. Because the tournament is played at the same course — Augusta National Golf Club — every year, experience is more vital at The Masters than any other weekend.
While younger players think they can get a sense of the undulation by watching it on television — believe me, I’m convinced I could tell you the break of every putt at Augusta and still shoot approximately 130 — there’s nothing that compares to stepping on the hallowed grounds and feeling the lightning-quick greens for yourself. With such fine margins, veteran course knowledge can be the difference between a green jacket and a missed cut. There’s a reason why no Masters champion has won the tournament in his first attempt since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979.
Ludvig Åberg came closest, finishing second last season, although Jordan Spieth tied for second in 2014 before winning outright the following year. Does that mean Åberg is going to become the first Swedish player ever to win the world’s most prestigious golf tournament? It’s certainly a possibility; at +2000, he has the seventh-shortest odds at DraftKings Sportsbook to win.
This weekend, 21 players who will make their debuts at The Masters. Five of them are amateurs, and no amateur has ever slipped the green jacket over his shoulders. Among the debutants, Aaron Rai (+11000) has the shortest odds to win, while Asia-Pacific Amateur champion Hiroshi Tai and Rafael Campos both have +200000 odds to win, tied for the second-longest odds of any player in the competition.
None of the debutants are quite as accomplished as Åberg was prior to last year’s tournament. By that point, he had already played in 24 PGA TOUR events, and he earned his way into The Masters by winning the RSM Classic in 2023. He had an incredible four-year career at Texas Tech, winning the Fred Haskins Award as a senior in 2023 and earning his PGA TOUR card directly through his collegiate success. At the time he turned pro, he had been the No. 1 amateur in the world and earned a Top-25 finish in a PGA TOUR event, and he went on to make 21 of his first 22 cuts as a professional. Entering The Masters in 2024, Åberg was the ninth-ranked player in the world.
Maverick McNealy’s story most neatly parallels Åberg’s, as he slots in at No. 10 after finishing in the top 10 in four of his 10 starts so far in 2025, including a tie for third last weekend at the Valero Texas Open. Coincidentally enough, McNealy also finished solo second behind Åberg at the Genesis Invitational in February, and, like Åberg, he earned his place in the field after winning the RSM Classic. So far this season, McNealy has been elite in his approaches to the green and on the surface itself — ranking in the top quartile in both Strokes Gained: Approach the Green and Strokes Gained: Putting — but he ranks just 158th in Strokes Gained: Around the Green, where Augusta National is most penal to its players.
Rai — who’s likely to pair with Åberg on the European Ryder Cup team later this year — is the third-highest ranked debutant, at No. 27 in the Official World Golf Ranking. The Brit is an experienced player, having made 100 PGA TOUR starts across seven seasons, and he finally earned his coveted Masters invite by winning the Wyndham Championship last season. He’s elite off the tee and in his approaches to the green and also an above-average putter, so his game is certainly a solid fit, but his chipping, like McNealy’s, leaves room to be desired. He also missed the cut at the Texas Children’s Houston Open, played at Memorial Park Golf Course, which Tony Finau has called the most Augusta-like of any PGA TOUR venue.
My favorite dark horse, though, is Rasmus Højgaard, who, like his twin brother Nicolai, has +20000 odds to slip on the green jacket on Sunday. Højgaard doesn’t have a long track record on the PGA TOUR — he has four made cuts in seven starts this season, finishing in the top 35 in all of the tournaments in which he qualified for the weekend — but he has been a star in Europe. In 2021, he and Nicolai became the first set of twin brothers to win in back-to-back weeks on the DP World Tour, where he’s won five tournaments and finished second at the prestigious DP World Tour Championship in November. He also ranked in the top 25 on the DP World Tour in driving distance, sand save percentage, and putts per green in regulation in 2024, three traits that are critical for success at Augusta National. The family certainly has a good track record; Nicolai Højgaard tied for a respectable 16th last season in his inaugural appearance.
Realistically, none of the 21 Masters rookies will immortalize themselves in history by donning the vaunted blazer. However, if any of them does, I think it’ll be Højgaard, who would become the first Danish man ever to win a major championship.
