If you look through the history of winners at The Masters Tournament — the golf season’s first major, which will be played this weekend at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia — most of them kind of make sense. Experience has generally won out at the tournament, so it’s usually been won by one of the world’s best players.
Since 2017, it’s been won by Scottie Scheffler twice and Jon Rahm, Hideki Matsuyama, Dustin Johnson, Tiger Woods, Patrick Reed, and Sergio Garcia once each — all big names. Entering the tournament, Scheffler ranked first in both 2022 and 2024, Rahm ranked third, Matsuyama 25th, Johnson first, Woods 12th, Reed 24th, and Garcia 11th. The lowest-ranked players at the time of their victory — Matsuyama and Reed — had both finished in the top two at a major championship prior to their breakthrough, so it was hardly a surprise that either of them slipped on the green jacket.
The most startling winner in the last decade came in 2016, when Danny Willett won, but it was more the fashion in which he did so (a Jordan Spieth back-nine collapse) and his lack of major pedigree (only one major Top-10 finish prior to his victory) than his world ranking (12th). Besides Willett, the other big surprise came in 2011, when Charl Schwartzel claimed his only major championship.
Of the 95 players in the field, only 31 have better than +10000 odds (or an implied 1% chance) of winning at DraftKings Sportsbook. It’s almost certain that the man donning the green jacket on the 18th green on Sunday evening will be one of those 31. But improbable runs like Schwartzel’s prove that winning The Masters as a true long shot is possible. Here are my two favorites with +10000 odds or longer:
Sungjae Im, +13000
Im has had an up-and-down season and has been in rough form as of late, missing the cut in two of his last six events and finishing outside the top 55 at three more, including a solo 60th-place finish at the Texas Children’s Houston Open, at a venue (Memorial Park) considered by some as comparable to Augusta National. He had a hot start to the season, finishing solo third at The Sentry in Hawaii and following it up three weeks later with a tie for fourth at the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, but his form has dipped dramatically since. The 27-year-old Korean ranks sixth-to-last on the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green, which is a major concern given the iron precision that Augusta National requires of its players.
But of all the players with +10000 odds or longer who are close to their prime, Im is one of the most accomplished. This group includes some aging former champions — including Phil Mickelson (+10000), who I also considered picking — and talented tournament debutants. Im already has two top-10 finishes at The Masters under his belt, in addition to a tie for 16th in 2023. It’s the major championship at which he’s performed the best, and it’s not hard to see why; Im is well-suited to handle Augusta National’s diabolical greens, as even in a down season, he ranks in the circuit’s top quartile in Strokes Gained: Around the Green and Strokes Gained: Putting. Im isn’t that far removed from an incredible 2024 summer that brought him into the world’s Top 20.
J.J. Spaun, +13000
My case for Spaun rests entirely on his performance at THE PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass in the third weekend of March, where he lost to Rory McIlroy in a Monday morning playoff, dunking a ball in the water at the island-green 17th and making a triple-bogey six that effectively took him out of contention for the tournament. The 34-year-old, whose only PGA TOUR win came at the 2022 Valero Texas Open, seemed nervous in the first playoff of his career. He’s never come particularly close to contending at a major championship and has never even qualified for The Open Championship, but his best finish did come at the 2022 Masters, when he followed up his Texas Open win by finishing in a tie for 23rd. Was the close call at Sawgrass all he needed to improve his mental game and actualize his potential?
Spaun isn’t a completely natural fit at Augusta; this season, he ranks in the bottom half of the PGA TOUR in both Strokes Gained: Around the Green and Strokes Gained: Putting, and Augusta’s lightning-quick bent grass greens aren’t exactly easy. But The Masters is often won by elite iron strikers, and the greens can be neutralized somewhat by a player who consistently puts the ball in the right position on his approach shots. Spaun does that; he ranks second on the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green this season. He’s especially strong from within 150 yards — the approaches on the third, ninth, 12th, 13th, and 15th holes should all be within this number — and he’s a solid lag putter as well. Wouldn’t it be fitting if Spaun goes nuclear with his irons and edges McIlroy to the green jacket on Sunday?
