The Masters
The Masters preview: Best mates Cantlay and Schauffele can tame Augusta
While The Open is the tournament for the golf purist, The Masters is probably the one that harbours the most attention. It’s the most bet on golf tournament of the entire year and this year’s renewal should be no different as it looks wide-open.
Golf’s ‘big three’ – Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm – rightly head the market and there’s a fair argument to say that the winner will come from within the group. Last year’s winner and world number one Scheffler is probably the most likely winner, but winning the Masters back-to-back doesn’t happen very often and while he could easily do it, at 7/1, he’s a touch short.
For us, Rahm is the outsider of the three. He’s rarely contended here and remarkably has never been closer than six back going into Sunday, so perhaps it’s a course that doesn’t quite fit his eye.
The news that bad weather is forecast will be music to the ears of McIlroy’s supporters. The Northern Irishman thrives when conditions are soft and it might just be the asset he needs to get the win around here that he so desperately wants. As we all know, a win at Augusta would make Rory just the sixth man to complete the career Grand Slam by winning all four Majors and he’s a very solid proposition to do just that at 7/1.
Cantlay’s time has come for Major breakthrough
While Scheffler, McIlroy and Rahm are the top-three in golf at the moment, there’s plenty to suggest that Patrick Cantlay is the fourth best and he looks a big player here.
The American is a prolific PGA Tour winner but hasn’t really cracked it on the Major stage yet, despite clearly having a game which has few, if any, weaknesses. He’s also a player that looks perfectly suited to Augusta and he showed just that with a 12-under weekend back in 2019 where he hit the front before a certain Tiger Woods swept through to win his 15th Major. And perhaps his limp effort when in charge there has left a few scars because while he finished in a tie for third in the PGA later that year and in a tie for eighth at the 2022 Open, he just hasn’t really delivered on the grandest stage of them all.
Augusta certainly looks a prime spot to change that. His long game is absolutely purring at the moment, ranking second in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, while the fact he ranks first in par-four scoring and particularly in par-five scoring are big nods in his favour. The last 15 winners have ranked 129-under on the par-fives, so you need to play them well to compete and the fact that the course will play long with the bad weather only emphasises that.
Granted, he has tended to throw in a bad round here so he’ll need to change that to be a factor, but six top-25s from eight starts this season show he’s been playing really nicely. His putter went cold at the Match-Play, but he bumped into an inspired Sam Burns there, who seemed to have a real point to prove, so it might just have been the wrong time to face him.
The fact he’s gone well at Riviera in the past, including this year, is another bonus and he looks a very solid proposition at 18/1.
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Mr consistent Schauffele should go well
Hit most of the fairways, most of the greens and hole plenty of putts – that’s pretty much the standard with Xander Schauffele these days and one of golf’s most consistent players looks rock solid at 22/1.
Currently on a streak of 20 consecutive cuts made – the most on the PGA Tour by some way – Xander is just one of those players who does everything very solidly and that’s the sort of game that tends to go very well around Augusta. He’s 10th in Strokes Gained: Total and is ninth for Strokes Gained: Approach – always a strong stat for the Masters. Seven of the top-11 finishers ranked inside the top-10 in 2021 and eight of the top-11 were in the top-12 last year – stats that very much back up the view that Augusta is a ‘second shot golf course’.
By his ridiculously high standards, this season hasn’t been his best, but he has still managed four top-10 finishes, including last time out at the Match Play. He was beaten by McIlroy there and lost little in defeat having played really well. He looked really good in the group stage before that and his game seems to be peaking at just the right time.
He was another who was usurped by Woods in 2019 having to settle for second, but he’s a better player now having won three times last season and he can be expected to go really well as he seeks a maiden Major title.
