Last year, MLB handicapper Joe Peta put away the baseball spreadsheets and began immersing himself into the world of golf betting. His latest book, A 2019 Masters Preview, was published last month (available on Amazon) and contains never-before-revealed analytics and insights on the Masters. As part of his look at the most popular betting event on the PGA Tour, Joe is previewing the 2019 Masters tournament for ESPN.
Handicapping a golf tournament is the cooking equivalent of creating a stew. No matter if you’re building a spreadsheet-based model or you’re a PGA Tour fanatic who has watched every Masters since Tiger Woods turned pro, you’re probably factoring in some combination of the following ingredients: a golfer’s current form, his results over the past year and his history at the event. For this article, let’s focus on the last item: history at the Masters.
There are many ways you can assess a golfer’s history at this or any event, including a look at his top-10 finishes, cuts made, career money won and, of course, in the case of the Masters, green jackets in his closet. Additionally, to truly determine if a golfer has a favorable course factor at a specific venue, it’s necessary to compare his annual performance at an event with the baseline performance he exhibited at all events he played that season. We’re not going to get that complicated here though. We’re simply going to look at the raw strokes gained of this year’s betting favorites over the course of their careers.
Strokes gained is the elegant creation of Mark Broadie and defined as amount of strokes by which a golfer bettered the average score of the entire field. If that figure is negative, it’s actually strokes lost, but in the world of golf analytics is expressed as negative strokes gained. The metric is appealing to golf analysts because it’s a zero-sum calculation that eliminates factors like weather, pin placements and other course set-up variables, etc. that can plague comparisons of raw scores or strokes under par. It therefore allows comparisons across years and even entirely different events (although strength-of-field adjustments are needed).
With that in mind, here are the career strokes gained figures at the Masters for the 10 betting favorites at this year’s event. (All posted odds via Westgate; Tommy Fleetwood and Francesco Molinari are also +2000.)
Rory McIlroy (+800)
10 events, 38 rounds played, 58.71 strokes gained (SG:T), 1.54 strokes gained per round (SG:Rd)
Almost certainly the hottest golfer on Tour, McIlroy has only once posted negative strokes gained at the Masters, when he missed the cut in 2010. In the nine events he has made the cut, he has had positive strokes gained in 29 of his 36 rounds, a sparkling 80.6 percent success rate. However, three of those seven negative rounds occurred on Sundays, and in the cases of 2011 and 2018, it’s why he hasn’t won the event.
Dustin Johnson (+1000)
8 events, 30 rounds played, 34.92 SG:T, 1.16 SG:Rd
Sitting atop the Official World Golf Rankings, Johnson is, of course, a magnificent golfer, and Augusta National would appear to be tailor-made for the long-hitting, high-flight-path bomber. His overall figures are fine and obviously well above average. But a look at his data shows a golfer who has only twice — in 2015 and 2016 — recorded over 10 strokes gained for the tournament. Ten of his 30 rounds in the Masters have resulted in negative strokes gained.
Justin Rose (+1200)
13 events, 52 rounds played, 92.46 SG:T, 1.78 SG:Rd
The reigning Fed Ex Cup champion had a chance to enter the Masters as the top-ranked player in the world, but he needed a slightly better showing at the Dell Technologies Match Play event to overtake Johnson. You might remember Rose at the Masters for his playoff loss to Sergio Garcia in 2017, but he has very quietly amassed a stellar body of work at Augusta. It takes roughly 14 strokes gained in the Masters to win a tournament, and unlike the two names above him on this list who have never accomplished that feat, Rose has done it twice, bettering 15 strokes gained in both 2015 and 2017. You have to go all the way back to Lloyd Mangrum, who finished in the top 10 for 10 straight years over the 1940s and ’50s, to find anyone who has more total strokes gained and a higher strokes gained per round but hasn’t won the event.
Tiger Woods (+1400)
21 events, 82 rounds played, 202.30 SG:T, 2.47 SG:Rd
As a pro, Woods has never missed a cut at the Masters in 19 appearances, and his body of work is spectacular. Over his 76 rounds as a pro, Woods has averaged 2.73 strokes gained, second only in the history of the tournament to a name lower on this list — but he has played nearly four times as many rounds. The four-time winner has never finished the event with negative strokes gained since he turned professional. Over that time, 66 of his 76 rounds have resulted in positive strokes gained (86.8 percent success rate), including a mind-boggling 27 straight rounds spanning 2004-2011.
Jon Rahm (+1600)
2 events, 8 rounds played, 16.19 SG:T, 2.02 SG:Rd
He has played the event only twice, but the results look good. Bolstered by two rounds worth over six strokes gained, Rahm finished fourth in 2018 and certainly will enter this year’s event with confidence. (A further note on the data, since Rahm has limited history: He shot a 68 in Round 2 and a 65 in Round 3 last year, yet both were worth nearly the same amount, 6.56 and 6.26, respectively, in strokes gained. This highlights the strength of the strokes gained statistic because it recognizes how much easier the course played on Saturday than Friday.)
Justin Thomas (+1600)
3 events, 12 rounds played, 9.72 SG:T, 0.81 SG:Rd
As one of only two golfers on this list not to average at least one stroke gained per round at the Masters, Thomas has never really put together a complete performance at Augusta. He’s three for three in made cuts but just seven of his 12 rounds have resulted in positive strokes gained. The one bright spot is the 67 he shot in last year’s second round, resulting in 7.56 strokes gained, the third-best round of the event in 2018.
Rickie Fowler (+1600)
8 events, 30 rounds played, 40.95 SG:T, 1.36 SG:Rd
Fowler has always played well in the Masters, but last year he broke through and played well enough to win. Fowler posted 16.11 strokes gained in last year’s event, second by a stroke to winner Patrick Reed. But like free throw “defense” in basketball, Fowler can’t control what Reed — or any of his opponents — shoots; he can control only his own score. Fowler’s 16.11 strokes gained were more than seven of the last 12 Masters winners leading up to the 2018 event. He might be in the conversation for best players currently on Tour to have never won a major, but it’s not because he hasn’t played well enough to win at least one.
Brooks Koepka (+2000)
3 events, 12 rounds played, 12.89 SG:T, 1.07 SG:Rd
The last time Koepka played the Masters, he hadn’t won a major yet, but now he’s a three-time major winner. Familiarity with Augusta National is a huge factor in success at the Masters, and Koepka has gotten progressively better each year he has played, posting 1.28, 4.53 and 7.08 total strokes gained from 2015 to 2017. He was certainly no more than an afterthought entering the event any of those years, having earned only one career win, a title at the 2015 Waste Management Phoenix Open, which got him an invite to the 2015 event. This year, of course, the reigning U.S. Open and PGA Championship winner will be in a featured paring for the first time.
Jordan Spieth (+2000)
5 events, 20 rounds played, 65.19 SG:T, 3.26 SG:Rd
By far the most intriguing name on this list, Spieth enters the event in the worst form of his career. Yet, he also enters the event with the all-time highest strokes gained per round average of the more than 1,300 golfers who have ever played in the Masters. His 65.19 strokes gained across five events is bettered only by Woods (69.89, 1997-2001) as the best five-year stretch any golfer in the field has had at Augusta. His worst performance was 7.08 strokes gained in 2017 — the only time he didn’t finish with at least 11.50 strokes gained.
Bryson DeChambeau (+2000)
2 events, 8 rounds played, 3.64 SG:T, 0.46 SG:Rd
DeChambeau has made the cut both times he has played here, including once as an amateur in 2016. In fact, that year he played better than (4.53 strokes gained) he did in 2018 (-0.89). When you look at the history of the names above him on this list, DeChambeau wouldn’t appear to have the résumé at Augusta to factor into this year’s event. As I point out in my book, however, when you look at his results last year, you find stellar work off the tee (sixth in the field in strokes gained off the tee) above-average work with the irons — but horrendous results on the greens (83rd of 88 in the field in strokes gained putting.) Perhaps increased familiarity with the greens will aid DeChambeau this year.
So that’s a look at the strokes gained history at the Masters for this year’s favorites. On Tuesday we’ll look at why course history is more important at the Masters than any other stop on tour and who in the field, historically, has raised (or lowered) his game at Augusta.