The Masters 2023: Preview and betting tips

It’s coming! Golf fans are experiencing the real golf fever again after a year. Once again, a tournament of tournaments in this sport is approaching. Once again, the famous Masters Tournament is here for another year. What can we look forward to this year? And who do the bookies predict could dominate this golf event of the year?

Across the world, you won’t find a more important golf event than the Masters. The famous tournament of the world’s best players is regularly hosted by Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia. The 86th Masters will also be the first major tournament of the season.

Defending the green jacket will be twenty-six-year-old American Scottie Scheffler, who will be one of the biggest favourites to win again this year. Fifty of the world’s best players will take part in the tournament, along with former Masters winners and recent champions. This line-up will also include the best players in professional and amateur tournaments.

Course and weather forecast

Augusta National is considered one of the most beautiful, yet difficult golf courses in the world. If you have a solid chunk of money in the bank and would like to play there, you’re out of luck. You can only get on the specially maintained Masters course as its champion, or by invitation.

The course is at its most magical in the spring months, when the flowers bloom and the holes are named after them. The biggest change has been to hole number 13. In recent years, it has become one of the easiest holes at the Masters in modern golf, so the tee has been moved back 35 metres.

The course offers quite wide greens at first glance, but the pretty view is where all the fun ends. Thanks to the speed of the millimetre turf and the tricky undulations, it’s often a miracle when the world’s best players can knock a ball into the hole in two putts.

Playing four even rounds on such a challenging course is a challenge for even the world’s greatest players. Very often, whoever can avoid major losses in some part of the game throughout the tournament has a great chance of winning. No matter how the cards are dealt during the tournament, the old familiar rule that the Masters is decided on the last nine of the final round may well apply again.

PGA vs. LIV

This year’s Masters, however, will be even spicier than ever. That’s because Augusta will also feature eighteen golfers who decided to leave the PGA Tour’s flagship event over the past year to join the newly formed LIV Golf League.

Their departure has greatly outraged many fans, but also the PGA players themselves. The commissioner of the American circuit, Jay Monahan, subsequently decided that these players could no longer play on the PGA. However, the Masters does not fall under the category of PGA Tour tournaments. The organizers have their own rules. Therefore, LIV players who have won or qualified for the famous tournament in the past are not blocked from participating in the Masters.

However, recent months have shown that tensions between PGA Tour professionals and the LIV are at a high point. While lawsuits rage between the two, at Augusta they will all meet again for the first time in the same room and on the same course in a year.

LIV players are often labeled in the media as not playing full golf with the best and that their low competition must inevitably hurt them. But LIV players disagree. They also take the Masters as a great challenge to show these people that their competition is of the same quality and that they can leave the packed starting field behind.

These players include former Masters champions such as Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia, three-time winner Phil Mickelson and two-time winner Bubba Watson. Fresh LIV Golf Orlando tournament winner and four-time major winner Brooks Koepka will also be a hot LIV handcuff.

The return of King Tiger Woods

Also returning to golf’s most famous stage is forty-seven-year-old legend Tiger Woods. Last year, he entered the Masters for his first professional tournament since a serious car accident in February 2021. While his chances of winning weren’t great, he was able to at least make the cut and entertain the crowd during the weekend rounds.

Today, Tiger Woods is in much better shape. He rarely plays in tournaments, but the Masters is always the obvious choice for him. At Augusta, he will thus be one of the most experienced, as he has managed to don the famous green jacket for the champions five times in the past, most recently in 2019.

Will McIlroy break the curse?

While Tiger Woods won’t be among the top favourites this year either, his friend and world number two Rory McIlroy already is. He was already considered the top favourite last year by experts and computer models, but ended up finishing second, three shots behind the phenomenal Scottie Scheffler.

On several occasions McIlroy had his sights set on winning the Masters, but each time he hit one passage of play that took away his chances of winning in the aggregate. The desire to triumph in Augusta is huge, the Irish pro would have the final piece of the puzzle with a possible victory, completing the last missing title of the four majors.

However, the hot favourites include many others. Bookmakers have high hopes for Jon Rahm, who has been in constant form of late. Other hot aces include Jordan Spieth, Patrick Cantlay Justin Thomas and Cameron Smith from Australia.

Betting tip

Virtually any of the aforementioned golfers have a realistic chance of winning the tournament or at least finishing in the top five of the leaderboard. Experience, current form and mental toughness will be the deciding factors. In this respect, Scottie Scheffler seems to be the ideal candidate, who still gives the impression on the course that he has come just to play golf.