2023 Masters Tournament dates: April 11–14 (Thursday-Sunday)
Is this the year Rory finally wins the Masters? Back In October before the start of this season, we picked Jon Rahm to win the Masters. We’ll nailed that pick. This year will be the first Masters played since the LIV tour started. In general, I’m curious to see how those golfers perform. They are professionals and I’m sure will try to ramp up for the Masters, but I think everyone knows it’s less competitive and they play far less. I’m not sure that’s going to be the greatest preparation for those coming from the LIV tour. They will begin the first of three events prior to the Masters starting February 24th. The event the week prior will be at Orange County National in Orlando.
As always course history is a major bonus at the Masters as it’s played on the same course every year. While we have seen some players come out of the gates like Jordan Spieth dominated from his first step on the course typically that is not the case. Experience matters here and even some oldsters can preform well from time to time. We’ve seen Jack Nicklaus with a T6 at 57 years old for example. Fred Couples, Bernhard Langer and others have had nice finishes in the last decade.
There have been some short hitters like Zach Johnson win before, but usually the weather is more in play in those instances. The long hitters have the advantage, especially lefty’s like Bubba Watson and Phil Mickelson over the years. Hole 13 Azalea is an important hole to birdie or even potentially eagle. Even as someone that only plays it on video games you understand that. The shape of it sets up perfectly for them.
Here is the course history and our general power rankings. Some discount course history in general when betting, I wouldn’t here. Form is important but experience matters at the Masters too. Some notable exceptions that just missed the cut to make the tournament this week were Matt Kuchar and Rickie Fowler. Ranking 51st and 55th. That’s got to hurt to be that close as top 50 the week before would have got you in.
