The fractured landscape of men’s professional golf has made the first 13 Sundays of 2024 a little less compelling. It’s also turned the Masters into something even greater than it normally is.
Scarcity drives value, and at the moment, golf’s four major championships possess the rare commodity of all the game’s best competing against each other. The Masters is always highly anticipated, but the split-tour era has added another layer to the year’s first major.
Here are the top numbers and notes to know ahead of the 88th Masters Tournament.
1. Even amidst a sea of advanced statistics, it’s tough to overstate how good Scottie Scheffler’s driving and approach play have become. The gap between Scheffler’s strokes gained tee-to-green per round average this season and second-best (Xander Schauffele) is larger than the gap between No. 20 and 109 on the list.
Last season, Scheffler became the first player in more than a decade to lead the PGA Tour in greens in regulation in back-to-back seasons. He’s hitting an even higher rate in 2024. On the rare occasion he does miss his target, Scheffler is enjoying the best around-the-green performance of his pro career (+0.55 per round, fifth-best on Tour).
Oh, and he also leads all players in strokes gained approach at Augusta National the last three years, and in strokes gained ball striking since 2020. He enters this year’s Masters having not shot over par in competition since August and on a run of 20 straight rounds with positive strokes gained total.
It is not an understatement to say that if Scheffler putts slightly above average any given week, he can run away from a field. Since the beginning of 2022, he has had four tournaments where he averaged one or more strokes gained putting per round. He won all four of them. Since the beginning of last season, Scheffler has gained strokes putting in 48 percent of his measured rounds – his scoring average when he does that is 66.5.
He lost nearly 7.4 strokes putting in Rounds 1 and 2 at Augusta last year. The field would vastly benefit from a repeat of that this week.
2. Jon Rahm was a turbo-charged buzzsaw heading into last year’s Masters: three wins, the best scoring average on the PGA Tour and a birdie average of 5.21 per round. His move to LIV gives prognosticators less golf this year to evaluate entering the season’s first major. In 2023, he had 28 competitive rounds under his belt when also counting the WGC Match Play. This year, LIV has played 15 rounds.
Rahm hasn’t won an individual title on his new tour, but his underlying numbers are nothing to scoff at. He’s averaged 1.45 strokes gained ball striking per round, second-best among LIV players in the field this week. That said, it would be difficult for anyone to replicate the ball-striking precision he showed off at ANGC in 2023. In his victory last year, Rahm hit 85 percent of his fairways and 72 percent of his greens in regulation, the first champion to reach both benchmarks since Ben Crenshaw in 1995.
Since making his Masters debut in 2017, Rahm has led all players in strokes gained total per round (2.28), cumulative score to par (42-under-par) and strokes gained off-the-tee (1.31). He’s racked up five top-10 finishes in seven starts and has never finished worse than tied for 27th.
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3. Both numerically and anecdotally, the slight dissipation of the pre-Masters hype storm cloud that annually builds over Rory McIlroy’s head is probably a good thing. Since 2019, McIlroy’s performance has improved as the week has progressed at Augusta National: negative strokes gained in round one (-0.81), with increases in each of the next three rounds (0.61, 2.71, 5.01). He’s 10-over-par in Rounds 1 and 2 of the last five Masters and 22-under-par in Rounds 3 and 4. Whether that’s a testament to the impact of pre-tournament pressure or something else entirely, it’s a significant enough trend to pay attention to.
When McIlroy finished in a tie for sixth place last summer at Royal Liverpool, it marked his 20th top-10 finish in a major since his last win, the 2014 PGA. Not only is that the most top-10s in majors since the beginning of 2015, it’s the only time in the modern era that a player had 20 or more top-10 results in nine years of majors without a victory.
Golf is unique in that the perceived competitive lifespan of its greats is longer than more physically demanding sports. But perhaps the window for historic greatness isn’t quite as long as it may seem. The five men to complete the professional grand slam each got the final leg of it in three or fewer tries. This will be McIlroy’s 10th Masters start since winning the 2014 Open, and 16th appearance overall. Only one player has won his first green jacket in his 16th try or later: Sergio Garcia in 2017 (19th start).
Seve Ballesteros won his last major at 31. Tom Watson was 33. Arnold Palmer, 34. For as incredible and acclaimed as those men’s careers were, none of them completed the slam. That McIlroy finishing it seemed inevitable at one point reflects an underestimate of how tough the task is.
Still, the tantalizingly close calls stir hope amid his faithful. He’s 41-under-par in the majors the last two years, best of anyone by six shots (Scheffler, -35). Nobody has gained more strokes off the tee per round in the majors the last two seasons than McIlroy. He ranked fifth in strokes gained approach at the majors in 2023, and even gained shots with his putter (+0.18 per round).
McIlroy’s approach play has taken a step back so far in 2024, but last week in San Antonio he may have unlocked something. He vastly improved his average proximity to the hole from every key yardage and gained more strokes with his approach play than he had in any PGA Tour event in nearly five years.
4. The adage that Augusta National is a “second shot” golf course has proven to be empirically true in the era of advanced data. Seven of the last nine Masters champions have ranked sixth or better that week in strokes gained approach. The average ranking for winners on tour across that same period is 12.1, with 46 percent ranking in the top six. The last 10 Masters winners have combined to hit 72.6 percent of their greens in regulation that week, 11 percent more than the field average.
It’s also a stern test around some of the most nuanced greens in the world. The last four champions ranked fourth or better for the week in scrambling. Last year, Rahm led the field getting up and down, his 80 percent clip the best by a Masters champion since Trevor Immelman in 2008.
Missing the fairway at ANGC has become more penalizing since scoring records crumbled at the COVID-induced fall Masters of 2020. The last three years, the average penalty for a missed fairway is 0.42 strokes, an increase of about one-tenth of a stroke over the preceding five Masters. That may not seem like much on the surface but consider this: players hit the green in regulation after a missed fairway 34.6 percent of the time at the 2023 Masters, the second-lowest rate of any course on tour all last season (Los Angeles CC, 31.6).
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5. Brooks Koepka was achingly close to his first green jacket in 2023, carrying a two-shot lead into the final round before being passed by the surging Rahm. Brooks’ ball striking was unreal through two rounds last year, gaining 10.54 strokes with his drives and approach shots. He didn’t maintain that breakneck pace, however, losing 1.75 strokes with his ball striking in the final two rounds.
Koepka’s victory the following month at the PGA Championship further cemented his place as this era’s best performer in the biggest events. He’s a combined 72-under-par in majors since 2016, 20 strokes better than any other player in that span. Since 2015, Koepka leads all players in the majors in birdie average, strokes gained total, percentage of rounds in the 60s and, most importantly, wins.
Koepka’s past laissez-faire demeanor toward the non-major events on the PGA Tour schedule suggests that his move to LIV might be the least impactful of anyone when it comes to pre-major perception of form. However in ‘23 he came to Augusta off a win at LIV Orlando – last week in Miami, he finished in 46th place, his worst result this year on that circuit. This week, Koepka will try to become the first reigning PGA Champ to win the Masters since Phil Mickelson in 2005.
6. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more compelling pair of top Masters debutants than we have in 2024. Wyndham Clark’s rapid ascent to the top of the sport puts him in a unique position in his first trip down Magnolia Lane. Clark will be the first player to make his Masters debut as the reigning U.S. Open champion since Orville Moody in 1970. Were it not for the brilliance of Scheffler, Clark might be the talk of the PGA Tour in 2024 – he backed up his rain-shortened win at Pebble Beach with second-place finishes at Bay Hill and TPC Sawgrass. Clark is among the tour’s leaders in most key ball striking and scoring statistics, including birdie average (sixth) and strokes gained tee-to-green (13th).
It’s difficult to wrap your head around the fact that this will be the first major – let alone Masters – for Ludvig Åberg. Last year in Rome he became the first in history to compete in a Ryder Cup before making his major championship debut. Since turning pro, he’s averaged 4.9 birdies or better per round on the PGA Tour, trailing only Scheffler. That would help explain having the lowest odds ever (+2500) for a player in his Masters debut, according to Golfbet.
Twice in the last four years, a player making his Masters debut has finished runner-up: Sungjae Im in 2020 and Will Zalatoris the following spring. The last player to win in his Masters debut was Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979. Another historic streak-busting event would fit nicely in a season where we have already seen an amateur win for the first time since 1991, and a player go back-to-back at TPC Sawgrass for the first time ever.
7. Some 250 players have 30 or more career rounds all-time at the Masters. Of that group, Jordan Spieth ranks second in strokes gained per round (2.31), behind Ben Hogan and just ahead of Tiger Woods. Spieth seemingly always finds his best self at Augusta National: since 2015, he leads all players in strokes gained approach per round and ranks 11th in strokes gained putting. No player in that span has had more rounds in the 60s or one-putts, either.
There is no course in men’s professional golf where past performance is more indicative of future success than Augusta National. Backers of Spieth will take solace in that golf tenet when they juxtapose it with his wobbly approach numbers so far in 2024 (-0.02 strokes gained per round, 97th on Tour). But like McIlroy, Spieth might have found a solution last week in San Antonio – he had his best strokes gained approach week in nearly a year at the Valero Texas Open. Hope springs eternal in the form of a flushed 7-iron.
8. Xander Schauffele has not merely been knocking on the door of a big win. He has procured a power drill and is in the process of removing it from its hinges altogether. Schauffele, who held the outright 54-hole lead last month at TPC Sawgrass, has six top-10 finishes in eight starts this season on the PGA Tour. He has finished in the top 20 in each of the last seven majors contested, the only man who can make that claim.
He has averaged 1.82 strokes gained total in his major championship career. Since 2000, that is the highest average for any player with at least 40 rounds played and no victories. Over the last five Masters, only Patrick Reed (86) and Cameron Smith (84) have more birdies-or-better than Schauffele does (80).
Schauffele has every club in the bag to win the game’s biggest championships: this season, he and Scheffler are the only two players ranked in the top 20 on the PGA Tour in strokes gained off-the-tee, approach and around the green. The only step remaining is the hardest one.
He’s not the most decorated player on LIV Golf without a major, but he’s inarguably the hottest of the group. Joaquin Niemann has won twice in five starts on the LIV Tour in 2024 after closing 2023 with a win in the Australian Open. He’s also added top-five finishes in Dubai (T-4) and Oman (3rd). Niemann’s 1.39 strokes gained approach per round this season is nearly half a shot better than any other LIV player in this week’s field.
This is unquestionably the best form Niemann has shown entering a major championship season. In 19 previous major starts, he has never finished better than tied for 16th place.
9. Seemingly countless other major champions have intriguing numbers suggesting a strong performance this week. Over the last two seasons, Cam Smith leads all players in strokes gained putting in the majors and trails only Scheffler in strokes gained approach. His short game is as deft as ever, as he’s gaining 1.5 strokes per round on the LIV Tour this season on putts and shots around the green combined.
Hideki Matsuyama and Scheffler are the only two players to finish in the top 20 each of the last four years at Augusta. Since 2015, Matsuyama ranks in the top three among all players at the Masters in scrambling (65.6 percent), bogey avoidance (3.03 per round), and strokes gained tee-to-green (1.81). Hideki leads the PGA Tour this season in strokes gained around the green, as well.
Patrick Reed has averaged well over a stroke gained putting per round at the Masters since 2018 and finished tied for fourth last year. Shane Lowry has averaged more than 1.5 strokes tee-to-green here the last three years, all top-25 finishes.
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10. It’s been five years now since Tiger Woods won his 15th major championship at the 2019 Masters. That was also the last time he entered an April Masters having played more than one tournament that year leading up to it. While Woods’ physical limitations make contending seem far-fetched, he does have one Masters record realistically square in his sights. Should Tiger make the cut this week, it would be his 24th in a row, breaking a tie for the longest streak all-time with Gary Player (1959-82) and Fred Couples (1983-2007).
There might not be another venue in sports that provides more flashes of past brilliance for legends past their prime. Tiger and his supporters don’t have to look back far to find the last example of it: Phil Mickelson’s 65 on Sunday last year not only tied Lefty’s lowest career Masters round, it was the best ever by a player aged 50 or older.
The 88th Masters Tournament begins Thursday.
(Top photo of Scottie Scheffler: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
