Masters 2024 Golfers: Stock Up, Stock Down
The Masters is on the horizon, and as we approach the year’s first major, we want to highlight some players who are coming into April in great form…and some who maybe aren’t. This doesn’t necessarily mean that these players are an automatic bet or an automatic fade. But we can take what we’ve seen so far and perhaps use that information to help form our player pool.
Stock Up
Scottie Scheffler
I’m not breaking any news here by saying Scottie Scheffler is really good at golf. He’s finished outside of the top 20 just three times since September of 2022 while finishing inside the top 10 in seven of eight tournaments in 2024. But you might be wondering if you can honestly justify pulling the trigger on any golfer at +400 odds. While I probably won’t (and I’ll probably regret it), there is a case to be made for trying to find some kind of exposure to Scheffler. On the season, he’s #1 on tour in Scoring Average, Birdie Average, Strokes Gained (SG): Total, SG: Tee-to-Green, SG: Approach, Bogey Avoidance, and Greens in Regulation. He’s 4th in SG: Around-the-Green and 10th in Scrambling. Oh yeah, and it seems he learned how to putt. We don’t always have to play outrights, so whether it’s H2Hs, placement markets, or even DFS lineups, it would be wise to have Scottie as part of your portfolio.
Joaquin Niemann
Since getting cut at last year’s Open Championship, Niemann has been on quite the heater. He’s won twice on the LIV Tour, captured another win on the Euro Tour, and has a 3rd, a 5th, and a couple of T-4s since November. The youngster was T-16 at last year’s Masters despite losing nearly three strokes to the field on approach. It’s always a bit of a leap of faith betting on the LIV players. We don’t have near as much data as we have with the PGA Tour. The fields are definitely weaker than the good PGA events. And with the difficulty in watching the events, we haven’t seen much of these guys play in the last couple of years. But the results speak for themselves with Niemann, who was on the cusp of breaking out on the PGA Tour before he bolted for LIV.
Hideki Matsuyama
The former Masters champion has heated up at the right time. After a ‘meh’ start to 2024, ‘Deki started to put things together in February at the WM Phoenix Open where he cobbled together a T-22 finish despite losing off-the-tee and on approach. Then he hopped over to California and won the Genesis Invitational over a stacked field. He took a few weeks off and then grabbed a T-12 at the Arnold Palmer, gaining three strokes on the field with his patented approach game. The very next week, Matsuyama finished T-6 at The Players, where he shot four rounds in the 60s. ‘Deki’s putter can always be an issue (he lost two strokes to the field at The Players), but he does everything else so well, he just needs to be level to the field with the flat stick to be in contention.
Others to consider: Will Zalatoris, Ludvig Aberg, Jon Rahm
Stock Down
Viktor Hovland
After closing out 2023 by winning the Tour Championship, the start to 2024 has been less-than-inspiring. Something just seems a little off with Hovland. He’s making cuts, but not really contending. His last five tournaments have produced a T-22, T-58, T-19, T-36, and a T-62 in The Players Championship. What’s more troublesome, it seems his struggles around the green have reemerged. He’s lost SG:ARG in all five 2024 tournaments, including an astoundingly terrible 6.8 strokes at The Players in mid-March. More than anything, his betting odds (20/1 at the time of this writing) just don’t match the results on the course this season. He’s one of the most talented golfers on the planet, but will most likely be a fade for me.
Patrick Cantlay
Cantlay makes the list due to a massive amount of inconsistency in 2024. He did T-4 at The Genesis and was T-11 at the weather-shortened AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. But those nice performances are crammed in the middle of a T-52, T-56, T-36, and T-68. And, unlike Hovland, we can’t point at a single glaring weakness. Cantlay has kind of been all over the place. He lost SG:OTT in two of those tournaments. He’s lost SG: Approach in six of his last seven tournaments. He lost SG: ARG in four of his last six. The putting has been erratic, having split gaining and losing SG: Putting in his last six tournaments played. Cantlay has been one of the most consistent performers on Tour for the last several seasons, so a rapid correction is not out of the realm of possibilities. I just doubt it happens at Augusta.
Rory McIlroy
Did you know McIlroy hasn’t won a full-field event in North America on the PGA Tour since 2022 (RBC Canadian)? He hasn’t won a full-field PGA Tour event on American soil since the Wells Fargo in May of 2021. There are a lot of nice finishes for Rory along the way, but the wins have been sparse. Fast forward to 2024, where he’s teed it up on the PGA Tour five times. Those starts have resulted in T-66, T-24, T-21, T-21, and T-19. He’s made every cut but has not been in real contention for four rounds of golf. Digging in, he’s really struggled in at least four key metrics that we look at. For the season, he’s 119th in SG: Approach, 134th in SG: Around-the-Green, 94th in SG: Putting, and 133rd in Scrambling. Rory still mashes off the tee, and his length is going to be a big weapon at The Masters. But Augusta National requires every single shot in the bag, and several of those aren’t working right now for Rory.
Others with form questions: Collin Morikawa, Jason Day, Rickie Fowler
