Masters Odds 2023 Tips for Golf-Betting Novices and Best Picks in the Field
The Masters is an event unlike any other on golf's major circuit.
It is the only one of the four majors in which you can draw from course history for betting picks every year.
Some of the top golfers in the world have strong records at Augusta National Golf Club, and that makes them yearly contenders for the green jacket.
For example, Rory McIlroy has seven top-10 finishes in his last nine Masters starts. He will be a popular pick because of his wealth of success in Georgia.
One of the other ways to narrow down your Masters picks is to figure out which players are best suited to get around Augusta in the most efficient way possible.
Augusta has a reputation for being a second-shot course, so a golfer with a terrific approach game could be preferred to others.
The one way that novice golf bettors should not look for a winner is through a long shot. Rarely does an unknown golfer far down the pre-tournament odds chart end up with a green jacket.
Masters Betting Tips
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Rely On Course History Data
The Masters has the unique feature of being played at the same course every year, so we know which golfers are historically good, average or bad at Augusta.
Four of the last five winners had at least one top-25 finish at Augusta before they won the season's first major. Tiger Woods is the exception to that trend. He won for the first time in 1997 after a tie for 41st and a missed cut.
Patrick Reed, Dustin Johnson and Hideki Matsuyama all produced a top-15 finish in years after they earned the green jacket, so they were not just fluky winners, they have had course consistency for a long time.
Reigning champion Scottie Scheffler is in a good position to follow that trend, as he comes into the Masters as the No. 1 golfer in the world and with multiple PGA Tour wins this season.
If the 2023 Masters winner is not a previous champion, it will likely be someone with a strong history at the course. Cameron Smith and Corey Conners each have three straight top-10 finishes at Augusta. McIlroy, Justin Thomas and Collin Morikawa were some of the most notable names in the top 10 in 2022.
Look at Golfers With Great Approach Numbers
CBS Sports' Kyle Porter outlined an important stat from the last decade of Masters champions.
Nine of the last 11 Masters winners produced a strokes-gained-tee-to-green statistic of 1.7 or better in the three months building up to the Masters. He pointed out on Twitter the seven golfers that fit that category in 2023.
Scheffler, McIlroy and Jon Rahm, the top three golfers in the world, all fit into that criterion, as do Morikawa, Cameron Young, Jason Day and Patrick Cantlay. Young is the only member of that group without a top-10 finish at Augusta. Young only has one previous Masters appearance.
Avoid Long Shot Winner Picks
Action Network's Jason Sobel pointed out that the last 10 Masters winners had an average pre-tournament odds price of 27.1.
Matsuyama had the longest odds of any recent winner at 60-1 in 2021.
DraftKings Sportsbook has 12 golfers listed at +2800 (bet $100 to win $2,800) or shorter to win the Masters.
Eleven of those 12 golfers have at least one top-10 Masters finish. Max Homa is the only member of that group without a high finish. He has two missed cuts and a tie for 48th at Augusta.
There is a good chance that one member of that dozen comes away with the green jacket because of the odds trend and all of their recent successes on the course.
Best Picks
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Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm
We could see the top three golfers in the Official World Golf Ranking dueling for the green jacket on Sunday.
That is the dream scenario for any golf fan because Scheffler, McIlroy and Rahm are all at the peak of their powers right now.
Scheffler has the pressure on him to become the first repeat Masters champion since Woods in 2001 and 2002.
The 26-year-old has two recent wins on the PGA Tour, and he has rarely had a bad finish this season.
McIlroy came close to threatening Scheffler for the win last year after he put together an incredible final-round 64.
However, McIlroy's early-round play kept him three strokes back of Scheffler, and that could be the biggest factor that keeps him out of title contention this weekend.
McIlroy produced first-round scores of 73, 75 and 76 in his last three Masters appearances.
The four-time major winner comes into Augusta off a second-place finish at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and a third-place mark at the WGC Match Play. He missed the cut at The Players Championship in between those events.
If the version of McIlroy from last year's fourth round and two of the last three tournaments shows up, he will have a chance at his first green jacket.
Rahm has three PGA Tour victories since January, and he has two other top-10 finishes in that span.
The Spaniard owns the best recent results of the favored trio, and he is typically a major player at Augusta. He finished in the top 10 in four of his last five starts at Augusta.
You can't go wrong by selecting any one of Scheffler, McIlroy and Rahm to win the Masters. At least one of them should be near the lead on Sunday, and if all three are in that position, we could be in for one of the greatest Masters finishes ever.
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