Masters Odds 2017: Latest Lines for Top Favorites at Augusta

For many sports fans, few sights in spring are better than a pristine, verdant golf course that is ready for play.

The Masters, set to begin on Thursday at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, heralds the season better than most tournaments, as it features the game's best players vying for the iconic green jacket.

The first major of the year has an obvious front-runner in Dustin Johnson, who is in brilliant form after chasing away his demons and winning the first major of his career at the 2016 U.S. Open.

He'll be facing plenty of strong competition, and golf is an unforgiving game at best. One disastrous stroke is enough to destroy a golfer's confidence or dash tournament hopes entirely.

Here's a look at the players with best odds heading into tournament week:

Golfer	Odds
Dustin Johnson	+500
Jordan Spieth	+700
Rory McIlroy	+750
Jon Rahm	+1800
Hideki Matsuyama	+2000
Jason Day	+2000
Rickie Fowler	+2200
Justin Thomas	+2500
Phil Mickelson	+2500
Adam Scott	+2800
Henrik Stenson	+2800
Justin Rose	+2800

Odds are according to OddsShark and updated as of Friday, March 31.

Johnson will enter the Masters tournament with victories in his past three tournaments and a third-place finish in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February. He finished tied for fourth in last year's Masters, so all eyes will be on him as he tries to continue his imperious run of golf. 

World No. 6 Jordan Spieth has the next-best odds. The 23-year-old Texan has four top-10 finishes this year, including a win at Pebble Beach. Spieth will not only be looking to don the second green jacket of his sterling young career, after winning the Masters in 2015, but erasing the painful memories of last year's collapse.

Eric Gay/Associated Press

In 2016, Spieth held a seemingly secure lead going into the final nine holes, but a quadruple bogey on the 12th hole in the midst of a string of poor shots led to Englishman Danny Willett claiming victory. 

All told, he still finished tied for second, but the sting of letting a major tournament slip away will likely motivate him this year. 

For casual golf fans, Jon Rahm's name might be rather unfamiliar. The 22-year-old Spaniard will be playing in his first Masters, but the Guardian's Scott Murray noted he has already shown he doesn't wilt in big-pressure moments: 

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Fuzzy Zoeller remains the only debutant to win, the beneficiary of Ed Sneed's famous collapse over the last three holes in 1979. (Horton Smith and Gene Sarazen won on debut too, in 1934 and 1935, but those were the first two tournaments, a fact that slightly undercuts the feat.) History is against Rahm, then. But form isn't: he tied for third at the WGC-Mexico and pushed Dustin Johnson all the way in the Match Play final. Finding the green with a drive over water in that match, when four down with six to play, proved he can step up on the big occasion.

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Rickie Fowler has yet to finish atop the final leaderboard at any of the four majors and hasn't fared well at them recently. However, the 28-year-old is heading into the Masters with a confidence-boosting performance at the Shell Houston Open, where he finished tied for third at 16-under. PGA Tour showed one of his more precise strokes early in that tournament:

World No. 2 Rory McIlroy is a threat to snatch any tournament he takes part in. He recently spoke about the difficulties of keeping a mental edge heading into a big contest.

"You're always trying to figure out the best way to peak for tournaments," McIlroy said, per CBSSports.com's Kyle Porter. "It's a very inexact science. Certain things I've worked on in the past, and sometimes you try to...replicate those and they don’t work, and you mix it up and you do something else."

World No. 3 Jason Day has had an uneven start to the calendar year, with just one top-5 finish amid several unassuming or poor outings.

The golfers with the top odds or best pedigrees aren't necessarily the only ones in contention. Perhaps Willett could be ripe for a repeat. A steady veteran like Sergio Garcia or Bubba Watson might finally have his day. It's all there for the taking for the top contenders like Spieth or Johnson, but as both golfers know all too well, it takes strong play from start to finish to come out on top