The Masters: Trend Table

We are finally at Augusta.

If you close your eyes and let yourself drift away, you can hear the crunch of the Georgia pine straw underneath your feet as the wafting and intoxicating scent of pimento cheese and spring azaleas fill your nostrils and overpower your senses.

The CBS theme plays gently in the background.

Augusta National is back. The Masters is here.

Unfortunately they don’t hand out green jackets for gambling or DFS, which is why the lot of us are here. Alas…

However, with the (hopeful) amount of money we’ll be winning, we can buy however many jackets in every single color! It’s fun to have dreams.

I’m just thankful Greyson Sigg isn’t in the field, but somehow Luke List made it, and frankly, I’m offended.

But that’s neither here nor there. We have trends to identify.

For the sake of full transparency, we simply don’t have data on some of the LIV guys - they’ll be a blind spot, at the very least, in the trend table. I wish that wasn’t the case, but here we are. I plan to do the best I can to address it within the player pool when that comes out, but we’ll need to take it with a container of salt and try to add as much context as we can.

One slight change to this weeks trend table as opposed to the tables you’re used to seeing, is I’ve included the Strokes Gained: Tee To Green (T2G) column next to the total trend. After diving in last night, it’s abundantly clear that it’s a pretty vital metric at Augusta, flawed as Strokes Gained may be, it can at least try and paint a helpful picture for us.

Without further ado, let’s see who’s trending:

Not overly shocking to see Rahm near the top as he hasn’t played in a counting stats tournament in a little while - but leave no doubt - he’s up there with Scottie in terms of talent and ceiling. The reigning Masters Champion will still garner plenty of attention this week, rightfully so.

Last years majors proved, if anything, that the narrative surrounding the LIV guys compete was vastly overplayed, and they’re very much playable and threats to compete at a high level in these tournaments.

I’ll be really interested to see where the clicks come in on Shane Lowry. He has strong course history here, making the cut each of the last four years, placing no lower than T-25 and has a T-3 in 2022 to boot. He missed a cut in his first event of the season, but has since been involved in every tournament he’s played in, including two top 5’s and a top 20 on the PGA Tour and logging a 29th in Singapore on the World Tour two weeks ago. This is purely my guess on Tuesday pre 8 AM Eastern, but with guys like Homa, Bryson, Burns, Fitzpatrick, Harman & Theegala all within $300 each way of Lowry’s price range, the Irishman may go overlooked. Over his last 16 rounds, he is 2nd in approach, 3rd in ball striking and 4th in tee to gI’d reen (relative to the field) and has won a major championship before. Let’s see where the clicks come in.

Austin Eckroat is $6,300, $100 more than Denny McCarthy (who I expect to be immensely popular, especially after last Sunday) and Eckroat has already won this year, is 4th in approach & 5th in ball striking his last 16 rounds (again, relative to the field) and 13th in T2G. His 9th in the trend table when sorting by gains in T2G. His putter is a slight concern.

Hideki has been lights out here, including a win, and finished very impressively at Valero after having a ho-hum Thursday-Friday.

I’d at least be somewhat cautious on Lee Hodges. I was on him last week at Valero and he completely bombed out. Played terribly. He’s never played Augusta (along with a handful of other names, such as Eckroat, Wyndham Clark, Ludvig, Akshay, Denny McCarthy) so I think that will have a factor for some of these guys, if not all of them.

Rory & Scottie are Rory & Scottie — no need to over think it. Rory was lights out at Valero and, frankly, has been the Rory of old this year — perhaps without the weight of being the mouth piece for the Tour — and my sincerest hope is that he comes in well below Scottie & Rahm of the top three, in which case he becomes a massive value. He desperately wants a green jacket to complete the career grand slam & to avenge a MC last year.

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I’m guessing Fitzpatrick will pick up a lot of steam at his price. He’s solid here - not overwhelming - but in a much better spot than what he was to begin the season.

Sungjae has been… average… at best this year. He’s taken the past two weeks off. Let’s see if he found something with his game in that period.

Sahith is probably going to be mega chalk at his price. Kind of makes sense, finished 9th here last year in his first trip to Augusta. He’s been really good this year and his trend isn’t bad, just staying steady. I don’t really have an argument against him.

Nothing really stands out too crazy here for me, other than I’d be cautious on Homa, Spieth, Finau and probably on Fleetwood, although Tommy was solid last week at Valero.

Interesting to see Min Woo & Eric Cole this far down the list, as well.

Tom Kim seems completely broken right now. Two straight missed cuts, doesn’t have a finish higher than 17th and that was two months ago at Waste(d) Management. The numbers reflect that.

It’s absurd seeing the likes of Cantlay, Thomas, Morikawa & Hovland at the bottom of this list and surrounded by red.

Cantlay: 11th at AT&T and 4th at Genesis, but those were sandwiched by a 52nd at Amex/56th at Farmers and a 36th at API and 68th at Players.

Thomas: Started the season strong, going placing a 3rd, 6th and 12th in his first three events, but MC’ing at the Players, 64th at Valspar and just breaking ties with his long time caddy.

Morikawa: Close to DFL last week at Valero, two missed cuts this year (including at a signature event in which he shot 80! on Friday where it’s hard to miss cut) and only two top 20’s since starting his season with a 5th at Sentry.

Hovland: Hasn’t missed a cut, but hasn’t finished higher than T-19 in five events this year. Has three finishes 36th or worse out of his five season events.

For JT Poston, he may get a little chalky or more attention than he should given his price tag - but I’d proceed with extreme caution based on trend and recent performance.

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As always, more to come this week.