No golfer has repeated because the champion of the Masters Match, which begins on Thursday at Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership, since Tiger Woods efficiently defended his crown in 2002.
Such is the problem dealing with Spain’s Jon Rahm, who closed with a 69 final yr to safe his second main title. He additionally received the 2021 United States Open.
Rahm, who signed with LIV Golf in late 2023, will probably be one of many favorites.
Listed here are 5 different gamers to look at:
Scottie Scheffler
The robust favourite will probably be Scheffler, who’s so exact from tee to inexperienced. When he’s making putts, as he’s been doing currently, he appears unbeatable.
Ranked No. 1 on the earth, Scheffler turned in a six-under 66 within the remaining spherical to seize the Arnold Palmer Invitational final month. One week later, he shot an eight-under 64 to rally to win his second consecutive Gamers Championship, which no participant had finished because the event — thought-about the unofficial fifth main — started in 1974.
The true check of his greatness, nevertheless, will rely on how he fares within the official majors. Scheffler, 27, who tied for second in March on the Texas Youngsters’s Houston Open, has one main title, the Masters in 2022.
Brooks Koepka
Koepka, 33, made a run on the inexperienced jacket final yr earlier than faltering with a final-round 75 to tie for second, 4 strokes behind Rahm.
The following month, he took the P.G.A. Championship, his fifth main. Another and he’ll match the overall of Phil Mickelson, Lee Trevino and Nick Faldo.
Koepka stated his incapacity to shut the deal at Augusta Nationwide final yr helped pave the best way for his win on the P.G.A.
“I feel failure is the way you study,” he instructed reporters on the P.G.A. “You get higher from it. You understand what errors you’ve made.”
Phil Mickelson
It wouldn’t be a shock if three-time Masters champion Mickelson, 53, had been to overlook the lower. He missed the lower in final yr’s U.S. and British Opens and tied for 58th within the P.G.A. Championship.
It additionally wouldn’t be a shock if his title popped up on the leaderboard late Sunday afternoon.
That’s what occurred final yr when he fired a 65 to tie for second behind Rahm. In 2021, Mickelson received the P.G.A. Championship at age 50, changing into the oldest golfer to win a significant.
May there be one other week of magic in Mickelson on a course he is aware of so properly?
Hideki Matsuyama
For one factor, Matsuyama, 32, is a former Masters champion. In 2021, he grew to become the primary Japanese man to win a golf main, edging Will Zalatoris by a stroke.
For one more, he has been enjoying extraordinarily properly in current months.
In February, he recorded a 62 on Sunday to seize the Genesis Invitational by three.
In March, he tied for twelfth on the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Then, Matsuyama, who has 9 tour victories, tied for sixth within the Gamers Championship. And on Sunday, he tied for seventh within the Valero Texas Open.
Jordan Spieth
Put apart how he has carried out lately — he hadn’t cracked the highest 25 for almost two months, till tying for tenth within the Valero Texas Open — and remember that Spieth, nonetheless solely 30, usually involves life when he tees it up at Augusta Nationwide.
Final yr was no exception.
Spieth, now ranked No. 18, closed with a 66 to finish up in a tie for fourth. In 2021, he tied for third. In 10 appearances at Augusta since his Masters debut in 2014, Spieth, the winner in 2015, has notched six high 5 finishes.
“From the second I obtained right here,” the three-time main champion instructed Golf Digest in 2023. “I used to be at all times very excited, and I needed to study it and fall in love with it.”