AUGUSTA, Ga. – The 83rd Masters features a field with almost as many potential champions.
From 48-year-old Phil Mickelson to 25-year-old Justin Thomas, the only theme to the potential list of would-be champions is that there is no theme. When club officials pre-position various sizes of green jackets on Sunday in Butler Cabin the historic enclave could resemble a haberdashery, with potential options ranging from Thomas (38 regular) to Mickelson (43 long).
It comes with the territory for the year’s first major, which is almost always equal parts anticipation and anxiety.
“The last time we played a major was what, seven, eight months ago, so there’s a lot of anticipation for seven, eight months, just to play another one,” said Brooks Koepka, who finds himself positioned squarely among the favorites. “I love getting on that first tee and letting it fly. It’s more excitement now.”
Excitement is never really an issue at the Masters, that comes with decades of historic examples and, as Koepka points out, the correlation between absence and a fond heart. What makes the 83rd edition a truly delightful potpourri of potential outcomes is the extended cast of would-be champions.
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Make a case for a single player to be the undisputed favorite, any player will do, and more times than not the only argument against that player winning is how easily a claim can be made for another player to assume the pole position.
Rory McIlroy is the betting favorite and for good reason. The Northern Irishman hasn’t finished outside the top 10 on the PGA Tour this season, won The Players with the type of steely fortitude we expect from our major champions, and brings a mental toughness that brilliantly rides the fine line between indifference and intensity.
“It’s just focusing on the small things and not living and dying by results, and not getting caught up in trying to play perfect golf,” McIlroy said. “Maybe a little more acceptance, and a little bit of change in attitude, which I think has been one of the biggest keys to how I’ve played for the first few months of the year.”
That should serve McIlroy, who has finished in the top 10 in half (five) his starts at the Masters, well at Augusta National where the only thing that stands between the 29-year-old and the career Grand Slam is a green jacket.
But if McIlroy has the game to win the Masters – and he does – Dustin Johnson, who is listed just behind McIlroy as this week’s betting favorite, has proven he has just as much firepower.
Johnson has also won this year, at the WGC-Mexico Championship where he lapped the field, and – with the exception of 2017 when his title hopes tumbled, literally, down a flight of stairs at his rental house on the eve of the Masters – he hasn’t been out of contention on Sunday since 2014.
While McIlroy and Johnson bring power, which will certainly be a big part of this week’s winning formula with an already wet course and an unfavorable forecast, Justin Rose, the runner-up two years ago to Sergio Garcia, brings an elevated level of precision and patience that has been the hallmark of Masters champions.
The same could be said of Thomas, Francesco Molinari and last year’s runner-up Rickie Fowler. Stop me when you’ve heard enough. What truly makes this year’s Masters such a toss-up are those players who may not check all of the boxes for a favorite but bring a resume of reasons why they could win that is impossible to ignore.
Atop that list would be Tiger Woods. Although the four-time Masters champions is nearly a decade-and-a-half removed from his last Sunday celebration at Augusta National, and he hasn’t exactly looked Masters ready on the greens this season, there is an air of invincibility around Tiger that hasn’t lost its luster.
More than any other event, the Masters brings out the best in Woods and let’s his inner-golf-nerd free to study the nuanced genius of Augusta National.
“I just wanted to do a quick scouting trip and get a feel for how this golf course is going to be playing, especially see No. 5, see the changes to the green – well, the entire hole – and see what they did to 18, as well,” Woods said of his scouting trip to Augusta National last week.
The same could be said for Mickelson, who annually emerges as a different player at Augusta National. The place taps into whatever part of Lefty’s brain that makes him the game’s most entertaining enigma and he also has shown the ability to peak, with two Tour victories the last two seasons.
“This is a place that you drive up Magnolia Lane and things just change for everyone,” Mickelson said. “You just have that special feeling, that special remembrance of when you were a kid and dreaming of coming here and playing, and it oftentimes brings out the best in everyone.”
Perhaps the most difficult player to tag into this group is Jordan Spieth, who like Woods and Mickelson has developed a relationship with Augusta National that borders on the spiritual.
Spieth’s record, however small the sample size, supports his spot among this week’s favorites, with runner-up showings in 2014 and ’16 to bookend his victory in ’15, but there’s little in his resume this season that would suggest he’s poised to break free of a slump that has now extended nearly nine months since his last top-10 finish on Tour.
If Spieth, however, is lost, as some have suggested, Augusta National would be the one place where he could reconnect with his game.
“I don’t think I need results to prove anything,” Spieth said. “I know where my game is at and I know that good things are coming soon.”
What is certain is that good things await this week, the only question is who among the crowded field of potential winners will write that script.