Tiger Roll might’ve called it a day after Cheltenham, and Subway might’ve called time on their Tiger Bread option, but this week, there’s only one Tiger in the headlines.
The 15-time major winner, 11-time PGA Player of the Year, youngest ever winner of the Grand Slam and the only person to do so within a single year, Tiger Woods, will play in The Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, competing to win his sixth Green Jacket.
Woods is currently 50/1 to win The Masters outright, alongside the likes of Paul Casey and Tony Finau. It would perhaps be a little bit unrealistic to expect Tiger to come back from a serious injury due to a car accident in 2021. It would be foolish to expect similar heroics to the 2008 U.S Open where he defeated all of his competition with a broken leg.
Looking back to last year’s winner, Hideki Matsuyama is 40/1 to win The Masters outright. If he was to be successful again, he would be the first back-to-back winner since Woods in 2001 and 2002. With success already this season at the Sony Open in Hawaii, Matsuyama could be a smart pick yet again in Georgia.
The favourites include the usual suspects, with US Open champion Jon Rahm, 2021 The Players Champion Justin Thomas and current world number one, Scottie Scheffler all in the running. Rahm, who often hangs around the higher end of the table is 11/1 while Thomas and Scheffler are 12/1 and 14/1 respectively, and will be hoping to turn their good form into a green jacket by Sunday evening.
Other than the standard outright betting choices, there are also specials available. You can back whether there will be a Hole In One at Augusta National, with the odds being 4/7 for a Hole In One to be made at some point this week. A wire-to-wire winner, where the winner tops the leaderboard every round from Thursday to Sunday, like Jordan Spieth in 2015, is 12/1.
The European favourites are Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland, who are available in the Top Regions market, where you can back the best golfer from either mainland Europe or Great Britain and Ireland, with a place for the top three.
The Masters is famous for letting amateur golfers tear up the course as much as the professionals they’re playing with, often with impressive results. Ryan Moore managed to finish T13 in 2005 in the same year that he won the NCAA Championship, while modern stars like Bryson DeChambeau and future champion Hideki Matsuyama, finished 21st and 27th respectively in their Augusta debuts.
This year’s class of amateurs sees a first player from the Cayman Islands enter, as Aaron Jarvis qualifies thanks to his one-stroke victory in the 2022 Latin America Amateur Championship. He’s 28/1 to finish in the top 20, whereas Laird Shepherd, the English amateur whose twin is a successful Flat jockey, is 25/1 to make it into the top 20.
The smart money from the amateur category might be on Keita Nakajima. He’s the Japanese number one amateur golfer in the world, who impressively won the Panasonic Open on the Japan Golf Tour whilst still in his amateur status. You can get 9/1 to finish in the top 20.
*18+, terms and conditions apply, odds subject to change.
