One of These Golfers Will Win The Masters

Masters week is finally here. Golf fans everywhere are quietly holding their breath as the long-awaited stroll down Magnolia Lane quickly approaches. With only one day left before the start of the tournament, everyone is looking to answer the same question: “Who is going to win the Masters?” Whether you are looking for a leg up in your office pool or bragging rights between friends, our prediction hopes to answer your questions.

Since 1934, The Masters Tournament has been one of the most prestigious competitions in all of golf. It has long been said that earning the green jacket at Augusta National is far and away the most coveted honor in the sport. From the history of the famed course to the accolades that come with becoming a champion, winning at Augusta cannot be overstated.

So…Who will be the lucky winner of the most glorious award in all of golf? This year, we believe we have the answer.

Analysis

There is no shortage of statistics when it comes to the sport of golf. Whether you are looking at driving distance, greens in regulation, putting performance, or strokes gained, it is very easy to get bogged down in the infinite amount of data that is available. The hardest part is figuring out which of these factors really matter. To determine this, we have to look at what makes up a champion at Augusta.

Methodology

We are interested in predicting who has the highest likelihood of finishing first in the upcoming Masters tournament. We gathered player level PGA Tour data for every year from 2010 through 2020 from pgatour.com, and gathered Masters tournament results data for every year from 2011 through 2019 from masters.com.

Next, we specify a model that predicts each player’s finishing position in a Masters tournament using their prior year PGA Tour averages in various statistical categories. We apply a lasso regression method to predict each player’s finish, training our model on the 2011 through 2019 Masters results (using 2010 through 2018 PGA Tour data) and then employing our model to predict the 2020 Masters winner using 2020 PGA Tour data [1]. We hypothesize that, due to the inherent unpredictability of a golf tournament, the predictive power of any one specific statistical category should be limited. Lasso regression imposes constraints on both important and non-important variables in the training set, even forcing the predictive power of the most redundant variables to zero.

After testing our model on the 2011-2019 Masters results, we found that the most relevant factors in predicting Masters performance are Strokes Gained (putting and tee to green), Scoring Average, and Bounce Back %. The most nonrelevant variables were PGA Tour Rank, Putting Average, and Rough Tendency.

Strokes Gained Putting: Player performance putting. It compares how many putts a player took to the expected number of strokes to hole out based on the initial distance to the pin.

Strokes Gained tee to green: Number of strokes better or worse an individual player was than the field on average per round.

Scoring Average: Total stokes per player, per round, on average.

Bounce Back %: Player’s ability to follow a bad hole (over par) with a good hole (under par).

Top 10

We believe one of these golfers is going to win The Masters.

Projected Finish	Golfer	Odds (via Oddshark)
1	Justin Thomas	+1100
2	Bryson DeChambeau	+800
3	Webb Simpson	+3300
4	Jon Rahm	+1000
5	Patrick Reed	+2800
6	Dustin Johnson	+900
7	Xander Schauffele	+1400
8	Patrick Cantlay	+2500
9	Sungjae Im	+5000
10	Rory McIlroy	+1200

Sleepers

Everyone loves to get behind an underdog. Based on performance data, we believe these three sleepers have a good chance of scoring low at The Masters.

Scottie Scheffler (+5000): After an incredible showing at the PGA Championship earlier this season (T4), this young golfer’s poise and natural ability should propel him to a nice finish during his first Masters appearance.

Sungjae Im (+5000): Another young gun looking to make a name for himself, Sungjae shows a lot of promise coming into his first Masters tournament. After a big victory at the Honda Classic earlier this season and a top 25 finish at the US Open, he has a great chance at shooting some low scores at Augusta. If he can keep it together over the first two days, expect Sungjae to make a run at the jacket headed into the weekend.

Cameron Smith (+8000): Perhaps the biggest sleeper in the group but not one to take lightly, we predict Cam to come in hot after his performance at the Zozo earlier this season. If he shows up the way he did in 2018 (T5), he could make a legitimate run at the green jacket. Expect this Aussie to display some stellar ball striking and to make a great case for himself early in the tournament.

Hot Takes

Brooks Koepka finishes outside of the top 10: Koepka’s season has been rocky to say the least. Between knee (then hip) injuries plaguing him for most of the season, it is safe to say he is not walking into the tournament at 100%. The only flat areas at Augusta seem to be the tee boxes which will only cause Brooks more trouble down the stretch. His shining light came last week where he finished 5^th in Houston, but his ball striking seemed to be a bit lackluster. Brooks is an outstanding golfer who is definitely due for a Masters victory, but don’t expect his major-trophy case to gain a green jacket this weekend.

Conclusion

Picking a winner for any golf tournament – let alone The Masters – is an incredibly difficult task. Whether you are diving into an analysis or just going with your gut, its safe to say that come Sunday we will all be watching with enjoyment.

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Appendix

Full Model Results: (Note: Players without sufficient sample size of rounds played were excluded)

Projected Finish	Golfer
1	Justin Thomas
2	Bryson DeChambeau
3	Webb Simpson
4	Jon Rahm
5	Patrick Reed
6	Dustin Johnson
7	Xander Schauffele
8	Patrick Cantlay
9	Sungjae Im
10	Rory McIlroy
11	Jason Day
12	Collin Morikawa
13	Tony Finau
14	Tommy Fleetwood
15	Tyrrell Hatton
16	Cameron Smith
17	Hideki Matsuyama
18	Justin Rose
19	Shane Lowry
20	Adam Hadwin
21	Gary Woodland
22	Sergio Garcia
23	Kevin Na
24	Ian Poulter
25	Lucas Glover

Projected Finish	Golfer
26	Lanto Griffin
27	Adam Scott
28	J.T. Poston
29	Abraham Ancer
30	Phil Mickelson
31	Billy Horschel
32	Zach Johnson
33	Matt Wallace
34	Brandt Snedeker
35	Cameron Champ
36	Kevin Kisner
37	Matt Kuchar
38	Charles Howell III
39	Byeong Hun An
40	Danny Willett
41	Dylan Frittelli
42	Jordan Spieth
43	Jason Kokrak
44	Rickie Fowler
45	Matthew Fitzpatrick
46	Brendon Todd
47	Matthew Wolff
48	Paul Casey
49	Bubba Watson
50	Si Woo Kim
51	Louis Oosthuizen
52	Corey Conners
53	Max Homa
54	Brooks Koepka
55	Sung Kang
56	Tyler Duncan
57	Nick Taylor
58	Marc Leishman
59	Chez Reavie
60	Nate Lashley
61	Andrew Landry
62	C.T. Pan
63	Jimmy Walker
64	Andrew Putnam
65	Graeme McDowell

[1] Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Masters tournament was delayed from April until November. This gives us a unique opportunity to use 2020 PGA Tour statistics to predict the 2020 Masters outcome.

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Authors

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