Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- The Masters has consistently crowned champions who excelled in ball-striking over the past decade.
- This year, only 11 golfers meet the critical strokes-gained threshold of 1.7 SG: Tee-to-Green in the three months leading up to the tournament.
- The list includes past champions and top performers at Augusta, highlighting the importance of experience and precision on the course.
The Masters is unlike any other golf tournament in so many ways. Yes, you have the traditions, you have the prestige as the first major championship on the calendar, and you even have Augusta National, arguably the most hallowed course in the game. But it's also unique in that there is one statistical trend that has proven true for almost every winner of the Green Jacket for the last decade plus.
Specifically, if you dive into strokes-gained data and specifically the ball-striking and look how it correlates to predicting the winner of The Masters, one trend sticks out. As Kyle Porter of Normal Sport pointed out, 11 of the last 13 winners at Augusta were putting up 1.7 or more SG: Tee-to-Green in the three months prior to The Masters (Patrick Reed and Hideki Matsuyama are the exceptions). With this week at the Valero Texas Open being that cutoff, that means there are only 11 players who, by this criterion, can win at Augusta this year.
The 11 golfers who can win The Masters in 2026
Here are the 11 players, both on the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, who are in The Masters field already and have gained 1.7+ strokes tee-to-green over the last three months.
- Ludvig Åberg
- Matthew Fitzpatrick
- Chris Gotterup
- Si Woo Kim
- Min Woo Lee
- Rory McIlroy
- Collin Morikawa
- Jon Rahm
- Scottie Scheffler
- Sepp Straka
- Cameron Young
There are some mild surprises in that list, to be sure. However, it's also a list that features three past Masters champions in Rory, Scheffler and Rahm, as well as major championship winners in Matthew Fitzpatrick and Collin Morikawa. Meanwhile, Åberg, Gotterup, Lee, and Young have all won on the PGA Tour since the start of 2025. All that is to say, the group of 11 players isn't totally expected, but it does make a great deal of sense, especially when you're talking about ball-striking.
But it's more than just hitting it well at Augusta (though that certainly helps as a rising tide), as The Masters has one of the strongest tournament history correlations of any tournament, especially major championships. Players who have succeeded and have garnered experience at Augusta tend to see future good results if they're in form.
Because of that, it also felt relevant to take a look at the history at The Masters for each of these 11 players with their best finish at Augusta and when that came.
Best Masters finishes for these 11 players
Player | Best Finish at The Masters |
|---|---|
Ludvig Åberg | Runner-Up (2024) |
Matthew Fitzpatrick | T7 (2016) |
Chris Gotterup | Has Not Played Before |
Si Woo Kim | T12 (2021) |
Min Woo Lee | T14 (2022) |
Rory McIlroy | Win (2025) |
Collin Morikawa | T3 (2024) |
Jon Rahm | Win (2023) |
Scottie Scheffler | Win (2022 and 2024) |
Sepp Straka | T16 (2024) |
Cameron Young | T7 (2023) |
Outside of Gotterup, who will be making his debut at The Masters for the 2026 tournament, it speaks to the strength of these 11 golfers that we're looking at three winners and then a group of seven other players who have all finished inside the Top 20 at Augusta in their careers.
That probably largely speaks to the ball-striking pedigree of this group. However, there are past Masters winners and other players who have contended who aren't hitting the ball as well as this group is coming into major season. That stands out, and ball-striking will likely determine who wears the Green Jacket once again.
Why ball-striking reigns supreme at The Masters
Even if you consider Porter's stat an arbitrary cutoff line both in terms of strokes-gained and timeframe (I don't, for what it's worth), the importance of ball-striking at The Masters is always going to be important.
Now, to be clear, there's some obviousness in diagnosing the tournament in this way. It's not exactly groundbreaking analysis to look at this list of 11 players and say, "Shocker, the guys who are hitting the ball well are going to be able to compete in a major championship". At the same time, it does give us insight into the group that is peaking in terms of ball-striking at the right time at a course in Augusta that demands exactly that.
While we always talk about the diabolical putting contest at The Masters with their lightning-fast greens and the brutal contours, the tournament is most purely a tee-to-green test. Look back at Tiger Woods' success here — his true dominance came when he so blatantly separated himself from the rest of the golf world as an overall ball-striker. The same is true of Scottie Scheffler, who's won two of the last four Green Jackets. And ball-striking is his superpower.
The hilly facade of Augusta National, combined with its length and layout makes position pivotal to success at The Masters. If you find yourself in the wrong spots, you're going to have a hard time even making a par on a given hole. That starts with the tee shot, then trickles down to the approach shot as well. Remember those green contours? If you hit them in the wrong spots, you'll be in a far worse position than if you were an inch in any given direction on that shot.
Yes, players can't come in and not make a damn thing with the putter and expect to be hosting the Champion's Dinner next year. At the same time, if they're not striking the ball well and posting high-end tee-to-green numbers, anything that happens on the greens is largely going to be superfluous in the end — or at least not enough to win the Green Jacket.