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McIlroy's Moment?

Rory McIlroy is set to tee it up in his 17th Masters this week. His career at Augusta has been solid—four top 5s with his best finish being a (backdoor) runner-up in 2022—but also disappointing for a player of his calibre. The closest he came to winning was in 2011 when he made the turn on Sunday with the lead before collapsing to a T15 finish.

Ever since that fateful snap hook off of the 10th tee in 2011, Rory's relationship with the Masters has been filled with angst—and that feeling only seems to grow with every year he leaves Augusta without a Green Jacket. But there is reason to be hopeful, as Rory is coming into the 2025 Masters in some of the best form of his career:

McIlroy arrives at Augusta this year with a very high DG skill estimate (+2.25) and a healthy year-to-date DG Points total (43.2). In short, this means that Rory is both playing consistently well and closing out tournaments—a pretty good combination. McIlroy has only entered two other Masters with comparable numbers in both metrics: 2012 and 2019.

In terms of win probability, which can differ quite a lot from our simple rankings, McIlroy’s 2025 value of 8.7% is the 4th-highest of his Masters career. His best chance to win came in 2017, which was the year a heavily-favored Dustin Johnson withdrew late after falling down a flight of stairs. In 2012, despite being #1 in our rankings, Rory’s win probability wasn’t that high in part because he didn’t have much experience at Augusta (he also had to contend with a resurgent Tiger).

Including this year, Rory’s pre-tournament win probabilities sum to 1.1, which means we can officially say he’s due for a Green Jacket.

13 at Augusta

The thirteenth hole at Augusta National is widely regarded as one of the best in the world. And while it has undergone changes over the years to adapt to the changing technology of the sport—including two new tee boxes and many new trees—it has continued to challenge the game’s best players. Here is the scoring average on the 13th hole from 1983-2024:

In the '80s, the 13th was a stern test as far as par 5s go, playing to an average of about 4.9 strokes. Scores steadily declined through the 90s to a low of 4.6 in 1999, until a 25-yard lengthening of the hole in 2002 restored some of its challenge. This pattern has repeated itself over the last 20 years, with a new scoring low of 4.5 reached in 2019, and 35 yards added in 2023 to combat it.

As the next section will highlight, what makes the 13th hole great is the wide range of outcomes that are possible on each shot. The next plot shows how the full scoring distribution has evolved over time:

The main effect of the two hole lengthenings has been to trade birdies for pars. However, post-2002 there was also a reduction in the eagle rate while the double rate remained steady, and a similar pattern has played out over the last two years (albeit with a limited sample size).

To further explore the effects of the new tee box added in 2023, the plots below show shot-level outcomes using data since 2021:

Yearly data is noisy, as lots of variables impact how a hole plays in any given round, however the story told here is fairly clear. Tee shots are going further, but not far enough to offset the 35-yard increase, which results in fewer players going for the green and (maybe?) fewer penalty strokes. Interestingly, the GIR rate has held steady.

Top Shots

What are the most “important”—i.e. consequential, influential—shots at Augusta National? A few specific shots come to mind: Phil’s approach from the pine straw on 13 in 2010, Tiger’s tee shot to kick-in range on 16 in 2019, Fred Couples’ ball hanging up on 12 in 1992. Each of these shots played a crucial role in the path to a Green Jacket. In this section, we take a look at all shots hit from specific locations—the tee shot on 11, the 2nd shot on 15—to determine which shots separate players the most.

For our metric of shot importance we use the standard deviation in strokes-gained from each location. If everyone hits the ball to a similar spot on the green or fairway, SG values will be bunched, and the standard deviation low. Conversely, if some shots end up in hazards while others end up close to the pin, the standard deviation will be high. Higher standard deviation means more influential on the outcome of the tournament, and hence more important.

By this metric, here are the most important shots (short game excluded) at Augusta National since 2021:

1. Going for it on 13 (217 yards from the pin, on average): This shot has the highest penalty rate of any location at Augusta at 16%. Despite playing significantly harder than the typical PGA Tour shot from this distance, great shots (gaining 0.5 strokes against the tour’s baseline function) occur at a similar rate.
2. Tee shot on 12 (152 yards): This is the hardest shot at Augusta National relative to expectations based on distance and lie. Tour players hit the green from 150 yards about 75% of the time with an average proximity of 25 feet; at the 12th, those numbers are 47% and 30 feet. Almost 6% of tee shots result in a penalty stroke, the 4th highest of any location.
3. 3rd shot after laying up on 15 (89 yards): This is the 2nd-hardest shot at Augusta relative to expectations: players hit the green just 66% of the time, a similar rate to 185-yard shots from the fairway at a typical tour venue.
4. Tee shot on 16 (168 yards): Great shots occur at 16 at almost twice the rate we would expect (13% vs 7%), despite the overall difficulty of this tee shot being in line with expectations. It also has a non-negligible penalty rate of 2.4%.
5. Going for it on 15 (231 yards): Like the 13th hole, going for it on 15 has a very high penalty rate at 12%. However, unlike 13, great shots are hit at just over half the rate you would expect from this distance.

The shots ranked 6-10 in importance were: 2nd on 11, 2nd on 10, 3rd on 13, second on 7 (hello front 9!), and the tee shot on 13. Given that the 13th hole has 3 shots in the top 10, it’s no surprise that we’ve found it to be the most influential hole at Augusta National. The next two most important non-par-3 tee shots were hole 2 (12th overall) and hole 18 (16th), while other top shots on the front nine were the 3rd at 8 (11th) and the 2nd at 9 (14th).

Bomb-O-Meter

We added an "insights" section to the live tournament stats page last week. This provides a clearer picture of how the course is playing compared to eyeballing correlations and trends from the raw data table.

Our favourite feature is the Bomb-O-Meter, which indicates the degree to which the course is favouring bombers (or straight-ballers):

Should be fun to follow early on Thursday this week!