Previewing the 2026 Masters | Data Golf Newsletter #76

Prior to last year's Masters, we highlighted Rory McIlroy's strong momentum heading into Augusta. In the lead-up, he had two wins (Pebble Beach and The Players), and averaged +2.8 adjusted strokes-gained per round across six starts.

However, McIlroy's build into April and eventual win wasn't unique—the last four Masters have been won by the player who dominated the first three months of the season:

The weakest resume of these four heading into Augusta—according to DG Points—belonged to Rory last year, and he won a Signature event and The Players! Incredibly, Scheffler went on to win the DG PoY race in all four of these seasons (helped slightly by both Rory and Rahm falling off after their Masters victories).

Let's turn our attention to this year's field and see who has been both 1) in contention frequently (accumulating DG Points), and 2) playing solid week-to-week (high adjusted SG). The table below is the result of a simple ranking system that values both 2026 DG Points and SG:

Comparing this table to the first, it’s clear that no player has matched what the previous four Masters winners accomplished prior to April. From an SG perspective, only Scheffler (+2.68) and Rahm (+2.69) are above the lowest lead-in SG mark of the winners since 2022.

So far this season, DG Points have been more evenly distributed. With Scheffler struggling since winning his first start, Rory dealing with a bad back, and Rahm toiling away on LIV, there have been more opportunities for second-tier players to accumulate points that would typically concentrate among a few elite guys. As a result, seven players surpassed 20 points, but none have reached 40+. Since 1983, only three seasons have had a DG Points leader below Bridgeman's 29.6 at the end of March (the lowest being Nick Watney's 28.7 in 2011), and the last time more than 7 players exceeded 20 points prior to April was 2004.

The top of this list is also a reminder of just how much turnover there has been in professional golf over the past three months. Of the top 10, only Scheffler, Rahm, and Fitzpatrick were ranked inside the DG Top 10 to start the year, and the top two (Bridgeman and Gotterup) are making their Masters debuts next week.

Since 2022, the story coming out of The Masters has been one of a superstar cementing their place atop the game. The 2026 Masters doesn't look like that. Instead, it's shaping up to be a battle between the established elite—Scottie, Rahm, and Rory—seeking to reassert their dominance, and a new wave of players chasing a career-defining win.

Strokes-Gained at Augusta National

With 5 years of Masters strokes-gained category data now available, it's useful to give a quick overview of what we've learned since 2021.

In terms of which categories drive overall scoring variation, we've seen that off-the-tee and approach are similar to PGA Tour averages (15% and 35%, respectively). The main difference is on and around the greens, where around-the-green has driven more of the variation in scoring compared to a typical tour stop, while putting has driven relatively less.

The higher around-the-green contribution may partly reflect the fact that players hit about one additional around-the-green shot per round at Augusta National, though they are also expected to hit roughly one extra putt. It's also possible that because where players miss greens matters more at Augusta than a typical course, some approach shots might not get punished enough by the baseline SG functions—meaning a portion of the variance labelled as around-the-green may actually belong to approach.

In terms of how difficult Augusta plays relative to other courses, it is "easy" off the tee (lots of drivers, not many penalty areas) but challenging everywhere else. This means that from any given distance, we expect players to hit it further from the pin, hit fewer greens, and make less putts. In particular, fairway around-the-green shots, putts from outside 15 feet, and approach shots from less than 150 play very difficult at Augusta National. (You can view data points like these for all PGA Tour courses here.)

Finally, here is the SG category breakdown for Masters champions since 2021:

In each of the last five years, the winner's worst category for the week was putting, while around-the-green has often been one of their best. For some context, here are the average SG breakdowns for winners of each of the majors and all non-opposite-field PGA Tour events since 2021:

Distance vs. Accuracy at Augusta

The plot below displays our estimates of the value of driving distance and driving accuracy at Augusta National for every year since 2004:

These values are based on players’ pre-tournament skills, and tell us how correlated distance or accuracy is with performance in a given week. Points higher on the plot indicate weeks where longer hitters gained more strokes than expected, while points further to the right indicate weeks where accurate players outperformed expectations.

The difference between the distance and accuracy values is what we call the “bomber advantage”, which we display on our Bomb-O-Meters. In extreme years, like 2008 or 2025, it’s obvious just from looking at the leaderboard whether distance or accuracy was more favoured: distance in 2008, accuracy in 2025.

Prior to 2021, bombers tended to overperform at The Masters while accurate players underperformed, resulting in a bomber advantage of roughly 0.2 strokes per round. This made Augusta National the 5th-most bomber-friendly venue among PGA Tour courses. Since 2021, however, accurate players have underperformed slightly less, while bombers have performed far below expectations. This has turned the bomber advantage negative, with long hitters underperforming by 0.1 strokes/round relative to accurate players.

Conveniently, we have Masters shot-level data beginning in 2021, which allows us to break down this 0.1-stroke bomber disadvantage into its SG components:

Off-the-Tee: +0.11
Approach: -0.11
Around Green: -0.01
Putting: -0.09

The putting deficit is likely noise, but that still means that bombers haven’t performed any better than accuracy-based players from tee-to-green at the last 5 Masters. That is interesting given Augusta’s reputation as a course where length is essential, and the data confirming that view from 2004-2020.

Because we don’t have shot data before 2021, we don’t have the SG-category breakdown for bombers’ 0.2-stroke advantage from 2004-2020. However, it's reasonable to assume that their OTT edge has been fairly stable. Since 2021, Augusta National has ranked as one of the best courses for bombers to realize their distance advantage off the tee (lots of drivers, wide fairways), and that was likely true in earlier years as well.

That leaves us trying to explain bombers' poor approach performance at Augusta, which is particularly surprising given that players hit fewer wedges and more long irons at The Masters, something that should favour longer hitters.

To dig deeper, we can break down bombers’ approach (dis-)advantage by hole at Augusta National. Since 2021, they've underperformed the most on holes 15, 5, 17, and 11, while performing best on 3, 13, 8, and 9. There's plenty of noise here, but the latter list makes some sense to me: 9 allows bombers to drive it into easier approach locations, while 13 and 8 feature long second shots that should reward power.

Stepping back, the key takeaway is that accuracy-based players have outperformed expectations relative to bombers at Augusta over the past five years—a meaningful shift from the historical advantage enjoyed by longer hitters. This reversal has been driven primarily by worse-than-expected approach play and putting (likely noise) from bombers. It will be interesting to see whether this trend persists at the 2026 Masters.