who will win the masters

While there are four golf tournaments that are viewed as a cut above the rest (the majors), The Masters is the most prestigious of the four. Part of that is because of the tradition. Each year, it’s the first major of the PGA Tour season, it’s always played at the same golf course (Augusta National Golf Club) and the golfer that wins is suited with a green jacket. The big question before the tournament is: Who will win the Masters? We’re here to help give you an edge to betting on the Masters and helping you make smart Masters betting choices.

Let’s take a closer look at this year’s tournament, including how to bet it.

Understanding The Masters Betting Odds

If you’re a sports betting veteran, you can skip ahead but if you’ve never bet on golf before, this will help you understand the odds. When you see a tournament on the board, you’re going to see a list of players with odds next to their names. Let’s use the follow four as an example.

Odds To Win The Masters

Tiger Woods +500

Jordan Spieth +800

Dustin Johnson +1200

Justin Rose +1800

What you’ll want to notice here is two things: that there the odds and the sign in front of them. The plus sign denotes the amount of money you’d win if you bet $100 on that golfer and they won. For example, with Tiger Woods, a $100 bet would net you $500 or with Dustin Johnson, a $100 bet would net you $1200. Of course, you don’t have to bet in $100 amounts but that gives you an idea of how it works.

Sometimes you might see a negative sign in front of the odds. For example, in a head-to-head matchup

Tiger Woods -200

Justin Rose +150

In this case, what you’re looking at is which golfer will finish with the better score. Since we already know what the plus sign indicates, the main difference here that we want to highlight is the minus sign. What that means is that if you bet $200 on Woods, you’d win $100. Clearly, you can see the payout is much smaller in this case.

Typically, the smaller the number (as we go further into negatives), the bigger the favorite and the smaller the payout since they are expected to win. The opposite is true as the numbers grow larger into the positives.

Handicapping Who Will Win The Masters

One of the benefits of betting on The Masters versus any other golf event is that the course is the each and every year. Since it’s held at Augusta every year, you get the benefit of using course history to your advantage. For example, certain players may consistently struggle on this course or certain players may excel. Depending on how the course plays, someone who drives the ball well or someone who is accurate with irons could thrive.

The course has been lengthened in recent years, so now driving distance is even more important. At any rate, the key is that since you know the course and how it plays, you can look back and use those previous trends to your advantage. Every other major is played at a different course each year.

Betting The Masters Futures

One of the most popular ways to bet on golf is to bet the futures. What that means is you’re betting on an event that’s down the road. Most sports bets are day-to-day like betting on who will win a baseball game. That outcome will be decided that same day. Futures focuses on things further down the line.

Right now, you can bet on who will win The Masters in 2019. Just as there is with anything, there are pros and cons to this. On one hand, you’ll usually earn a bigger payout by betting futures. If you’re a shrewd bettor who studies the sport well, you could find some value. For example, let’s say you bet Dustin Johnson at +1400 now but he finishes 2018 on a hot streak and starts well in 2019. He might actually only be priced at +800 when the tournament rolls around but you’ve got your price locked in. On the flip side, betting futures usually locks in your money for a while. And, as any bettor knows, a lot can change from now until the event actually tees off.

Here are the 2019 odds to win the Masters:

Jordan Spieth +1000

Tiger Woods +1200

Rory McIlroy +1300

Dustin Johnson +1400

Justin Thomas +1500

Brooks Koepka +1600

Jon Rahm +1800

Rickie Fowler +2000

Justin Rose +2000

Jason Day +2000

Patrick Reed +3000

Bubba Watson +3000

Francisco Molinari +3000

Hideki Matsuyama +3500

Phil Mickelson +3500

Paul Casey +3500

Tommy Fleetwood +4000

Henrik Stenson +4000

Adam Scott +4000

Sergio Garcia +5000

Marc Leishman +5000

Thomas Pieters +5000

Tony Finau +5000

Matt Kuchar +6600

Louis Oosthuizen +6600

Bryson DeChambeau +6600

Patrick Cantlay +6600

Xander Schauffele +6600

Field (Any other player) +600

Betting The Masters Props

While the futures focus on who is going to win The Masters outright, there are other bets that give you a bigger window of opportunity. After all, picking the outright winner can be a challenging task. But some props give you a bigger chance to win. Think of it like roulette: if you pick the right number, you get a big payday. But if you bet on odds or even, or red or black, you increase your chance of winning while earning a smaller payout.

The golf version of that would be betting on props like Top 5, Top 10 or making the cut. What that means is you can bet on a golfer to finish in the Top 5, the Top 10 or to make the cut. For example, Tiger Woods didn’t win a Major in 2018 and if you bet him to win in all four, you would have lost every time. However, had you bet him to place in the Top 10, you would have won twice as he placed second in the PGA Championship and sixth at The Open.

Making the cut gives you an even bigger margin for error but your payout decreases accordingly.

Betting The Masters Matchups

Another excellent way to bet on The Masters without having to pick the outright winner is betting the matchups. The oddsmakers will post lines on head-to-head matchups between the golfers and you can pick which of the two you think will finish higher up the leaderboard (with the lower score). Your golfer doesn’t have to win the event outright; as long as he finishes with a better score than the player he’s facing in the matchup, that’s all that matters.