Over the past 10 Masters, I have created a filtering process to help determine the players who are most likely to win the green jacket based on criteria that have strongly predictive outcomes at Augusta. I usually get the list down to roughly 20-24 players.

In that time I have correctly shortlisted every champion. In last year’s Masters, right of the 11 players that finished in the top-10 were shortlisted. The closest a non-shortlisted player came to winning was Corey Conners’ T6 finish; seven strokes from the winner Scottie Scheffler.

If you’re watching at home, the “critical holes” that will likely determine the top finishers will be holes No. 8, 11, 13, and 15. With the 13th hole being lengthened this year I do not expect the hole to lose any mathematical importance for the top finishers.

Moving on to the tournament, I will address the elephant in the room with the LIV Tour players. The LIV Tour does not have ShotLink data, so many of the measures we can use to filter out players do not apply. Therefore I have to perform guesswork based on their most recent performances on the PGA Tour as well as how well the player has played on the LIV Tour. I won’t go over each player, but here are the LIV Tour players I have filtered out.

• Abraham Ancer
• Bryson DeChambeau
• Sergio Garcia
• Talor Gooch
• Jason Kokrak
• Phil Mickelson
• Kevin Na
• Joaquin Niemann
• Louis Oosthuizen
• Thomas Pieters
• Patrick Reed
• Charl Schwartzel
• Harold Varner III
• Bubba Watson

Next, I filtered out the amateurs and all first-time professional attendees. The Masters has only been won three times by a first-time attendee: Fuzzy Zoeller was the last to win in 1979. Prior to Zoeller though, it was Horton Smith in the inaugural event in 1934 followed by Gene Sarazen in 1935.

• Sam Bennett (a)
• Ben Carr (a)
• Harrison Crowe (a)
• Mateo Fernandez de Oliveria (a)
• Ryan Fox
• Kazuki Higa (a)
• Tom Kim
• Kurt Kitayama
• Matthew McClean (a)
• Adrian Meronk
• Taylor Moore
• Mito Pereira
• Aldrich Potgieter (a)
• Gordon Sargent (a)
• Adam Svensson
• Sahith Theegala

Out of the first time invitees the data projects Kurt Kitayama as the favorite to finish best.

I also filter out old Masters champions that I do not believe can get into contention anymore.

• Fred Couples
• Bernhard Langer
• Sandy Lyle
• Larry Mize
• Jose Maria Olazabal
• Vijay Singh
• Mike Weir

Recency has a strong predictive value for player performance and missing the cut in the event in the prior week greatly reduces the likelihood of winning the following week compared to players that miss the cut, take a week off, and then play the following week. Therefore I filter out any player(s) that missed the cut at the Valero Texas Open last week.

• Tyrrell Hatton

And let’s filter out those players that have never made the cut at the Masters as outside of Zoeller, Horton Smith and Sarazen mentioned previously.

• Sam Burns
• K.H. Lee
• J.T. Poston
• Cameron Young

A Tradition Unlike Any Other…

Every year I do my Masters picks, it’s always pointed out that I do not pick former Masters Champion Zach Johnson due to his lack of length off the tee. Augusta National greatly favors long-ball hitters. They can play the par 5s more like par 4s, and typically the longer hitters can also hit the ball higher so they can get their long approach shots to hold the green more easily.

When Johnson won the Masters in 2007, the event featured record-low temperatures in the mid-40s and wind gusts of 33 mph. This made it very hard for any player to reach the par 5s in two shots and allowed Johnson to get into a wedge contest on the par 5s, his strength.

The weather report this week is calling for rain on Friday with rain and cooler temperatures on the weekend. While it depends on the course, typically softer conditions favor longer hitters. However, that’s on your standard golf courses with rough and fairways roughly 30 yards wide. On those courses the longer hitters start to hit more fairways and that reduces the standard deviation of hit fairway percentage between the field. Augusta National has very little rough. That means the standard deviation of hit fairway percentage is already low and it still favors the longer hitter because they are leaving themselves with shorter approach shots from the same type of lie.

The key hole will likely be the par-5 13th. It was has been a critical hole on the course every year that I have posted this column. Now it has lengthened by 37 yards. If the weather conditions prevent the hole from being reachable in two shots, that will favor the shorter and more accurate ballstrikers that are adept from 75-125 yard like Zach Johnson back in 2007.

Having said all of that, I will stick with the filters I have used due to the the weather forecast not calling for a lot of wind and at this point it’s impossible to predict how the par-5 13th hole will play.

So I will rule out the golfers that are hitting the ball too short to win.

• Russell Henley
• Tom Hoge
• Billy Horschel
• Zach Johnson
• Chris Kirk
• Kevin Kisner
• Francesco Molinari
• Collin Morikawa
• Sepp Straka

Out of this group, the data likes Tom Hoge the best. He currently ranks 4th in Red Zone (175-225 yards) play and 31st form the Green Zone (75-125 yards) and is one of the best 3-wood performers on Tour. Morikawa isn’t quite as sharp as he has been the in the past as he ranks 43rd from the Red Zone and 88th from Green Zone. But if he regains his old form these weather conditions may play nicely in his favor.

Last year I created a new formula to better determine ball height. As I’ve written in each Masters picks post, low ball hitters tend to not fare well at Augusta. Last year I had nine players filtered out for low trajectory and the best finisher was Corey Conners at T6. Danny Willett also finished T12, but the other seven low ball filtered players didn’t do much.

• Brian Harman
• Max Homa
• Seamus Power
• Alex Noren
• Si Woo Kim

The big shocker is Homa, the fifth ranked player in the world. Typically has has been a high ball hitter, but this season he has dramatically lowered his ball flight. The weather conditions may help particularly if the greens soften and hold better.. Currently he ranks sixth in Red Zone play and first in Green Zone play, so I am not exactly confident in filtering him from winning.

Last season I had 14 players filtered out for poor Red Zone play. 8 of the 14 players either missed the cut or withdrew from the tournament. Rory McIlroy finished 2nd, but needed a final round 64 to do so. Other than that, Charl Schwartzel finished t-10th and the rest either missed the cut or didn’t do much of anything.

So, let’s filter out those players.

• Cameron Champ
• Harris English
• Tommy Fleetwood
• Mackenzie Hughes
• Min-Woo Lee
• Hideki Matsuyama
• Adam Scott
• Jordan Spieth
• Danny Willett

That leaves 23 players that can win the Masters:

• Keegan Bradley (150/1)
• Patrick Cantlay (20/1)
• Corey Conners (40/1)
• Jason Day (25/1)
• Tony Finau (25/1)
• Matthew Fitzpatrick (50/1)
• Viktor Hovland (40/1)
• Sungjae Im (40/1)
• Dustin Johnson (25/1)
• Brooks Koepka (33/1)
• Shane Lowry (66/1)
• Rory McIlroy (7/1)
• Keith Mitchell (125/1)
• Jon Rahm (10/1)
• Justin Rose (66/1)
• Xander Schauffele (25/1)
• Scottie Scheffler (7/1)
• Cameron Smith (25/1)
• Scott Stallings (500/1)
• Justin Thomas (22/1)
• Gary Woodland (250/1)
• Tiger Woods (80/1)
• Will Zalatoris (33/1)

My top-10 picks are as follows:

• Rory McIlroy (7/1)
• Scottie Scheffler (7/1)
• Jon Rahm (10/1)
• Tony Finau (25/1)
• Dustin Johnson (25/1)
• Brooks Koepka (33/1)
• Corey Conners (40/1)
• Shane Lowry (66/1)
• Keith Mitchell (125/1)
• Keegan Bradley (150/1)