🌸 One Week In April

📢 Fore, Please…

This is the greatest week of the year, soak it in! The weather forecast (knock on wood) looks absolutely perfect. Augusta, Georgia has received only eight inches of rain this year — on pace for a historically low amount. While that might not be great for all species, the human-golf watching species are going to see a firm, fast Augusta National — they way it should be.

As with most big weeks, there’s so much to write about so buckle up!

Let’s enjoy it.
Rick

🏆 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

JJ Spaun ($8,600): 128.0 pts
Matt Wallace ($7,300): 116.5
Michael Kim ($6,900): 115.0
Robert MacIntyre ($9,900): 114.5
Kevin Yu ($6,700): 105.0
Ludvig Aberg ($10,100): 100.5
Total: $49,500: 679.5 pts

🤼 Spaun From The Top Rope

I’ll be the first to admit — no way in the world did I think JJ Spaun was winning the Texas Open last week. He entered last week losing 0.45 strokes per round which ranked him 114th on TOUR (out of 167 qualified golfers).

His putting numbers were even worse, where he tanked 159th and was losing 0.875 strokes per round to the field.

He had missed four cuts and his best finish was a T24 at THE PLAYERS Championship. But … golf is weird.

Spaun showed up and gained 6.7 strokes on approach and another 3.8 on the putting surfaces en route to his second career win at the Texas Open. What I love most is that he had two statement shots over the final three holes.

He stuffed his approach on the par-3 16th hole to just 3’10” which was worth +1.02 strokes. Then he hit his drive to 9’7” on the par-4 17th, to gain +1.08 strokes to the field.

He had two consecutive full swings that were each a full shot better than his peers. Get ‘em JJ!

👶 Young & Reckless

The Masters is filled with incredible history over the previous 89 editions of this event. But the best, youngest players to ever play are both teeing it up this week.

Experience and age are supposed to correlate but Jordan Spieth and Scottie Scheffler have broken that mold at the Masters. They’ve each had an uncanny amount of success over the first handful of starts, at a young age. Here are the best players in their first six Masters, with starts at age 29 or younger:

+69.27: Jordan Spieth
+64.40: Scottie Scheffler
+63.67: Byron Nelson
+60.42: Ken Venturi
+58.71: David Duval
+57.25: Ralph Guldahl

That’s a list that includes both Ralph Guldahl, who was born in 1911, and Scottie Scheffler, who was born in 1996. What a sport!

🤖 Long & (Mostly) Straight

The skill profile for success off-the-tee at Augusta National is pretty simple:

• Hit it far

• Don’t be too erratic

• Work it both ways

Easy for me to say!

There is rough (aka second cut) but it’s really only an intermediate cut and it’s not much of an issue at all — distance is certainly preferred over accuracy.

The real advantage comes if you can hit it ~310 yards and relatively straight. There are a few bunkers that you can fly and some of the landing zones (below) are quite wide in those areas. Remember — most TOUR pros factor for a 50 yard wide dispersion with driver. Anything around that, or wider, is not going to have them thinking twice.

The ability to work it both ways is a huge advantage with a small lean to players who can work it right to left on command. That gives a big advantage on numbers 2, 9, 10, and 13. Depending on wind speed and direction, it might also be a big benefit on 5.

So when you have someone like Cameron Young, who is the sixth longest player in this field, who hits a draw on ~60% of his shots, he becomes incredibly appealing. That doesn’t even consider the fact that he’s playing the best golf of his life right now.

🍀 Rolling Quad Deep

You’re going to hear the word “quadrants” this week in regards to the putting surfaces at Augusta National. That really just means that there are natural sections and collection areas that will either attract the ball or repel it. And the difference of being one yard on the wrong side of the quadrant could end up being a putt that is 30’ longer than anticipated or a ball that doesn’t even stay on the putting surface.

I’ve been able to calculate the Strokes Gained data back to 2019, using the shot-by-shot information.

There are some obvious names on here, but it’s worth noting that Patrick Reed is the seventh best approach player at the Masters since 2019. He’s not a known flusher and is usually reliant on his short-game to get him across the finish line.

Even more importantly — this doesn’t even include his win! The Strokes Gained calculations start the year after Reed won his green jacket.

💰 Masters Fantasy Giveaway

I guess this has been going on for a few years, but the fact that the Masters has a Fantasy Game just smacked me right in the head this year. You pick one golfer from a variety of tiers (past champ, international, etc) and then they give away prizes depending on how you finish.

One of the most narcissistic things about me is that I always want to have the RickRunGood league be the biggest league on the site. We’ve accomplished this countless times over the years for match play, PGA TOUR fantasy, etc — and I think we should do it again.

I’m spicing up the prizes and providing the following prize pack to one random entry (your finishing position doesn’t matter).

1) 2026 Masters Tournament Journal
2) 2025 Masters Hat
3) 1983 Masters Badge (Seve) graded in a PSA 9.

There are only four other graded equivalents of this badge and none higher. This is quite truly, the best conditioned 1983 badge in known existence.

You need to do two things:

• Enter Your Lineup

  • Link: https://bit.ly/4tuQ1Uy

• Tell me your entry/email address so I can contact the winner

  • Link: https://forms.gle/FKWmbQ7bjD77x1qY9

 😰 Harder As We Get Closer

Patrick Reed on chipping at Augusta National — “Chipping around here becomes very difficult. It’s not -- you’re always going to get a great lie. It’s not the lie that’s the issue. The issue is how firm and fast they get these greens with the slope, so you have to make perfect contact.”

The photos and the television coverage doesn’t do it justice. The green complexes and surrounding areas are an absolute joke. There is simply no easy shot and no guaranteed up-and-down. Every shot requires a precise amount of loft, spin, and “shot shape”. Yes, shot-shape. You better be able to hit draw chips and cut pitches if you want to have a chance here.

In my Key Stats regression model, Scrambling was the most correlated stat to success at Augusta National in the last ten years. That is a “ranking system” meaning that there are only a few other courses on the schedule where Scrambling was more correlated.

It’s also based on the prototype of the player NOT for the actual week at Augusta National, which I think is important. You need to be a good short-game player before taking on the challenge of ANGC.

There are the top-10 players in the field were a Model of 33% on SG: ARG, 33% on Scrambling and 34% on Course History:

👱‍♀️ The Goldilocks Zone

Experience matters at Augusta National — there’s no doubt about that. But … how much experience is enough? I ran the Strokes Gained numbers by number of starts to see if we could learn something and … my goodness, we did!

The six year stretch, starts six through 11, are the best performing years for players in the history of the Masters. We’ll call those the “Goldilocks Zones”.

They are the six highest performing years and they account for 36/89 wins (40%). This chart passes the sniff test, doesn’t it? First-timers are going to struggle and then, those who continue to qualify, are going to get gradually better before they reach the Goldilocks Zone. Then, as experience and age start to increase, performance begins to drop off.

Here are the players in this week’s field who are in their Goldilocks Zone.

6th: NONE!
7th: Sungjae Im, Viktor Hovland, Collin Morikawa, Harris English, Max Homa, Scottie Scheffler, Daniel Berger
8th: Brian Harman
9th: Corey Conners, Si Woo Kim, Xander Schauffele
10th: Cameron Smith, Jon Rahm, Tommy Fleetwood, Tyrrell Hatton, Bryson DeChambeau, Keegan Bradley, Russell Henley
11th: Shane Lowry, Brooks Koepka, Justin Thomas

I know what you’re thinking — “but Rick, this is just showing that the good players keep getting chances to play at Augusta National while the bad players never qualify again”. Okay, fair. Here is the same chart but only includes golfers that would eventually make 10+ starts.

There’s a massive leap from year one to year two (makes sense) and then a smaller jump from year two to year three before leveling out.

⛳ Major Motivation

The last five years of major championships have produced some elite level winners but there are still a few who are looking for that first one! Below are the best players in all majors over the last five years.

The big four — Scheffler, Schauffele, McIlroy, Rahm are the only four to average 2+ strokes gained per round and they account for nine total majors. There’s a big gap between them and golfer #5 — Collin Morikawa.

Viktor Hovland is 8th in SG/rd but also has five missed cuts — the same number of top-10s that he has.

Corey Conners has MORE top-10s than Viktor Hovland and Tommy Fleetwood but has ZERO top-5 finishes. Classic Corey.

🐋 350,000 Reasons To Join

Our Masters Tiers contest has launched and this is a big one!

Splash has pumped $350,000 of guaranteed funds into the contest where you pick golfers across eight tiers, with the best seven score counting.

First place is a whopping $100,000 and there are plenty of other prizes along the way.

Join: https://bit.ly/SplashRRG

• Use my fantasy and betting tools here!

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