Coming into Masters week, we rank the 10 players most likely to find themselves in the Butler Cabin on Sunday evening alongside Scottie Scheffler and the leading amateur.
10. Shane Lowry
He might be without an individual PGA Tour win since the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush, but Shane Lowry has been among the most consistent golfers on the planet for the past 13 months and has given himself chances to win both the PGA and Open Championships during that period.
By his own admission, it took a little while to get used to Augusta National, but he’s gearing up for his 10th Masters now, he’s been inside the top 25 in four of his last five visits and finished tied for third behind Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy in 2022. He’s also one of just 34 players to have recorded a hole-in-one during the Masters Tournament – coming courtesy of an 8-iron to the 16th in 2016 – which, alongside other aces at Pebble Beach’s iconic seventh and TPC Sawgrass’ famous 17th, makes for one of the sweetest hat-tricks imaginable.
In his most recent start at the Valspar Championship, he topped the field in Strokes Gained: Off The Tee, and has consistently been among the PGA Tour leaders in Strokes Gained: Approach where he currently lies sixth in 2025.
Accuracy and distance control with the irons is paramount at Augusta National, as is the ability to scramble effectively when you miss your target. Lowry is well known for having a magic touch with his wedge, and even though his 2024 scrambling metrics were disappointing by his own very high standards, he’s shown a significant improvement in 2025 and only nine players have managed to get the ball closer on average.
The big concern for Shane is his putting. Even though he currently ranks 75th in Strokes Gained as opposed to 112th for 2024, he’s lost strokes to the field in four of his last starts with the Arnold Palmer Invitational being the outlier. But there’s always an element of luck on the greens, and at the Valspar Championship, he had very little as time and again well-rolled putts shaved the hole from the sorts of distances where you don’t make them all but you expect to make some.
At 12th in the OWGR, he’s never been officially ranked higher, but Data Golf, who rank players on stats alone and include LIV golfers, have him even higher at 10th.
All of this suggests that the equation is pretty simple for Lowry. If his putter gets hot, and he gets a little sprinkle of the ‘Luck of the Irish’, he’ll find himself very near the top of the leaderboard.
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