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.
03. Collin Morikawa
Rory McIlroy might’ve dominated the headlines in the early part of 2025, but were it not for a supreme feat of birdie-making by Hideki Matsuyama at The Sentry and an unlikely chip-in eagle from Russell Henley at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Collin Morikawa could have two PGA Tour Signature wins himself in 2025.
As it is, however, he’s officially winless since the 2023 ZOZO Championship though he got the full OWGR points allocation for the Tour Championship where he was the gross tournament winner but finished runner-up to Scottie Scheffler thanks to the staggered start. Scant consolation, but the $12.5 million he earned for ‘finishing second’ will surely have helped.
In five Masters starts, he’s yet to miss a cut and has been inside the top 10 in each of the last three, finishing fifth in 2022 and tied for third in 2024, which suggests that the PGA and Open Championship winner is likely to add a Green Jacket at some stage in his career.
And his stats have never been better. Driving distance has always been his weakest statistic, but rather than chase distance to the detriment of other aspects, he’s continued to be content with hitting more fairways and letting his iron play do the talking.
And right now, it’s not just talking, it’s singing the sweetest tune. Nobody – not Scheffler, McIlroy, Justin Thomas, or anybody else – has been better on approach play in 2025, and nowhere is accuracy and distance control into the greens more important than at Augusta National.
He’s also making birdies at a higher rate than anybody, so it’s all about whether his short game and putting can keep bogeys off the card, and he’s having his best putting season and best scrambling season to date as well, so you might think that the stars are aligning.
As a two-time major winner, he won’t fear the pressure of dealing with the second nine on Sunday, the only black mark is that he’s not been in the winner’s circle often enough and only Hideki Matsuyama from the last six Masters winners will have gone longer without a victory prior to donning a Green Jacket should Morikawa find one being fitted on his shoulders on Sunday evening.
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