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.
Before we reveal the number one pick – spoiler alert, you can probably guess – here are a selection of serious Masters contenders who didn’t quite make the top 10
Hideki Matsuyama
Winner here in 2021, Hideki Matsuyama is one of those players who can make the game look ridiculously easy when he’s on song, and the main bulk of his work was done with a third-round 65 that saw him take a four-stroke lead into the final round.
And that was on display again early this year when he set a new PGA Tour scoring record at The Sentry, finishing the week at an incredible 35-under-par.
The problem with Hideki is that he runs hot and cold, and since that win in Hawaii, he’s not had a top 10 and missed the cut in both The Players Championship and the Valero Texas Open, so his form is shaky to say the least. Even still, it would come as a surprise to nobody if he comes out firing on Thursday and finds himself near the top of the leaderboard, and if that’s the case, he’s a serious danger to the entire field.
Patrick Cantlay
Considering Patrick Cantlay’s killer instinct in team competition, it continues to befuddle how he’s only had five top-10 finishes in 31 major starts. Okay, three of those came as an amateur, but even still, it’s scant return.
His best chance of landing one of the big four came in 2019 when, with the entire world against him, it briefly looked as though he could spoil the Tiger Woods party when he hit the front with an eagle on 15 before bogeying two of his final three holes.
Sergio Garcia
It’s 26 years since 19-year-old Sergio Garcia duelled with Tiger Woods down the stretch at Medinah, and in the interim, he’d racked up 22 major top-10s before finally breaking through at Augusta National in 2017. Since then, he’s been a relative non-factor in majors, but he arrives with heightened expectation this year.
His win at LIV Andalucia last July was followed by his best major showing since 2017 when he finished T12 at Royal Troon, and he got his second LIV win in Hong Kong earlier this year before finishing third at LIV Miami last week.
Viktor Hovland
Having been lost in the wilderness for most of 2024, Viktor Hovland announced his return to the big stage with victory at the Valspar Championship in late March, but it was a win built largely on a stellar week with the putter while his swing troubles persisted, at least in his own mind.
That confidence boost was just what was required, and he’s one of the players who’s most capable of racking up birdies by the boatload, but whether or not he trusts his game enough to contend at Augusta National remains to be seen.
Sepp Straka
Nobody has been better on the PGA Tour from 150-200 yards than Sepp Straka, and Augusta National is a golf course that asks for approach shots from that distance time and again. A tie for seventh at the 2023 PGA Championship preceded a T2 finish at Royal Liverpool, and he’s one of just a dozen players who come in with a PGA Tour win under their belts in 2025.
Jordan Spieth
Augusta National tends to bring out the best in Jordan Spieth, so as long as he’d fit and able to play, he’ll always have an outside chance. Miraculous par saves have been Spieth’s calling card in recent years, but the fact that he’s often in position where he has to make miraculous saves has also been his downfall. But you can never count him out.
Joaquin Niemann
Dubbed the ‘best player in the world’ by Phil Mickelson just a few weeks ago, 26-year-old Chilean Joaquin Niemann has won two of his five LIV starts in 2025. But his major resume is weak by comparison, failing to register a single top 10 with a T16 finish here in 2023 his best showing. He’s got the talent, of that there’s no question, but he still has to prove he has the mental capacity to win on the biggest stage.
Tommy Fleetwood
Tommy Fleetwood’s ballstriking will always mean that he has a chance at major championship venues, and that’s proven by top-five finishes in each of the four majors. It’s putting, and particularly putting under pressure, that dictate whether he’s likely to be among those scrapping for another top 10 or whether he’d finally ready to get that first PGA Tour title and first major to boot.
Phil Mickelson
Like Jordan Spieth, Phil Mickelson is somebody who often seems to find form at Augusta National even when it’s been significant by its absence everywhere else, best exemplified by his third-place finish in 2023 when horribly out of sorts prior. At 54 years old, none of the contenders can even come close to matching Mickelson’s experience at the course, and he went an entire decade in the ’00s without finishing outside the top 25, racking up nine top 10s including two wins. And this year, he’s been playing well, finishing third in Hong Kong and sixth in Miami.
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