Tiger Woods will play in his 25th Masters this week.
He's +7000 to win at FanDuel, which is a far cry from where he's previously started Masters tournaments.
Tiger Woods had some RIDICULOUS outright odds through the years at #TheMasterspic.twitter.com/ajdUQNWb5X
— Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) April 4, 2023
Woods has been as high as -125 entering the golf tournament. It would be complete insanity to see someone with negative odds to win a golf tournament, nonetheless the Masters.
Bookmakers tend to agree.
"Tiger was 3-1 and oftentimes less than 2-1 quite a bit from those 1999-2002 and 2005-2008 time periods, so it was almost normal to see him at +150 or so to win a major," DraftKings Golf Trader Matt Grill. "If you take out the margin from the -125 price, it would give him "true odds" of about 53.5% to win the event. The depth of competition wasn't what it is today, but I think it would be hard to see an odds-on better than 50% favorite in a major again. The Tour is so much deeper now at the top."
It is rare to even see a golfer better than +700 to win a golf tournament today. Jon Rahm has been one of the few to go below that line this season as he was +550 (at Caesars) to win the American Express earlier this season.
"The best golfers in the world right now are fighting for favoritism in this year's Masters tournament at about the +700 range," PointsBet's Head of Trading Kevin Lawler said. "Any of those golfers getting to minus numbers in the betting is close to unfathomable and would take a period of sustained domination. Even at that, it would be several years before any of them could go off odds-on for a Masters, or indeed any major."
Rory McIlroy is the favorite to win the Masters and is priced around +700 at most sportsbooks. We wanted to know what handicap he would need to get close to even odds to win the tournament, so we asked bookmakers.
"Handicapping this year's tournament, I'd want Rory or (Scottie) Scheffler to have to have a six-shot lead on the tee-box on Thursday to be starting at Tiger 2007 prices," Lawler said.
Although "the next Tiger" gets discussed a lot, it's fair to say we won't see anything like him anytime soon. Or maybe ever.
