Masters early betting guide: 5 picks our gambling expert loves

Welcome to our PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sport betting. and you can read his early picks below for the Masters, which gets underway on April 10th in Augusta, Ga.

With the odds to win the 2025 Masters having been posted shortly after the conclusion of the 2024 Masters, these numbers have been staring sports bettors in the face for nearly a year.

I always find myself glancing from time to time, every year, to see if anything juicy stands out. It wasn’t until this past January, however, that I did take action for the first time for this particular Masters tournament.

It was our first column of the new season, kicking off 2025 with The Sentry at Kapalua’s Plantation Course in Maui, that I landed correctly on Hideki Matsuyama at 22-1. Over that weekend, the man chasing him was Collin Morikawa. Matsuyama of course, already has a green jacket and I was well aware of Morikawa’s success at Augusta National (5-10-3 in his last three trips). Knowing that whomever won the Sentry would see their Masters odds dip, I played Matsuyama to win the Masters at 25-1 and Morikawa at 22-1 on the Saturday night prior to the final round in Maui.

I did this same exact thing in 2022 with Cam Smith. He ended up winning in Hawaii and found himself in the final pairing on Sunday at Augusta with Scottie Scheffler, only to end up finishing tied for fifth.

The connection between success at the Plantation Course in Maui and success at the Masters is a very strong one. The PGA Tour has played the event in Maui to kick off the season 27 times. Ten of those 27 tournaments have been won by a Masters champion (37 percent).

The crossover success between Augusta National and Riviera Country Club is also incredibly strong. Matsuyama won the Genesis Invitational in 2024. Morikawa’s last three trips have resulted in 19th, sixth, and runner-up finishes.

Since 1990, Riviera Country Club has hosted the L.A. Open (Genesis Invitational) 35 times. During that stretch, the tournament been won 16 times by a Masters champion (46 percent).

The final piece of this bizarre love triangle is the Old Course at St. Andrews. The connection here to the Masters is astonishingly strong as well — and this one may make the most sense, because Bobby Jones and Alister Mackenzie drew a lot of influence from St. Andrews when designing Augusta National.

Since 1970, the Open Championship has been held 10 times at St. Andrews. Six of those 10 have been won by a Masters champion and in 2022 it was won by the aforementioned Cam Smith. In 2015, Louis Oosthuizen won the Open at St. Andrews after losing in a playoff to Bubba Watson at the Masters in 2012. That’s 60 percent, plus two more guys that got about as close as one can get to slipping on a green jacket.