Masters starts — wind, TV windows, favorites
The Masters officially tees off today and the conversation is as much about setup as names: Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy head early favorite boards, all four rounds will be nationally televised, and local wind and firming conditions could matter more than raw form. (Analysts are flagging gusts up to 20 mph and warming temperatures into the 80s for the week, making caddie experience and course knowledge a bigger edge than usual.) (nytimes.com) (golf.com) (youtube.com)
The first shots at Augusta National arrive with a weather problem, not just a leaderboard question: Augusta, Georgia, is forecast to be warm, mostly dry, and windy enough for gusts around 20 miles per hour, which can turn a short iron into a guessing game on greens built to run fast. (accuweather.com) (weather.gov) That matters more at the Masters than at most tournaments because Augusta National is famous for sloping greens and exact landing spots, so a ball that lands five feet wrong can roll 25 feet away. The Weather Channel says this could be the first completely dry Masters since 2011, which usually means the course firms up as the week goes on. (weather.com) (accuweather.com) The betting boards still start with the two names everyone expected. Golf.com listed Scottie Scheffler at +500 early in the week, with Rory McIlroy next at +650, putting the world No. 1 and the defending champion at the front before Thursday’s opening round. (golf.com) The split between those two is simple. Scheffler has already won two green jackets and arrives as the sport’s steadiest tee-to-green player, while McIlroy comes back after finally winning the Masters in 2025 to complete the career Grand Slam. (cbssports.com) (espn.com) After them, the names stay familiar but the margin gets thin fast. PGA Tour betting coverage listed Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa, Bryson DeChambeau, Ludvig Åberg, and Xander Schauffele among the next tier, which tells you this week is less about one runaway favorite than about who handles Augusta’s exact demands for four straight days. (pgatour.com) One reason analysts keep talking about caddies is that Augusta is a memory course as much as a power course. CBS Sports noted Jordan Spieth entered this week with a 70.98 scoring average at Augusta National, the best all-time among players with at least 25 rounds there, which is another way of saying local knowledge keeps showing up on the card. (cbssports.com) The television setup is unusually easy this year because every round has a national window. Golfweek reported that Amazon Prime Video carries first- and second-round streaming from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday and Friday, ESPN takes over on television from 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. those days, and CBS handles the weekend broadcast. (golfweek.usatoday.com) NBC Sports also lists the tournament dates as April 9 through April 12, 2026, at Augusta National Golf Club, so the whole event fits into four days with no weather-delay cushion built into the main plan. If the forecast stays dry and warm, the bigger story by Sunday may be less about rain interruptions and more about who survived the firmest greens. (nbcsports.com)
