The Masters begins on Thursday at Augusta National, where defending champion Scottie Scheffler will try to win his third green jacket, Rory McIlroy will try again to claim his first, and the biggest names in golf will come together amid the Georgia pine trees for the first major championship of 2025.
There is a total of 95 players in the field, the largest number for a decade, even without the five-time champion Tiger Woods who is missing after surgery in March to repair a torn Achilles tendon. Last year, Woods set a record by making the cut for the 24th time in a row.
There is still a divide among the game's elite players, and just 12 from the Saudi-backed breakaway LIV Golf league will be teeing up this weekend. That includes Jon Rahm, the winner two years ago, and Bryson DeChambeau, the US Open champion – two men considered among the favourites for the title. Here are the main talking points leading up to the Masters.
Rory McIlroy, obviously…
It’s the Masters, so it is all about Rory. Is it finally going to be his year? He must be sick of hearing that. It is the one major he is best suited to playing, yet the one that continues to elude him.
He is 18 years on tour now. Lots of players have risen and fallen from being golf’s pre-eminent player in that time – Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Jordan Spieth, Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm, and most recently Scottie Scheffler – and all have picked off a green jacket or two.
McIlroy has been there or thereabouts that whole time, and still hasn’t. The portents are good: he has won twice already this season on the PGA Tour, the first time he has done that going into a Masters.
But they so often are. Everyone can look for pointers, but they will never mean anything until he finally gets the job done to complete the set of career majors.
LIV, love, laugh
With the rowdy galleries, largely casual attire, and occasionally even playing at night, the players from the LIV tour often seem like they are arriving late after a party when they get back to the staid, established tournaments.
They are almost always in good spirits. But does that mean they are match ready? LIV players have had success at majors, but the rebel tour is surely not ideal prep for the historic showpiece events.
Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka are two players who are said to be setting their course for a return to the old order once their current contracts with LIV run down.
Each could contend at Augusta this week, but 72 holes on an undulating layout is very different to what they have grown used to in recent seasons.
For McIlroy, see Koepka, too
Koepka is a great golfer, but has a rubbish poker face. Fred Couples let slip at the start of last month that Koepka wants to return to the PGA Tour when his four-year contract with LIV lapses.
The man himself tried to play down that idea, saying: “I don’t know where I’m going, so I don’t know how everybody else does.”
Koepka was similarly unconvincing when he tried to be coy about moving to LIV in the first place. What is for certain is his game is less reliable right now than five years ago, for example, when he was on an extraordinary run of four major titles in the space of two years.
He took out a third PGA Championship in 2023 – and fifth major in all – having already switched to LIV, and was tied for second in the Masters that same year.
Like McIlroy, a Masters is the one major to which Koepka has often gone close, yet still remains just out of reach.
Anyone’s game
So, where is the threat coming from? More than ever before, the form guide is skewed because top-level golf is now so fractured.
The most recent PGA Tour event’s last-day leaderboard included players like Andrew Novak, Ryan Gerard and Chad Ramey. Which is not exactly a great form guide ahead of Augusta.
Europe’s rankings are currently led by Laurie Canter, whose Masters hopes might have been tempered by a recent bout of norovirus.
And Tyrrell Hatton is still second in the Race to Dubai, having played – and won – just the one event so far, which was the Dubai Desert Classic back in January. To put it into perspective, the next best in the standings – fellow Englishman John Parry – has played 13 times.
Maybe the challenge could yet come from LIV, where Sergio Garcia was a recent winner, and the outstanding Joaquin Niemann has won twice so far this season.
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Tyrrell Hatton of England poses with the Dallah Trophy after winning the Hero Dubai Desert Classic at Emirates Golf Club on Sunday, January 19, 2025. Getty Images -
Tyrrell Hatton of England shakes hands with Daniel Hillier of New Zealand after their round on day four of the Hero Dubai Desert Classic. Getty Images -
England's Tyrrell Hatton celebrates after putting on the 18th hole to win the Dubai Desert Classic. AFP -
Tyrrell Hatton hits his second shot on the 18th hole at the Emirates Golf Club. Getty Images -
Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy shakes hands with the caddie of Denmark's Rasmus Hojgaard after the final round. Reuters -
Rory McIlroy lines up a shot on day four of the Dubai Desert Classic. AFP
The Dubai effect
A myth that briefly came to life a few years back was that winning the Dubai Desert Classic was a sure-fire indicator that a green jacket was incoming.
Danny Willett won at the Majlis Course in 2016, then at Augusta two months later. A year later, Garcia did the same double.
Every other year has proved the trend to be a coincidence instead. McIlroy, for example, won back-to-back Classics in 2023 and 2024, but failed to trouble the engravers at the Masters.
Still, though, Hatton might not mind it if the facts don’t get in the way. He might have been hidden away on LIV in the time since, but his form in regular tour golf has been remarkable for some time. He has not been out of the top 10 in his past six DP World Tour events, and won twice, including the Dallah Trophy at the start of this year.
