Does The Masters Have The Weakest Field? Does It Matter?

Does The Masters Have The Weakest Field? Does It Matter?

I’ve been following some interesting threads on golf social media in which the claim is made that The Masters has the weakest field of the Majors. It might on paper, but I am not sure that the paper matters.

The detractor’s claim is that the first Major of the year would be improved by expanding the field from the top 50 to the top 60 or 80 in the Official World Golf Rankings. The thought is that by expanding the field (and perhaps cutting out many past champions) more players with a chance to win would tee it up.

Expanding the field might make sense if Masters Champions regularly emerged from the group of players ranked 40 to 50. If players in the lower 20% of the field were contenders, then players further down the OWGR lists might also have a chance.

That’s not what has happened over the past thirty years, though.

The average OWGR position of Masters Champions at the beginning of the year in which they won is 17.8.

Just three of the Champions fell outside the top 40: Angel Cabrera, Zach Johnson and Mike Weir. However, all three of those were inside the top 40 in September of the previous year: Cabrera was 28th heading into September 2008; Johnson was 38th in September 2005; Weir was 27th in September 2002.

Just six of the winners were outside the top 30 (including the three above).

A full 70% of the winners were in the top 20 in January of the year in which they became the Masters Champion.

There is no reason, therefore, to believe that adding players 51 – 80 would have any impact on which players are expected to win. Players ranked 40 – 50 have won only 10% of the time (and even then, those three likely were inside the top 40 by another measure). Aside from flukes (which no one except the winner would be happy about), the 60th ranked player is not going to crack a winner’s circle dominated by players 1 – 20.

The chart below shows the masters Champion for each of the last 30 years and their Official World Golf Rank in January of the year of their victory.

Year	Champion	OWGR In January of Winning Year
2022	Scottie Scheffler	13
2021	Hideki Matsuyama	19
2020	Dustin Johnson	5
2019	Tiger Woods	14
2018	Patrick Reed	25
2017	Sergio Garcia	14
2016	Danny Willett	19
2015	Jordan Spieth	9
2014	Bubba Watson	28
2013	Adam Scott	5
2012	Bubba Watson	22
2011	Charl Schwartzel	34
2010	Phil Mickelson	2
2009	Angel Cabrera	42
2008	Trevor Immelman	20
2007	Zach Johnson	54
2006	Phil Mickelson	3
2005	Tiger Woods	2
2004	Phil Mickelson	14
2003	Mike Weir	48
2002	Tiger Woods	1
2001	Tiger Woods	1
2000	Vijay Singh	6
1999	José María Olazábal	25
1998	Mark O’Meara	10
1997	Tiger Woods	33
1996	Nick Faldo	7
1995	Ben Crenshaw	34
1994	José María Olazábal	15
1993	Bernhard Langer	6
1992	Fred Couples	5