Masters Tournament: The ten best players in Augusta National history
By Bill Felber
The Masters Tournament is more than a legendary golf tournament, it’s a legend maker. To triumph at Augusta National is to etch your name into golf history forever. Of course, not every champion has long lasting success at the Masters. Here are the ten greatest players ever to tee it up at Augusta.
Performance at the Masters can make a player’s reputation. In its more than eight decades of existence, the Masters stage has elevated several players to golf glory.
Arnold Palmer’s reputation was made there. His four televised victories at Augusta National – in 1958, 1960, 1962 and 1964 – made both the player and the tournament a household name. But Palmer was not alone in that respect. Byron Nelson (1937), Tiger Woods (1997), Phil Mickelson (2004) and Jordan Spieth (2015) all made the Masters their first major tournament championship.
In fact since the tournament’s creation by Bobby Jones in 1934, virtually all of the game’s premier stars have won it. The list of champions also includes Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Tom Watson, Raymond Floyd, Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo and Vijay Singh.
A total of 17 players have won two Masters, although attaining a second green jacket has become noticeably harder in recent years. Since Phil Mickelson won his third in 2010, only Bubba Watson (in 2012 and 2014) has won twice. That’s bad news for returning champions of the stripe of the four most recent winners, Spieth, Danny Willett, Sergio Garcia and defending champion Patrick Reed.
Here’s a calculation of the ten players who have compiled the best career performances at Augusta National. Players are graded based on the sum of the standard deviations of their career performances in the tournament between their first professional appearance and their 50th birthday. In each case, the introductory information includes the player, the years in which they competed, their Masters victories (in parenthesis), and the sum of their career standard deviations.
First, however, a few of the names you won’t be seeing…Masters contenders (and champions) whose cumulative performances don’t quite elevate them into the all-time pantheon. These are the players whose records rank them 15th through 11th in Masters history: Rory McIlroy is 15th, surpassed by Justin Rose (14th), Gene Sarazen (13), Jim Ferrier (12) and Jordan Spieth (11).
Now for the top ten players in Masters history.