Decade by decade, the best of the Masters

We are coming up on three years into the 10th decade of the Masters, the first two years having produced Dustin Johnson and Hideki Matsuyama as champions.

Question: For each of the preceding nine decades, which players produced the most dominant Masters records?

It’s an interesting question because all of the greats of the past century have Masters’ pedigree.

From Gene Sarazen and Byron Nelson right up through Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, the Masters has been a litmus test for greatness in men’s pro golf.

Here’s the system used to determine the best players of each 10-year period, beginning with 1934 through 1939 and continuing through 2010 to 2019.

• Players will be considered if they completed four rounds in at least half of the Masters’ competitions played during the decade in question. That’s three tournaments in the 1930s, four in the 1940s, and five for all subsequent decades.
• The measuring yardstick will be the standard deviation of the player’s performance in each Masters’. Standard deviation, which is a measure of relative exceptionality, is preferred because – unlike a raw score – it normalizes for season-to-season variations in course setup, equipment, weather, and numerous other factors.
• Keep in mind that because golf is a game where less is more, a lower standard deviation is preferable to a higher one. A decade-average standard deviation of -1.0 or lower would be of contending caliber.

To provide an illustration for purposes of orientation, let’s look at the 2020-21 scores to date for the 2021 champion and third-place finisher, Hideki Matsuyama and Jordan Spieth. Matsuyama’s winning score of 278 in 2021 translated to 2.32 standard deviations below the four-round field average of 288.65. In 2020, Matsuyama tied for 13th with a score of 280 which was 0.77 standard deviations better than the field average of 284.3.

For the first two years of this decade, then, Matsuyama’s average standard deviation is -1.55, a very good score indeed.

Spieth tied Xander Schauffele at 281, three strokes behind Matsuyama, and working out to 1.66 standard deviations better than the field. In 2020, he tied for 46th with a score of 289 which was 0.84 standard deviations worse than the field average. Spieth’s two-year average then is -1.66 minus +0.84, or -0.78, that figure divided across two years, for a decade-to-date average of -0.39.