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In many ways, the Masters is the pinnacle of professional golf. Yes, while we can argue about its status as the most prestigious of the four Majors, what we mean by being the pinnacle is that Augusta National is a fair course that rewards excellence. If you hear players coming out of a US Open grumbling about the course, you’ll know what we mean by that. Augusta is designed so that great players will flourish.
And they usually do. When you consider the roll of honor of Green Jacket winners through history – Nicklaus, Hogan, Palmer, Faldo, Watson, Ballesteros, Woods, Mickelson – almost all the all-time greats have won the Masters. Indeed, you can argue that you can only truly become great by winning the Green Jacket.
In saying that, the Masters has thrown up its fair share of surprise winners over the years. Some of those who ended up wearing the Green Jacket started at enormous odds in the Masters tournament odds. It’s something to bear in mind this year. Below, we look at five of the shock winners from the last twenty years:
1. Angel Cabrera (2009)
Starting with the heart-warming story of the Argentine whose career was a real rags-to-riches story. Cabrera made his living as a teenager caddying for the wealthy in golf clubs dotted around his home city of Cordoba. His 2009 win was arguably not the biggest shock, given that he won the US Open in 2007, but he was ranked 69 at the time – making him the lowest-ranked player ever to win the Masters. It couldn’t have happened to a more likable player; Cabrera was one of golf’s actual characters.
2. Danny Willet (2016)
It’s challenging to think of a player whose star rose and fell as quickly as Willet. He had moderate success in Europe but made little impression on the Majors before storming to victory in the 2016 Masters. You could find odds of 50/1 (+5000) and above for the Englishman pre-tournament. Many thought that would be the start of Willet's long, successful career, yet he is currently ranked 383 globally, which tells you a lot about how things went after.
3. Tiger Woods (2019)
Okay. Remember that this was the post-accident, permanently injured version of Tiger Woods, not the all-conquering winning machine of the 1990s and 2000s. Woods’ victory in 2019 was one of the most memorable moments in sports history. He did have some semblance of form in the months preceding the tournament, but very few experts thought he could hit the heights at Augusta again. He did and rolled back the year to win his 5th Green Jacket.
4. Trevor Immelman (2008)
Even in the era where historical sports betting data is freely available online, there is no complete consensus on which Masters winner in history. The most commonly cited candidate is South African Trevor Immelman, whose odds were somewhere in the region of 150/1 when he won the Green Jacket in 2008. That tells you all you need to know about what kind of shock this was. Immelman had a decent career before and after, but this was his moment in the sun.
5. Sergio Garcia (2017)
There were players with more enormous odds – Zack Johnson (2007) and Charl Schwartzel (2011) – than Sergio Garcia, who won the Masters, but we opted for the Spaniard because of the backstory. Garcia had spent years and years tagged as “the best player never to win a Major,” something that no elite golf professional wants. Thus, in 2017, few gave him a chance, even if the odds did say not to rule him out. It was Garcia’s 74th attempt at winning a Major. He had to endure a playoff (something that thwarted him in the past), but he duly delivered.
