Had some fun with golf stats to predict masters:

Ran some statistical models in Minitab to try and predict the Masters winner.

To do so, I took the final leaderboard at Augusta the last 4 years and ran correlation tests against player statistics in the golf season leading up to the Masters, as well as their world ranking and Vegas odds to win going into the Masters each year.

I have been doing one off algorithms for the last 4 years just for fun to try and predict winners in my pool, but now I've got 4 years worth of the same statistics pre-Masters so I ran some correlation tests.

Anyways, the most correlated statistics with Masters success are, in order, as follows:

Vegas Odds
World Ranking
Strokes Gained
Scrambling
3-Putt Avoidance

These create the best predictive model that I found.

Using those specific stats/rankings, once weighted appropriately (Vegas odds carrying most weight), this is the predicted finish:

1 - Justin Rose
2 - Dustin Johnson
3 - Tommy Fleetwood
4 - Xander Schauffele
5 - Jon Rahm
6 - Patrick Cantlay
7 - Rory McIlroy
8 - Hideki Matsuyama
9 - Tiger Woods
10 - Francesco Molinari
11 - Jason Day
12 - Webb Simpson
13 - Tony Finau
14 - Matt Kuchar
15 - Justin Thomas
16 - Marc Leishman
17 - Bryson DeChambeau
18 - Louis Oosthuizen
19 - Kevin Kisner
20 - Rickie Fowler
21 - Cameron Smith
22 - Sergio Garcia
23 - Si Woo Kim
24 - Bubba Watson
25 - Paul Casey
26 - Phil Mickelson
27 - Adam Scott
28 - Charles Howell III
29 - Brandt Snedeker
30 - Ian Poulter
31 - Patrick Reed
32 - Brooks Koepka
33 - Matt Wallace
34 - Gary Woodland
35 - Rafa Cabrera Bello
36 - Keegan Bradley
37 - Jordan Spieth
38 - Matthew Fitzpatrick
39 - Billy Horschel
40 - Zach Johnson
41 - Kiradech Aphibarnrat
42 - J.B. Holmes
43 - Kevin Tway
44 - Charley Hoffman
45 - Keith Mitchell
46 - Tyrrell Hatton
47 - Corey Conners
48 - Charl Schwartzel
49 - Branden Grace
50 - Emiliano Grillo
51 - Danny Willett
52 - Kyle Stanley
53 - Henrik Stenson
54 - Aaron Wise
55 - Kevin Na
56 - Patton Kizzire
57 - Alex Noren
58 - Shane Lowry
59 - Eddie Pepperell
60 - Jimmy Walker
61 - Lucas Bjerregaard
62 - Thorbjorn Olesen
63 - Stewart Cink
64 - Justin Harding
65 - Andrew Landry
66 - Martin Kaymer
67 - Adam Long
68 - Satoshi Kodaira
69 - Li Haotong
70 - Shugo Imahira
71 - Bernhard Langer
72 - Fred Couples
73 - Vijay Singh
74 - Michael Kim
75 - Takumi Kanaya
76 - Viktor Hovland
77 - Alvaro Ortiz
78 - Angel Cabrera
79 - Devon Bling
80 - Jovan Rebula
81 - Mike Weir
82 - Sandy Lyle
83 - Trevor Immelman
84 - Larry Mize
85 - Ian Woosnam
86 - Jose Maria Olazabal
87 - Kevin O’Connell


*should be noted that I pulled from a list of about 15 stats. There are hundreds that the professional books/predictors use, so mine is limited somewhat.