Breaking $100 - Free PGA Betting Picks - Golf Best Bets for the 2023 Masters

Ladies and Gentelmen, it is Masters week!!! All of golf's superstars are surfacing from wherever they have been LIVing in pursuit of the greenest of jackets. World No. 1, Scottie Scheffler, is half the odds he was to win when we hit him here last year at 14-1, now priced to the point where Vegas expects the southern shuffling stud to slip on a green jacket once every seven strolls through magnificent magnolias he masterfully navigated last year.

He does have some competition, with Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy not much more appealingly priced in the single digits too. At these prices, we are forced to go with a single bullet strategy on one of them, or bite that bullet and hope that whoever we roster can stand up to these three betting bullies and allow us golf bettors to actually have a shot at celebrating a double-digit winner. Let us meet this year's Masters champion, shall we?

For those of you who are new to the article, Breaking $100 is a comprehensive PGA betting guide on how to squeeze every cent out of your $100. We will be breaking $100 into a betting card of outrights, first-round leaders, placings, and a "farewell fiver," all in an attempt to turn a structured betting strategy into a profitable and entertaining Sunday sweat. $100 is easily divided or multiplied, so please only bet amounts that you can afford to lose. You can find me on Twitter an unhealthy amount of the time @TheModelManiac, if you have any questions, compliments, or insults for me.

Outrights

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This week Joe Nicely put together his free DFS Bible that dives into the DFS DNA of every golfer in the field. Spencer Aguiar's free Seven Deadly Sins breaks down the seven essential skill sets that the last five winners of the Masters have all possessed. If you like what you see from either of those articles our affordable pricing will be an afterthought on route to joining the PGA team that will have you Balling Like A Boss, Baby!!!

As is now becoming a tradition unlike any other, we had two of our outrights tie for third place, while never seeming to ever be within striking distance of Corey Conners who closed out his Sunday round with poise and profound ball-striking that left Matt Kuchar and Sam Ryder stuck in his snail trail of Canadian maple syrup that oozed off his silky-smooth swing all week long. Onwards and upwards.

This week we have a few major winners and two golfers who have soared up the world rankings courtesy of some sensational ball-striking and consistency. As it is the Masters we are doubling the amount we usually bet on golfers, because, why not? We will be spending $26.30 of our $100 budget to net $200.

Max Homa ($2.80 @ +8000 on PointsBet)

We will start off with this bet, as it was a future that has been part of this article since the Sanderson Farms article. Here was our thought process back then: "If you take a look at the odds board, the players around Max Homa at 80-1 are relics, who have either fled to LIV, required some sort of exemption to remain on tour, or are just straight-up bad at golf. Homa has won four times in the last two years and just proved that he can handle immense pressure on the biggest of stages, sinking clutch putts at the Presidents Cup a week after winning at the Fortinet.

His game translates incredibly well to what Augusta requires from its past winners. Golfers with distance off the tee, impeccable iron play and imagination, and touch on and around the greens have had success at one of golf's most treasured venues. Max does all three of those really well and after making his first cut in three tries last year, he should be a serious contender when he returns there next year."

Fast forward to the week of the Masters and Max is sitting at 25-1 after winning the Farmers Insurance Open and almost toppling a rampant Rahm at the Genesis Invitational (we were on Max there too). Homa is now the 5th ranked golfer in the world, but despite his ridiculous run of nine top-25 finishes in his last 10 starts including two wins and second place, Max has yet to record a top-10 finish in a major.

The Consistency he has shown this season is enough for us to believe that his game has elevated itself to the level required to succeed around major venues, with his first opportunity to show of his ample array of weapons he has armed himself with. Over the last 24 rounds, Max is the sixth-best approach player in a field full of the world's very best and is putting even better than he is hitting irons (3rd). A combination that can be unstoppable when complimenting each other.

His driving has been a little erratic lately (40th), but at Augusta, if you could choose an area of your game that is grading out as a B, it would be with the driver. The rest of his game has been eagerly awaiting its opportunity to take a crack at that green jacket! He now believes that he truly belongs amongst the likes of Rory, Rahm, and Scottie, which will give him all the belief he needs to win his first major at Augusta National Golf Club.

Cameron Young ($5 @ +4800 on DraftKings - Now 30)

This is the last of the futures, placed prior to Cameron Young advancing to the semi-finals of the Dell Match Play Championship two weeks ago. There are 30s out there still, which makes me feel a little better about having two futures on the card. Enough about what was and let's focus on what is now one of the most prodigious ball strikers in the world. Despite his game being the foster home for a putter behaving like a teenage Voldemort, Young has still managed to record four top-20s in his last six starts, with two 2nd-place finishes.

As of two weeks ago, he teamed up with long time caddie for Webb Simpson, Paul Tasori, who Cameron has friendly familiarity with, often playing with his fellow Wake Forest alum and his caddie. This move is saturated with the same ingredients that Scottie Scheffler and Ted Scott cooked up on route to 5 wins in the space of a year. Young has also adopted aimpoint express to help read putts and has since gained on the greens in back-to-back starts.

In a field loaded with premier ball strikers, Young grades out with the seventh best strokes gained over the last 24 rounds, while scorching drives further than all but two golfers who will be trying to keep up with the man who has 10 top-3 finishes since September of 2021. The upside, skill level, and ability to contend on any golf course is evidently there, and now with a new and improved co-pilot on the bag, this fighter Jet is ready to launch missiles at the BIG 3 till he slides his powerful torso into the sleeves of an Augusta green jacket.

Cameron Smith ($10.50 @ +2100 on FanDuel - Now 24-1)

What you may have missed out on the odds of the two futures above, you can recoup a little with Cam Smith now 24-1 on FanDuel. As somebody who has been struggling to find a certified assassin in the outright market on Sundays, we are resorting back to the player who helped us notch 3 wins in 2022. Since LIVing it up after his electric Open Championship victory at St. Andrews he has admittedly been a little off his game, though.

However, if you are capable of reading an article and closing your eyes at the same time, do so, and imagine eating your favorite dessert at your favorite vacation destination, sitting alongside your favorite person listening to your favorite song. Now multiply that by every hair that the scuffy Ozzie has on his upper lip and you will experience the feeling of comfort Cam has Augusta. Prior to being one of the best iron players in the world, he still recorded two top-10 finishes here, which is enough for us to go back to our savage soldier in hopes of redeeming his sad Sunday performance last year.

Smith has the short game to make up for almost any deficiency his ball striking may present, gaining over 10 strokes putting on route to his PLAYERS championship and his Open Championship. When the putter is pouncing, there is no prey that can get away from our most trusted champion and this week at Augusta we will be hunting the BIG 3 once again.

Collin Morikawa ($8 @ +2800 on BetRivers enhanced odds tab)

When it comes to stepping up an area of your game in the biggest of moments, there are very few that can do that better than two time major champion, Collin Morikawa. In his 44 major rounds, he has gained 0.25 strokes per round, which is half a stroke more than his lack luster -0,29 he loses at non-major events. As poorly as he has performed in pressure cooked moments recently, he seemingly finds an extra mental gear in majors, which we want to capitalize on.

Over the last 12 months, Morikawa is the best iron player in the world, barely eclipsing a golfer priced at 7-1 called Scottie Scheffler. Since his emergence as one of the most elite ball strikers on tour, Collin has steadily been an approach front runner with his shoddy short game often being a sword in his side. However, with each trip to Augusta resulting in better results (5th, T18, T44) winter is coming for the BIG 3, who will have to battle the king of the iron throne on a battlefield that is rapidly becoming one of his favorite places to wage war on the defenses of Augusta National Golf Club.

Did you know RotoBaller has a Premium DFS PGA subscription? Like what you read today? You can show your support for Byron by using the discount code MANIAC when purchasing a PGA Premium Pass. You get 10% off and full access to all of our Premium PGA articles, DFS tools, models, projections and Lineup Optimizer! You also get access to weekly betting picks from Spencer Aguiar, one of the top betting minds in the industry.

End of the Season Totals: @rotoballer @BettorGolfPod

2017 +54.26 Units
2018 +55.88 Units
2019 +27.743 Units
2020 + 37.015 Units
2021 + 68.846 Units
2022 +67.485 Units

Total Winnings: +311.229 Units

Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36

H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE

— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022

Placings

Last week's results: +$9.15 which is now back-to-back weeks of profiting in the placement market despite getting wrecked by two dead heats. Things are coming together.

• Matt Kuchar T20 +140: +$7
• Chris Kirk T20 +155: +$7.75
• Brendon Todd T20 +240: -$5
• Ben Griffin T20 +225: -$5
• Thomas Detry T20 +220: -$5
• Robby Shelton T20 +330: $8.50 (dead heat)
• Sam Ryder T40 +100: +$5
• Eric Cole T40 +175: $-0.1 (we cashed this bet but got so badly dead heated that we landed up losing money)
• Ryan Moore T40 +320: -$5
• Byeong Hun An T40 +120: +$6
• Erik Van Rooyen T40 +220: -$5

This week we are going to simply bet the four outrights for top 20 bets, add Will Zalatoris to the mix and call it a day.

• Max Homa $10.50 T20 -105
• Cameron Young $10 T20 +110
• Cam Smith $10.50 T20 -105
• Collin Morikawa $11 T20 -110
• Will Zalatoris $10 T20 +130

Matchups

Matchups are my favorite golf bet to place, as it is one of the safer bets that can be placed, and you can still cash in on a matchup even if our guy misses the cut. Our only matchup landed up losing to Hideki by 1 stroke. Hideki's neck held up and Montgomery couldn't finish inside the top-20 to push our matchup. Pain. -$20 Taylor Montgomery over Hideki Matsuyma -112 (FanDuel)

No official matchups this week, but we have several coming up in our next section.

88 Golfers, 88 Bets

This part of the article usually is a $5 bet on a single golfer at some ridiculous odds to finish T10 for the tournament or for an ace to occur over the course of the week. We are going to continue with that format, but with "roided degeneracy" which I afford myself for this event, and this event only.

There are 88 golfers in the field and below you will find 82 bets for 82 of them, with 6 golfers in the field that are so bad/old that they don't have any applicable bets out there. We will assign some sort of hole in one prop for the entire field to each of those 6, to stay true to making a bet for each golfer. The way the coverage works, you can have most of the Par 3s on multiple TV screens if you have enough of them, enjoying a micro-sweat every time somebody hits an approach shot.

The Masters is my favorite tournament and in honor of that we are going to try profit off of all 82 of these golfers in one way or another. This way, when ever you see them on the screen, you have something to root for, whether it's for them to dunk one into the water to miss the cut, or to make a clutch par save to keep a bogey free round alive, or simply to finish inside the top-20 of round 1.

This is also probably a little overkill and if you don't want to place 88 bets for the week, you can pick out your favorite bets and place as many or as little as you desire. I am basically treating each golfer as a human bingo square for $1 with varying payouts if that number gets called. I do not expect to profit off of this strategy, but I am viewing it as a fee to ramp up the entertainment value of the best golf tournament on Earth.

We are using 3 different books for this exercise: Draftkings (green), FanDuel (blue and white), BetRivers (blue and yellow). These are the books that offered the widest array of props in the Hawkeye State that Caitlyn Clark made so proud. Feel free to shop around for better odds of the same nature at books that you have available to you.

Thirsty Thursday's

Leader after R1

All six of these golfers would fall firmly into the "atomic" section of the volatility scale and that is why we like them as first round leaders. Outside of the walking bogey/birdie bomb that is Jordan Spieth, most of these golfers will most likely not produce the consistency to contend around Augusta for four consecutive rounds. If we can get lucky with one of them exploding up the leaderboard on Thursday, crack the beers and cheers to the week getting off to a hot start.

R1 Top 5 and Top 10 

These golfers could quite easily be placed in same bucket of brilliance and buffoonery that the R1 leaders are sloshing around in, but by making these bets top-5 or top-10, we can open the door to cashing multiple bets as a scenario exists where we can hit a first round leader, R1 top-5 and R1 top 10. If one of the below golfers cashes we are pretty close to covering our tails, while two would ensure profit for this part of this section of bets.

R1 Top 20 and Top National

Outside of Gary Woodland, who is allergic to good golf around Augusta (no missed cut or matchups available), the majority of these golfers have the ability to have one inspired Thursday round of golf and sneaking their way into the top 20 by end of day. We have three golfers who have to beat their fellow countrymen, with Matthew McLean basically needing to play a career round and hope that the luck of the Irish is entirely on only his side for 1 glorious round.

Top Somethings

Top 5, 10, 20, 30

Rory McIlroy should be floating around the top of the leaderboard for most of the event, in pursuit of that elusive Grand Slam (winning all four majors) that slipped through his fingers back when winning majors was as easy as picking his nose. As good as he is playing, he just can't seem to get it done, but if he finishes top-5 this week it will be the fifth consecutive top-10 finish in a major for the now silver foxy Irishman.

Patrick Reed has won this event before and at 5-1 we had to put the cheating chubby champion alongside a bet that will at least make us a lot of money if he succeeds this week. This is a bet I don't mind losing. Seamus Power is another Irishman who loves himself a major, making 3 of 4 cuts last year and hopefully he can sneak into the top 10 at 11-1 odds.

The rest of the top-20/30 crew all rank pretty close to their respective placement bet and the majority of these steady studs will be looking to provide the level of consistency that sees most of them rank inside the top 40 in my model. Their odds require about half of them to hit in order to break even in this part of the roided degeneracy.

Top 40

Outside of Kirk, Scott and Poston, the other top-40 golfers in this list are not necessarily expected to do anything of substance around this tricky venue. We have two past winners of the Green Jacket in Adam Scott and Iowa's very own, Zach Johnson, but Scott has been playing poorly lately and Zach Johnson simply does not have the length to contend here. We are hoping that he one or two of these misfits can get it done for us, giving us something to cheer about at the bottom of the leaderboard as the weekend unfolds.

Top Nationality, Senior, Lefty, Debutant

Jon Rahm was world No. 1 just a few weeks ago and Bernhard Langer will be playing in his FORTIETH (40th) Masters. A truly incredible feat, and before you judge the German Golf Guru, know that he only has to beat a bunch of other old farts who are basically trying to just survive the two day walk around this Augusta. Langer has missed his last two cuts here, but he is a few seasoned putts away from making the cut this year, having won multiple champions tour events since November of last year.

As you can tell by the odds that have made their way into the 300's and above, these bets are a little riskier. We have an overlap of Seniors but as the 81st ranked golfer in the field, it was tough to find a bet for Vijay Singh who could help us break even in this section if he can outlast Langer this week. Bubba Watson is two-time Masters Champion and will need to simply beat a few other golfers who also stand on the wrong side of the golf ball, for the Top Lefty bet to cash.

Fades, Grenades, and Dementor Raids

These bets are over the course of the event and if both golfers miss the cut, we can still cash that bet if the other guy sucked it up more. Patrick Cantlay is one of the best golfers in the world but struggles to perform to his high standards around Augusta, while Cam Smith has finished inside the top 10 in his last three starts here. Sam Burns, who missed his only cut at this event, will be matched up against Hideki Matsuyama, who won the Green Jacket two years ago.

Justin Thomas's putter appears to have been hit by a grenade, as it is in absolute shambles by his lofty standards, while Xander Schauffele has found incredible success around Augusta, despite looking like he just survived a dementor attack. Matt Fitzpatrick won the US Open and then checked out in the express lane in 2023, missing half his cuts so far this year. We are going to hope that Louis can lean on his experience around Augusta to outlast Tom Kim who will be playing here for the first time, in potentially wet conditions, lacking the length needed to succeed around Augusta.

Bryson DeChamabeau has changed tours, hats, diets, and logos more than a Broadway drag queen between songs, and despite hitting the ball further than 99.9% of the golfers in this tournament, his game could not be further from functionable. Shane Lowry has seemingly left his putting stroke at the bottom of a glass of Guiness while Min Woo Lee will look to improve on his T14 that he recorded in his debut last year - no easy feat doing that first time round.

Bogeys and Bye Byes

The top 50 golfers after Thursday and Friday rounds will make the cut with those outside of the top-50 and ties saying bye-bye to their buddies at Augusta. I love Tom Kim but for some reason I think he is going to play poorly this week as his game doesn't seem to be firing on all cylinders right now, despite his 25th place ranking in my model. Brian Harman couldn't hit water with a 7-iron if he teed off an aircraft carrier in the middle of the pacific ocean.

Brooks Koepka has missed his last two cuts at Augusta and despite winning a LIV event last week, we are banking on the four-time major champ to go for the inglorious 3-peat at +230. Billy Horschel has never excelled in big events and Phil Mickleson now looks like the dementor that sucked the joy out of Xander's on course persona. Scottie Scheffler has been sensational from tee to green throughout his career, which makes avoiding bogeys rather easy. All we need is one of those boring rounds from the defending Masters champ.

Mito Pereira was in the final group of the PGA Championship last year and landed up double-bogeying the final hole to go from leading the tournament to missing the playoff between Justin Thomas and Will Zalatoris entirely. If he finds himself in that position again, we want to capitalize on it. Cameron Young has 10 top-3 finishes on tour over the last two seasons, and if Scottie Scheffler or Rory land up winning this thing, we will not be surprised if Young is in second place yet again, which will still pay us out.

4 ACES

In honor of the LIV golfers returning to the screens of loyal PGA fans' TVs (4 Aces is Dustin Johnson's team name), we have chosen four golfers to record an ACE during the tournament. Will Zalatoris, Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, and Corey Conners are four of the best iron players in the world and Hovland has recorded multiple aces of the last two years on tour, and Corey Conners has made an ACE on this course before. If either of these guys make an ACE, if we are betting $1 per bet, they will essentially get us to break even at 80-1.

You can tell by their model rank that they are all really impressive golfers, while you can tell Kisner and Co. have no business showing up to this event as they are all almost certain to miss the cut. However, we will use their bet slots to load up on the ACE acid trip! If any golfer makes an ACE we will turn our $1 into $11.20 that day, with an additional ace just adding gravy to our golf gambling grub! I love betting on ACES at the Masters! The reason for betting two or more ACES is to avoid the fun ending if one occurs early in the morning. We want to cheer for all the shots on the Par 3s.

I had a blast putting this article together and I hope you had as much fun reading it. Good luck this week, and as always, may the odds be ever in your favor!!!

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