The opening tee shot at the Masters Tournament is less than 48 hours away, and that means everyone is picking who will win the Green Jacket on Sunday.
Many believe that it will come down to the two best golfers in the world – Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy – while Collin Morikawa, Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau also have plenty of backers.
However, Augusta National has thrown up plenty of surprises before so there’s no guarantee that the next champion is a household name.
Golf expert Gabby Herzig recently made two interesting predictions ahead of this week’s Masters.
Golf expert Gabby Herzig picks ‘dark horse’ to win The Masters
Herzig picked Will Zalatoris as her ‘dark horse’ to win at Augusta. The world number 66 is certainly an outsider to claim the Green Jacket.
He has only ever won one PGA Tour event before (2022 FedEx St. Jude Championship) but he’s in solid form heading into the tournament.
Plus, Herzig explained that Zalatoris has an advantage over the likes of Scheffler and McIlroy due to his lesser profile in the media.
“My dark horse, the one I wrote about, is Will Zalatoris. He has been dealing with a back injury for the better health of a year and a half – a serious surgery, which put him out of The Masters in 2023. He has not had the best record this year, he is floating around the top 20 or top 30. But I think he has been playing better than he is scoring. That is what I am telling everyone.
“I look back at the round at The Players Championship, where he was making all sorts of birdies. He was -10 in his last 27 holes at one point and then he made a quadruple bogey and shot right down the leaderboard. You see that T30th on his record for the season at The Players but you don’t actually think back to the shots that he was hitting and the round and nuances of what was going on there.
“He has performed so well here. He has a solo second and two top 10s. He loves this place. He is my dark horse because I think he is one of the guys who can fly under the radar, which is really important here, and block out some of the noise. He is not one of the people who is going to be asked 9 million questions about how you’re going to do this year and I think that can be really advantageous to some of these guys.”
Robert MacIntyre named as another Masters 2025 contender
While Zalatoris was Herzig’s primary dark horse, she also likes Scotsman Robert MacIntyre’s chances at Augusta National.
She said: “Another I will throw out there is Robert MacIntyre. I love a lefty here. A lot of favourable shot shapes for the way this course is designed.
“He has had some top 10’s here as well and he is a great iron player, and great in the wind, which can pick up here at Augusta and be hard to decode.”
Like Zalatoris, MacIntyre is not one of the top contenders at The Masters but he’s undoubtedly got the ability to put in an excellent performance.
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