There is one sight that bookmakers don’t want to see Sunday evening at Augusta National: Rory McIlroy donning the green jacket.
“It’s the Rory show,” Tristan Davis, a senior trader for BetMGM sportsbook, said of the betting action ahead of the 2025 Masters. “He’s the main attraction right now, so we’ll be rooting against him.”
Always popular with the punters, McIlroy is even more trendy thanks to a scorching start to the 2025 season.
McIlroy has two wins – most recently at The Players – and three top-five finishes in six starts this year.
The Masters is the only major championship that McIlroy hasn’t won, and there are a lot of bettors who want to make sure they cash in if the Northern Irishman completes the career grand slam this weekend.
McIlroy’s best showing at Augusta came in 2022 when he finished T2, but he’s also had a couple of nightmare performances recently.
He’s missed the cut in two of his past three trips down Magnolia Lane, and he fell out of contention with a 77 in the second round last year before finishing T22.
The helter-skelter performances aren’t deterring the public, though.
“There’s nothing we can do about it,” Davis said.
McIlroy is the second-favorite to win the Masters behind defending champion Scottie Scheffler (+450).
Surprisingly, Scheffler isn’t garnering his usual robust support.
“Not so much for Scheffler this year,” Davis noted. “Punters are very reactive, and he’s not off to this best start, so there isn’t as much action on Scheffler this year.”
Scheffler isn’t the only recent champion falling through the cracks.
Jon Rahm, who donned the green jacket in 2023 in between Scheffler’s two wins, isn’t seeing the type of action you’d expect from a player with his pedigree.
“It’s very minimal on Rahm,” Davis said. “The LIV guys, outside of a couple of exceptions, aren’t getting much, if any, attention.”
The defectors who are getting backed behind the window shouldn’t surprise anybody.
“Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka are a very popular duo,” Davis said. “The American public loves Bryson, he’s always a liability for us. And Brooks has a lot of good history at majors, and he’s out there at 33/1, so he’s getting plenty of action.”
According to BetMGM, DeChambeau makes up nearly 10% of their handle for the Masters, which could turn into a big hit considering he’s being offered at more than double the price of McIlroy and nearly four times Scheffler’s odds.
Davis noted that Ludvig Aberg is another big liability, but that comes as no shocker.
Aberg finished runner-up in his Masters debut in 2024 and has established himself as one of the rising powers in the sport. The 25-year-old has two career wins on the PGA Tour, including the 2025 Genesis Invitational.
“He’s getting good support at 20/1,” Davis said.
While it’s no surprise to see money pour in on the likes of McIlroy, DeChambeau and Aberg, there is one long shot that is stressing out the bookies.
“The roughie with the most bets trickling in on him is Sepp Straka,” Davis explained. “He’s played well so far this year and is getting action at 50/1.”
Straka, 31, has a win and three top-10 finishes in 10 starts in 2025. The Austrian has never finished better than T16 at Augusta, but he was a runner-up at the 2023 Open Championship.
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Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.
