Forty-eight hours from now, the 2026 Masters will be underway. Forty-eight hours after that, we’ll have the Sunday afternoon we’ve been waiting on since the previous Masters ended. Before the first tee shot, here are our final predictions for the week — the calls we’re committing to in writing so we can be properly accountable for them on Monday morning.
The winner: Ludvig Aberg
If you forced us to put a name on a piece of paper and slide it across the table, the name we’d write is Ludvig Aberg. The Swede has finished runner-up and seventh in his only two Masters appearances, and the case for him this week is the same as the case for him in 2024 and 2025: he has the perfect game for Augusta National. He hits a high draw with his irons, he is long enough off the tee to attack the par-5s, and his temperament suits a course that punishes anything less than complete commitment to every shot.
Aberg’s recent form has been spotty by his own standards, but the patterns at Bay Hill and Sawgrass were positive. The driving was sharper. The iron play was getting back to where he wanted it. The Valspar Championship gave him competitive rounds without exposing him to the full pressure of a Sunday lead. Everything points toward a player ready to win his first major.
The pick: Aberg, by one shot over Scheffler.
The favourite who won’t quite get there: Scottie Scheffler
The world number one will be in contention. He always is at Augusta. But the slightly off form he has shown over the past three weeks — and the fact that he’s been openly working on his swing in recent press conferences — suggests this might not be his Masters. Scheffler will likely finish in the top five, possibly the top three, and likely have a putt to win on Sunday afternoon. We don’t think it will fall.
He’s still the safest top-five bet in the field. We just think Aberg has the better complete week.
The defending champion: Rory McIlroy
Everything about a Rory McIlroy back-to-back at Augusta would be the perfect storyline. We don’t think his back will hold up across four full rounds. The withdrawal from the Arnold Palmer Invitational was a bigger warning sign than most observers wanted to admit, and the Augusta hills are tougher on a fragile back than almost any major venue.
Our pick is for McIlroy to be in contention through 36 holes and to fade slightly over the weekend, finishing somewhere in the top fifteen. A respectable defence, but not a title.
The dark horse: Sungjae Im
Of the players outside the top ten in the betting market, Sungjae Im is the one we trust most this week. His ball-striking has been the steady highlight of his recent stretch, his putting on Bermuda greens at Innisbrook two weeks ago was excellent, and he has been quietly building experience at Augusta for years. If everything aligns — and a Masters often comes down to whether one of the steady plodders has his best week of the year at the right time — Im could be the surprise on the leaderboard come Sunday afternoon.
We have him at top-five.
The cut watch: Bryson DeChambeau
This one is nervier than it should be for a player with two LIV wins already this season. DeChambeau’s Masters record has always been mixed — boom or bust, sometimes within the same round — and Augusta has a way of frustrating his attacking style. We think he makes the cut comfortably and finishes in the top twenty without quite breaking through. Whether the future LIV-PGA tour structure changes anything is a question for another week.
The storyline of the week
If Aberg wins, the story is the coronation of the next great European star. If Scheffler wins, the story is dominance. If McIlroy wins, the story is history. If Sungjae Im wins, the story is the South Korean breakthrough nearly twenty years after Y.E. Yang’s PGA Championship.
But the story we’re most prepared for, regardless of the eventual winner, is that Augusta National produces another Sunday afternoon that nobody quite saw coming until it happened. The 12th hole always plays a role. The 13th and 15th decide more rounds than they should. And the 18th green delivers a final putt that the cameras will replay for years.
We are 48 hours away from finding out which version of the story this Masters writes. If history is any guide, the version we get will be better than anything we predicted today.
Bring it on. Pin High Press will be covering every round, every story, and every meaningful moment from Augusta all week. See you Thursday morning.