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Why The Masters is the Easiest Major to Win

The Masters is golf's most celebrated tournament, but a number of factors—including the course and the field size—make it easier for top players to win.

It annually commands the biggest televised golf audience of the year in the United States. Tickets are like Willy Wonka's golden ticket, and are passed down from generation to generation. The merchandize pavilion often resembles Wal-Mart on the morning after Thanksgiving.

But while the Masters might be the most popular major championship in golf, if not the most colorful in terms of flora and fauna, it certainly falls far short in another notable classification: if you're a top golfer, the event staged annually at Augusta National is the easiest of the four Grand Slams to win.

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Even Jack Nicklaus has conceded this point. Mind you, he's an Augusta member and a six-time champion, with a record 18 major titles to his credit. Thus, he is Moses and this is his mountaintop.

"Easiest major to win?" Nicklaus said, uttering a phrase that first seems like a contraction of terms. "I suppose it probably is."

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Winning majors is tough, regardless of the venue. Yet if the British Open is the oldest, the U.S. Open is the toughest and the PGA Championship has the deepest field, the Masters perhaps tops the list solely as the most memorable, thanks in large part to its manicured golf course.

Opinions on the topic are one thing, but the supporting data is inarguable.

The three other majors offer full fields of 156 players, while Augusta's tee sheet generally averages around 95. This year, the number of starters stands at 89, the fewest since 2002.

Of that total, seven are players over age 50, who have only a small chance of making the cut, much less winning. Throw in six overmatched amateur invitees and the number of players with title hopes shrinks to 76, or roughly the number that makes a PGA Tour cut each week.

There's more. The list includes 14 professional players who will be making their first start at Augusta. Since 1934, the Masters has produced exactly one rookie winner, Fuzzy Zoeller, in 1979.

Thus, the plot thins.

To underscore how much depth matters to competitiveness, the PGA Championship usually lands between 95 and 100 players from the world top 100— and given the depth of the game globally, the notion of an "upset winner" has practically become obsolete. After all, if world No. 110 Y.E. Yang can beat Tiger Woods in a final-round staredown, which transpired seven years ago at the PGA, the point is underscored in red ink. The bigger the field, the tougher it is to hoist a trophy on Sunday night.

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Then there's the Masters venue itself, which favors power players such as Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Jason Day, Bubba Watson and Rory McIlroy, who all are capable of reaching the par-5 holes in two and hitting towering approach shots to tucked pins on diabolical greens.

"It's the smallest major championship field, but when you look at actually who has a chance to win this golf tournament, it is far fewer than the number of players in the event," Golf Channel and former tour veteran Notah Begay said.

In fact, Begay looked it up himself: Since 2000, 11 of 16 Masters winners have been ranked in the world top 10 at the time of their Augusta victory.

When you know how easy the Masters is because you have won, so you decide to take in the scenery. Photo: Rob Schumacher-USA TODAY Sports.

"So you can really start to eliminate players here more clearly than you can any other major championship, and it does boil down to a dozen or so players that really have a great chance," Begay said. "From that particular standpoint, all eyes are on the stars right from the get-go."

Five years ago, the Wall Street Journal ran more than 10,000 tournament simulations, factoring the field size, winning score and other variables. The publication determined the Masters came in a distant fifth in difficulty among the game's biggest events, the three other majors and the Players Championship.

The Masters also lags behind its majors brethren in advanced metrics used to measure both tournament depth and player performance. For instance, in 2013, the Augusta field featured 63 players from the world top 100. Eight other global events staged that same season had a higher number of top-100 players entered.

In reality, the Masters' vaunted status as the best of the majors in the minds of many is as much an illusion as the blue water in Rae's Creek, which meanders through the back nine and is filled with chemicals and dye so that it looks cool on television.

Does any of this matter to casual fans? Not from an enjoyment standpoint. Augusta National features the greatest fan experience in the game, and the place looks like Valhalla in green for those watching from home on a high-definition television.

After all, being more predictable than the other majors doesn't make it boring. In 2011, eight different players held at least a share of the lead on the back nine on Sunday before world No. 29 Charl Schwartzel birdied the final four holes to win as stars such as Tiger Woods, Lee Westwood, Luke Donald, Adam Scott and Rory McIlroy dropped back.

While some fans love underdogs, casual fans prefer the recognizable names. With stars like that on the board and a shot at Masters immortality at hand, who cares how many players are in the field or what the daily scoring average was?