McGinley breaks down his Masters favourites: "I think Rory would be a surprise winner"
Sky Sports’ Paul McGinley
Major championship punditry requires a lot more than the gift of the gab. That's why Paul McGinley has been doing his research before Sky Sports' provides wall-to-wall coverage of the Masters and his conclusions are not great news for Rory McIlroy or Bryson DeChambeau.
He might have four majors, and five top-tens in his last six Masters starts but Paul McGinley reckons Rory McIlroy would still be a "surprise" winner at Augusta National this week.
The 53-year-old Dubliner has never been a man to stoop to cheap sentimentalism, and as one of the leading analysts for Sky Sports' coverage of the final major of the season, he's crunched the numbers and made judicious use of his contacts book to get a feel for what to expect from the first November Masters and who might have the best claim to that green jacket.
Fans dreaming of a win for McIlroy, Shane Lowry, defending champion Tiger Woods or even hot favourite Bryson DeChambeau, would be better advised to hold on to their cash and look instead to Tyrrell Hatton, Xander Schauffele or Jon Rahm, or even Dustin Johnson or Bubba Watson.
"I have nothing against them but the bottom line is that their form is poor," he said of Lowry and McIlroy. "It is hard to justify (tipping them). I could put a positive spin on it and say, Rory, you know what, nobody is going to expect him to play well and this and that. But not really. Rory plays well when he's got the bit between his teeth, and it's 'Get out of my way, here I come, I am going to show you guys'."
When it comes to his punditry preparation, McGinley goes the extra mile to ask questions of his peers and contacts from caddies and coaches to club members and statisticians, just as he did for his hugely successful 2014 Ryder Cup captaincy.
His confidants have included two-time Masters champion Bernhard Langer, who impressed upon him the importance of pin-point approach play as the key to winning the Masters.
"I remember having dinner with him, and he explained it to me," McGinley recalled. "'Paul,' he said, 'everyone thinks Augusta is about putting, it is not', and he started laughing, he said, 'It's not, it is about iron play. You are hitting it into portions of the greens and if you can distance control, hit it into these portions and miss in the right place and leave yourself an uphill chip, the golf course is very scoreable, and you can make some birdies around it.'"
When it comes to iron play, McIlroy's ranking for strokes gained on approach has fallen off a cliff since golf emerged from the lockdown in June, hence McGinley's reluctance to tip him.
"In general, you would think this is lining up nicely for Rory, and the other thing that's going to work in his favour is he has been under the radar, his form has been so poor that everybody is talking about Rahm, everybody is talking about Bryson," he said.
"I don't fancy him, I have to say. I think he would be a surprise winner if he were to win, he showed no form post lockdown of any significance. All his categories have massively dropped off, not just his iron play. He was third in iron play going into the lockdown, strokes gained approach, and from lockdown to now he is 58th in that category of all the guys who have played on the PGA Tour."
McGinley points out that according to Augusta National's statistics, which have only been kept in the strokes gained format for the past five years, the winner of the strokes gained approach category has won the Masters three times out of five and come second and third in the other two years.
"That's why I would be surprised if he really raised a gallop this week on top of the fact there is a massive weight of history on his shoulders," he said, referring to the career grand slam.
"He played so, so a couple of weeks ago [in the ZOZO Championship at Sherwood], had 29 birdies, more birdies than he has ever had before, he said all I have to do is cut out the mistakes, but that is easier said than is done. The mistakes are coming, a lot of it is coming from poor iron play."
Inconsistency counts against Woods and Lowry and with first-time major winners triumphing behind closed doors in the US PGA (Collin Morikawa) and the US Open (DeChambeau) he reckons the scenario could be repeated at a fan-free Augusta, where he has three clear favourites based on their iron play, their form and their talent.
"Next week is going to be about aggressive play because of the soft conditions," said McGinley, who will always add Dustin Johnson to any list of favourites given his FedEx Cup win and recent Masters form.
"And those three guys are Rahm, Schauffele and Tyrrell Hatton. They would be the three I'd look at statistically as the guys that are trending.
"Another guy I'd put in there who is in great form over the last four or five weeks and has won twice around there is Bubba Watson. Keep an eye out for him."
As for DeChambeau, who he believes has merely "joined the party" in terms of big-hitting, he doesn't see him repeating his US Open performance given the course design at Augusta National, where you are deep in the trees if you miss fairways and where running the ball in is not often possible with water a factor.
Two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson. Picture: Augusta National
“There were a number of advantages Bryson had at the US Open. First of all, he had a better strategy than everybody else going into the event, he decided I’m not going to be intimidated by this course, as long as I miss it on the wide part of the elbow I can chop it onto the green as the rough was not too bad. Two things played to that strategy though, first of all was nearly every one of the greens were sloped from back to front, old fashioned greens so as the ball went into the green the natural camber held it and stopped it running off the back.
“The second thing that worked to his advantage in Winged Foot was most of the greens you can chase the ball in from the front of the green so even though he was coming from the rough he could land it a few yards short and chase it up into the middle of the green. That’s not the case at Augusta, a lot of the greens are raised up with water at the front and really dense trees along the fairways if you get out of position, take 15 for example, you get behind them trees left I don’t care who you are you are not getting to that green with a slinging hook. So there are a number of factors that wont play to his advantage like they did at Winged Foot.
"Do I see Bryson do something at Augusta? I don't think so no. Would I totally discount him and say he won't win this? No, I don't as I think he is unique, maverick and very strong mentally with a lot of confidence and belief in what he is doing.
"So he is certainly one of the guys I would put down as one of the favourites, but I'm not seeing him going to Augusta and playing a different game than anybody else just like Tiger did in '97, I don't think he is going to be able to do that."
He added: “Rory has trended in previous years and I have been very bullish about his chances but his form is not there at the moment for me to give a strong feeling that Rory can do it. And it is the same with Shane. I tipped Shane to win the Open last year on the Wednesday, live on Sky, because he was in form and I had a sense of where he was at and where his form was at and the way he was playing. That’s what I base my assumptions on and why I will discount Rory and Shane and I will discount Tiger. It is highly unusual to go from a poor run of form into winning a major championship. Generally you see guys trending before they win and for that reason, I look to guys who haven’t won majors before in Xander, Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton.
“Another guy I’d put in there who is in great form over the last four or five weeks and has won twice around there is Bubba Watson. Keep an eye out for him. This long golf course will suit him as well, the aggressive play will suit him and quietly he has gone about compiling a nice run of form.
“Dustin Johnson is another one. Again, lots of form. I think he has played nine Masters, his first five, he missed the cut more times than he played well [he went T30, T38, T38, T13, MC then T6, T4, T10, T2) and never had a top 10. And his last four he has had four top 10s in a row. So this guy is getting used to playing this golf course.
“This guys was really focussed and brilliant in winning the FedEx in August (won Tour Championship and FedEx on 6 Sept). I know he has had Covid since and is playing over in Houston so keep an eye on him because he’s a guy that’s trending and one of those guys in the right place mentally to go on and continue that run of form. Morikawa showed some really good form before he went on to twin. Bryson the same before he went on to win. I am a great believer in that and I make my assumptions based on form and the golf course they are going to be playing.”
McGinley's biggest regret is that Sky Sports can't be on-site at Augusta National due to the pandemic.
"Yeah, it's going to be very different being in London and not Augusta," he said. "Luckily, I know the golf course really well. My job as an analyst for Sky is to read between the lines and a lot of the information I use I get from being on-site, whether that be talking to caddies, players, coaches or just walking the course to see how holes are playing.
"All of that helps me form my opinions on how things are going to pan out, and unfortunately I can't do that, and I really miss that so as a result it's text messages and communicating with people on the ground over there and trying to get a sense through them as to how things are."
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