Dark Horses

Here’s a shorter list designed to help you win with longer odds when the new Masters champion is crowned as the light fades over the pines on Sunday afternoon. Written in the dead of winter, it doesn’t contain the names of players who have been tearing it up on the PGA Tour in 2011, including two-time winner Mark Wilson, the rookie with the great nickname, Johnny Vegas, the multi-shot making wizard Bubba Watson, Los Angeles winner Aaron Baddeley and other winners Jonathan Byrd, resurgent Vijay Singh (the 2000 Masters Champion), Hunter Mahan and Match Play Champion Luke Donald, who rose to number three in the world with that late-February win. Just as dangerous as these five excellent players are some veterans, some newcomers and all a threat to become the 2011 Masters Tournament Champion.

 

Photo by Zach Boyden Holmes

Ernie Els

The easy-going, three-time major champion Ernie Els won the 2010 World Golf Championship-Cadillac Championship over the TPC Blue Monster course at Doral last March and two weeks later won the Arnold Palmer Invitational. The South African also won the South African Open Championship in December, which is counted as part of the European PGA Tour’s 2011 schedule. Els was also elected to the 2011 class of the World Golf Hall of Fame last year. He has six top 10s at the Masters, including two second-place finishes, both one-stroke heartbreakers, in 2000 to Tiger Woods and 2004 to Phil Mickelson. His game is obviously back and his chances are good.

 

Photo by Rainier Ehrhardt

Dustin Johnson

There are plenty of reasons to admire Dustin Johnson other than the news that he was spending time with LPGA pinup girl Natalie Gulbis. After near misses at both the U.S. Open and the PGA last year, Johnson got his fourth career victory by winning the BMW Championship (and $1,350,000) during the FedExCup playoffs. Among the longest players on the PGA Tour, this Columbia, S.C., native and Myrtle Beach resident also has the delicate touch around the greens that is required to win the Masters.

 

Photo by Michael Holahan

Rory McIlroy

Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland finished in the top 10 in nine of his 17 European Tour sanctioned events in 2010, including third-place finishes at the British Open Championship, the PGA Championship and the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship. At the Open he shot the lowest opening round in the 150-year history of the tournament with 63 at St. Andrews, which tied the course record there. In America, he won the Quail Hollow Championship with a final-round course record 62 to beat second-place Phil Mickelson by four shots. Although quite young (he’ll be 22 in May), McIlroy has a wealth of experience to go with a dramatic personality—and game. He finished 2010 at 10th in the World Golf Rankings and moved up a couple of spots by February. A Masters win would shoot him near the top of the world.

 

 

Photo by Corey Perrine

Edoardo Molinari

In 2010 Edoardo Molinari, who turned 30 in February, won the OMEGA Mission Hills World Cup, a PGA Tour sponsored event played in China in November, the Barclays Scottish Open in July and the Johnny Walker Championship at Gleneagles, Scotland, in August. That shot him up the World Golf Rankings, finishing the year at number 18. This will be Molinari’s third Masters, having been invited in 2006 as the 2005 U.S. Amateur Champion and last year based on his world ranking. Playing with his brother Francesco, they won the World Cup for Italy in 2009. A three-win season is rare in this day of global competition and Molinari is ready to take his game to the next level.

 

Photo by Zach Boyden Holmes

Louis Oosthuizen

The previously little-known British Open Champion Louis Oosthuizen amazed the world with his brilliant play to win by seven strokes at the Home of Golf, the Old Course at St. Andrews. Since 1913 only one player had won the Open by a wider margin when Tiger Woods won by eight at the Old Course in 2000. We don’t know if the long-shot South African bet on himself at the 200-to-1 odds he generated before play began at St. Andrews, but he didn’t need to with a winner’s check of more than €1 million. Oosthuizen proved it was not a fluke in early January this year when he won the African Open in his home country over a strong European field.