‘Cake walk for Scottie Scheffler’: Brandel Chamblee critiques Tour stars’ poor form ahead of Masters

The start of the 2024 Masters is only one week away, and on Tuesday night Brandel Chamblee previewed what he sees as the biggest storyline heading into the first major of the year: the game’s best (with one exception) are playing poorly.

In a post on X, Chamblee called out the disappointing stats of pretty much every Tour star not named Scottie Scheffler. To prove his point, he focused on a list of nine players who were in the top 20 heading into last year’s Masters, ranking them by how much they’ve lost in the Strokes Gained: Total stat since then.

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World No. 7 Patrick Cantlay tops Chamblee’s list, which is not a good thing. According to Chamblee, he’s lost the most in SG: Total compared to last year, to the tune of -1.767. Cantlay hasn’t won an event since the 2022 BMW Championship.

The remainder of the list reads like a who’s-who of the PGA Tour’s elite ranks: Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Max Homa, Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, Tony Finau, Matt Fitzpatrick and Tom Kim.

You can see Chamblee’s full ranking below.

In addition to identifying two other Tour stars who are failing to perform of late, Chamblee also commented on one of his favorite topics: LIV Golf players.

He noted there’s evidence that the stars of LIV aren’t burning up the fairways and greens heading into the Masters either, writing, “There is some statistical analysis (mind you the stats on LIV aren’t great) that will show how the games of many of the stars on LIV have fallen off as well.”

What does it all mean? Chamblee concluded with a duel prediction for how this year’s Masters could turn out, given Scheffler’s world-beating play and the rest of the stars’ poor form.

“This will do one of two things in my opinion. It will either make this year’s Masters… wide open or an absolute cake walk for Scottie Scheffler.”

The 2024 Masters officially gets underway Thursday morning, April 11, at Augusta National Golf Club.

Kevin Cunningham

Golf.com Editor

As managing producer for GOLF.com, Cunningham edits, writes and publishes stories on GOLF.com, and manages the brand’s e-newsletters, which reach more than 1.4 million subscribers each month. A former two-time intern, he also helps keep GOLF.com humming outside the news-breaking stories and service content provided by our reporters and writers, and works with the tech team in the development of new products and innovative ways to deliver an engaging site to our audience.