With the 2025 Masters right around the corner, golf’s leading analyst, Brandel Chamblee, discussed some of the big talking points heading into the year’s first major with GolfWRX Managing Editor, Gianni Magliocco.

Within the discussion, Chamblee revealed why he believes Augusta National isn’t a great fit for Rory McIlroy, how he thinks Jon Rahm sold out at a discount when he moved to LIV, and why golfers seem to be the most sensitive of all athletes when it comes to any sort of criticism.

Check out the full Q&A below.

Gianni: Last week on the Dan on Golf Show, you said Scottie Scheffler was your second favorite for the Masters despite being way off his game compared to where he has been over the last 2 or 3 years. Has his performance in Houston shown you enough to make you feel he will defend his title at Augusta, or do you think he’s a very vulnerable betting favorite this week?

Brandel: Scottie putted beautifully in Houston and finished second on a course that is the ultimate bombers party, and he is the furthest one could get from the stereotypical bomber, so that certainly betokens great form headed into Augusta.

Having said that, he is not as sharp as he was heading into last year’s Masters, where he is enough off his form around the greens that I wouldn’t make him the overwhelming favorite as he was last year. But Augusta National is the perfect fit for his game, as he is one of very few, if not the only one in the field, who can easily work the ball in every direction to find the right corridors and eliminate risk. 

Gianni: Most of the hype at the Masters this year is surrounding Rory McIlroy, and it feels justified this time. The consensus is that Augusta National is a course that suits his game given that he can bomb it out there with his draw off the tee and he can land his towering irons softly into the greens. But he’s only shot 70 or better here once since 2020. Does Augusta National even suit him? 

Brandel: I couldn’t disagree more with the consensus. Augusta National is not a great fit for Rory, and his results bear this out. It was his worst major in 2024, 2023, and 2021, namely because he struggles to hit his irons well enough on the hilly terrain to play his best golf there. Over the course of his career at Augusta, he averages hitting 42.6 greens in regulation, which is under his average on the PGA Tour and almost 10 greens in regulation less per week than the winner’s average. 

Gianni: This is the first time Rory has ever headed into the Masters with two wins on the PGA Tour under his belt for the season. It took Sergio Garcia 19 attempts to win his first and only Masters, this year will be McIlroy’s 17th attempt. If not now for Rory, then when?

Brandel: Well, Rory still has plenty of time. Fully one-third of Masters winners have been 35 years of age or older, and Rory is the rarest of “red wine” athletes in that he keeps getting better with age, much in the Roger Federer and Tom Brady vein.

There are quite a few positives working in Rory’s favor heading into this Masters. First, he has never come into a Masters in better form, thanks in large part I believe, because he is using a softer ball which allows him to work the ball easier and necessitates him hitting more partial shots to keep it down and take some speed off, which has the effect of keeping him on top of the ball and helps to mitigate the pulls with short irons. Second, of those obvious players who could challenge prominently, all of them are either off their games to some degree or the course doesn’t fit their games perfectly — with the caveat that we don’t really know the state of LIV player’s games — and finally, he has become a very good wind and poor weather player, so he is ready for whatever mother nature throws at him.

Gianni: You caught some heat from the LIV brigade when you said Joaquin Niemann is not as good as LIV says he is, and you backed that up pretty emphatically by dropping the fact that he’s played in 22 majors and never even finished in the top 15, including seven missed cuts. Since then, he’s won again on LIV, and Phil Mickelson raised plenty of eyebrows by calling him the current best player in the world. In your view, does Niemann contend or flop at Augusta this year? And who is the biggest LIV threat this year?

Brandel: There is no doubt that Joaquin Niemann is heck of a talent, and at 26 years of age, he is just coming into his physiological prime. The reason he hasn’t played his best golf in majors is because the greens tend to be more severe in that they are firmer and faster, and he has a lot of right side bend at impact, and this produces a lower ball flight that makes it harder to hit it close on firm and fast greens. The forecast is for a fair bit of rain early in the week at this Masters, which will definitely work in Joaquin’s favor.

However, predicting what a player will do in the majors based upon their LIV finishes is somewhat of a dubious exercise. Jon Rahm finished in the top 10 in every single LIV event he played in 2024, and finished 45th in the Masters last year, and missed the cut at the PGA Championship.  

Gianni: Some pros have been very salty in reaction to your critical takes in the past, and with recent incidents like players not wanting to talk to the media because things haven’t gone their way on the course. Do you think professional golfers are overly sensitive in comparison to athletes in other sports?

Brandel: I can say this because I was one, but professional golfers tend to be the most sensitive of all athletes, because unlike athletes in other sports, who get criticized from an early age on by coaches, media and the spectators, sometimes to ridiculous degrees, if you are a good enough player to make it to the PGA Tour, there is a chance no one has ever criticized your game. Professional golfers don’t answer to anyone, not to coaches — indeed, coaches answer to them — not to caddies, not to agents, not to PGA tour executives, not to sponsors…they answer to no one. So yes, they are overly sensitive.

Having said that though, most PGA Tour players are very accommodating with the media. Tiger Woods always talked, and though he may not have given the media the sound bites they were looking for, he talked when he played bad, good, or indifferent, as did Phil Mickelson.

What Collin Morikawa did at the Arnold Palmer Invitational does happen from time to time, as the players are not contracted to talk to the media, although I would argue the huge media rights fees that NBC and CBS pay tacitly obligate them to speak. It was what Collin said at The Players, that he didn’t owe the media anything, that sounded so out of touch, especially so given that the elite players have never had so many lucrative and closed shop concessions conceded to them and as a result are viewed more disfavourably amongst the public. It is certainly his prerogative to say that, but given how good a player he is and how bright he appears to be, it is a poor long-term strategy, in my view. 

Gianni: A few years ago Bryson DeChambeau was the butt of many jokes in the golf world. From calling Augusta National a par-67 to his feud with Brooks Koepka, he was about as unpopular as could be. He then took the Saudi money and has somehow built himself into a people’s champion of some sort. Contrarily, Jon Rahm was one of the best players in the world and popular amongst golf fans. Since his move, he’s become somewhat of an afterthought and it looks as if his decision weighs heavy on him and his golf game, the total opposite of Bryson.

What do you make of their contrasting trajectories in recent times?

Brandel: I think Jon Rahm is suffering from being viewed as a turncoat having in the past so clearly denounced what LIV was and stated that he wanted to play for the history and legacy of the PGA Tour. Indeed, to that point, the whole LIV scene seems to be incongruent with what Rahm was on the cusp of doing in professional golf. He looks like he sold out, and I would add, given what he was likely to do in the game, he sold his business at a discount.

But fans are fickle, and he could change the way he is viewed by having the kind of year in the majors that Bryson had in 2024. 

Gianni: Finally, if you could make any course changes to Augusta National, what would they be and why?

Brandel: Augusta National, more than any other golf course that I can think of, has made the necessary changes year after year to keep up with the obvious changes in the way the professional game is played.

To that point, in 1984 Augusta National played to a scoring average of 72.89, in 1994: 74.20, 2004: 73.97, 2014: 73.94, and last year the scoring average was 73.90.  There is no doubt golf course architect aficionados will find fault with some of the changes that the course has gone through but I would argue they have been necessary and have added to the continued enjoyment that we all have, at what is the most popular golf tournament in the world.