Nobody is watching golf at the moment, but your best bet is that this will change when the Masters is played. It is a rite of spring, and every golf fan finds a way to see what is going on at Augusta each April.

The PGA Tour and the LIV Tour were supposed to have merged by now, but their deadline was Dec. 31, which was more than three months ago. There has been no word on what the holdup is -- part of the across-the-board dearth of reliable information out there in the United States news industry.

The LIV golfers are playing in Miami this weekend while the PGA golfers are at the Valero Texas Open in Houston. The merger that we all heard about late last year is not happening, and nobody knows why, least of all the golfers themselves.

But the top golfers from both tours will be on the course together at Augusta from April 11 to 14, led (in a way) by Tiger Woods, who flew by himself to Georgia last week for a practice round on the course where he was victorious in 1997, 2001, 2002, 2005, and 2019. He is also abstaining from sex, according to the New York Post.

Whether Woods can be competitive this year remains to be seen. He is on the Betway board at +10000 for Masters bets -- the same odds as Nick Taylor from Canada and Si Woo Kim of South Korea. Scottie Scheffler is the +400 favorite among Masters picks after finishing tied for 10th last year, when Jon Rahm won his first green jacket.

Ratings for golf events are down 20 percent from a year ago, and PGA Tour member Rory McIlroy said yesterday that he “isn’t surprised that many golf fans have become disenchanted” after nearly two years of PGA Tour-LIV Golf feuding, according to Tim Schmitt of GolfWeek. Schmitt noted that McIlroy also “sounded more than just mildly concerned about the ramifications that appear to be manifesting in recent viewership numbers.”

McIlroy said that the raw data from PGA Tour telecasts is “alarming, as one in every five former TV viewers has decided to shut the product off.”

“If you look at the TV ratings of the PGA Tour this year, they’re down 20 percent across the board,” McElroy said. “... I just think with the fighting and everything that’s went on over the past couple years, people are just getting really fatigued of it and it’s turning people off men’s professional golf, and that’s not a good thing for anyone.”

He added that "it will be really interesting to see how the major championship numbers fare compared to the other bigger events because there’s an argument to be made if the numbers are better and you’ve got all the best players in the world playing, then there’s an argument to say ‘OK, we need to get this thing back together.’”

That is why the merger deal with the Dec. 31 deadline was supposed to go down. Stay tuned.

Odds to win the Masters 2024

Scottie Scheffler +400
Rory McIlroy +1000
Jon Rahm +1200
Brooks Koepka +2000
Jordan Speith +2000
Viktor Hovland +2000
Xander Schauffele +2000
Justin Thomas +2500
Ludvig Aberg +2500
Patrick Cantlay +2500
Will Zalatoris +2500
Wyndham Clark +2500
Cameron Smith +2800
Hideki Matsuyama +2800
Joaquin Niemann +2800
Bryson DeChambeau +3300
Cameron Young +3300
Collin Morikawa +3300
Dustin Johnson +3300
Tony Finau +3300
Jason Day +4000
Matt Fitzpatrick +4000
Max Homa +4000
Shane Lowry +4000
Brian Harman +5000
Min Woo Lee +5000
Sahith Theegala +5000
Sam Burns +5000
Tommy Fleetwood +5000
Corey Conners +6600
Justin Rose +6600
Patrick Reed +6600
Rickie Fowler +6600
Sungjae Im +6600
Tom Kim +6600
Tyrell Hatton +6600
Adam Scott +8000
Russell Henley +8000
Stephen Jaeger +8000
Nick Taylor +10000
Si Woo Kim +10000
Tiger Woods +10000
Adam Hadwin +12500
Chris Kirk +12500
Denny McCarthy +12500
Harris English +12500
Nicolai Hojgaard +12500
Phil Mickelson +12500
Adrian Meronk +15000
Austin Eckroat +15000
Cameron Davis +15000
Emiliano Grillo +15000
Eric Cole +15000
Erik van Rooyen +15000
JT Poston +15000

See the full Masters 2024 picks on Betway Sportsbook

2024 Masters Betting Preview and Predictions

Last year, we gave you the winner: Jon Rahm. So pay attention, OK? When you have a sportswriter who owns a 1-iron and knows how to use it, you cannot yip a 9-inch putt.

2024 Masters Best Bets: Top Picks

We are going with a Masters rookie. Wyndham Clark won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February with a course-record 60 at Pebble Beach Golf Links and finished runner-up in both the Arnold Palmer Invitational and The Players Championship over consecutive weeks in March. He had a breakthrough year in 2023 by becoming a major champion with his U.S. Open victory at Los Angeles Country Club, while also winning Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte for his first career PGA Tour victory. In addition, he finished third in his Tour Championship debut at East Lake and earned a place on his first United States Ryder Cup team. We like him because of what he has been doing this year, and we believe he can overcome the machine named Scottie Scheffler on the final 9 Sunday at Augusta. Just remember where you heard about him when he was priced at +2500.

The Pick: Wyndham Clark +2500

The Masters Sleepers 2024

This is where it gets fun, because not everybody spends their life watching golf on television, and there are too many tours to keep track of (The DP Tour is the European Tour; the LIV plays all over the world; the PGA Asia Tour plays all over the Far East; and there are champions and runners-up in the Masters from the U.S. Amateur, the U.S. Mid-Amateur and the U.S. Senior Open).

We are going to give you three guys to consider whose odds are not prohibitive and whose chances might be better than some realize.

Ludvig Aberg (+2500): The Swedish golfer, who graduated Texas Tech last year as the world’s top-ranked amateur, qualified by being in the Top 30. He earned his first DP World Tour win in September in Switzerland, was part of the winning European Ryder Cup team in Italy in October, and earned his first PGA Tour win in St. Simons Island in November. He started 2023 outside the top 3,000 in the Official World Golf Ranking and ended the year inside the top 30.

Hideki Matsuyama (+2800): The 2022 winner of the green jacket has top-six finishes in all four majors, including runner-up in the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills in Wisconsin. Matsuyama won at Los Angeles in February for his first victory in over two years. He finished T-6 in The Players Championship in March, is ranked 14th in the World, and won the Genesis Invitational at Riviera in March.

Viktor Hovland (+2000): The sixth-ranked golfer in the world will be coming off a three-week vacation. The Swede, who attended Oklahoma State, will be making his fifth Masters appearance, and he has never missed a cut. He won three times in 2023, with victories in the Memorial Tournament and consecutive playoff events in Chicago and Atlanta. Last year he was also the runner-up in the PGA Championship at Oak Hill, recorded top 20s in both the U.S. Open and The Open, and went 3-1-1 for the European team that won the Ryder Cup.

The Masters Dark Horse Pick 2024

This is the guy nobody sees coming, sort of like Patrick Reed in 2018 and Danny Willett of Scotland in 2016. The Masters is unique in that the green-jacketed members on the tournament selection committee can choose anyone they please, and sometimes a special invite can lead to a surprise finish.

The Pick: Corey Conners (+6600): The 28-year-old from Ontario was the first-round leader at the Valero Texas Open, so he will come in as a known commodity by the time he gets to Georgia. He finished inside the top 10 at Augusta National in three of the past four years with a T-10 in 2020, T-8 in 2021, and T-6 in 2022. Before turning professional, he was a two-time All-American at Kent State University in Ohio and reached the final of the 2014 U.S. Amateur at Atlanta Athletic Club.

The Masters Betting Odds at Betway

Find The Master odds on the Betway. You’ll find all the latest moneylines, props, round totals and more! Missed tip-off? No problem, Betway also offers live betting. All your Golf betting needs are covered at our online sportsbook.