The Masters is less than a month away, in April. So BetTexas, as part of its coverage of topics that potential Texas sports betting customers would follow, decided to look at which state has produced the most Masters winners. Hint: We knew it was Texas, whose golfers have claimed 14 green jackets.
In second place is California with 11, nearly half of which have been won by Tiger Woods, and in third place is Ohio, largely due to some guy named Jack (Nicklaus). Arnold Palmer helped put Pennsylvania in fourth place, and Tom Watson can be thanked for getting Missouri to fifth.
We ranked the top 10 states with the most Masters Tournament champions based on total wins. For any ties, we factored in total average to par to come up with the higher-ranking state. Stay with BetTexas.com for articles about whether legal Texas sportsbook apps will be activated.
States Producing Most Masters Winners
Pride Of Texas Shows At Augusta
States with a single Masters win are: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Tennessee and Washington.
But back to Texas. The parade of Masters winners started with Ralph Guldahl, of Dallas, in 1939. Next came the great Byron Nelson of Waxahachie, who won his first Masters in 1937 and his second in 1942. He was still hosting his own golf tournament 60 years later.
Snappy, snazzy Jimmy Demaret of Houston won three green jackets – in 1940, 1947, and 1950, and was a big enough star in his time to have appeared in a 1954 episode of “I Love Lucy.”
The legendary Ben Hogan, of Stephenville, won the Masters in 1951 and 1953, both wins coming after he, his wife Valerie, and his Cadillac, survived a head-on collision with a Greyhound Bus in 1949. Hogan, a World War II veteran, threw himself in front of Valerie in the passenger seat when the bus hit, and in doing so saved his own life: The steering wheel ended up going through the driver’s seat.
Jack Burke Jr., of Fort Worth, won the 1956 Masters. He and Demaret founded Champions Golf Club in Houston, and Burke is the only major golf champion thus far who lived to be 100. Burke died this January at nearly 101.
Charles Coody of Stamford won the 1971 Augusta tournament, outdueling Nicklaus and a young Johnny Miller on Sunday.
Texans Shining In Modern Era
The best putter to come out of Austin, Ben Crenshaw, won the Masters in 1984 and then again 1995, that amazing week he barely kept it together following the death of Harvey Penick, his longtime friend and mentor.
Dallas native Jordan Spieth won the 2015 Masters, during his amazing 21-year-old season in which he also won the U.S. Open, finished fourth in The Open and second in the PGA. The most recent winner from Texas was San Antonio’s Patrick Reed, who fended off Rory McIlroy, Spieth, and Rickie Fowler to win in 2018.
Present-day Texan Scottie Scheffler won the 2022 Masters but, though he now lives in Dallas, he’s originally from New Jersey. Next door to Texas, in Louisiana, the DraftKings Sportsbook is available and that operators has Scheffler as the favorite, with +650 odds, to win the 2024 Masters.
