5 Players to Watch This Week Who Could Use Some Good Vibes Before the Masters

As of Monday morning, there are 23 players in this week’s Valero Texas Open field who also have an invitation into next week’s Masters Tournament.

Some of these guys likely just want a final tune-up before heading to Augusta National. Tommy Fleetwood has finished inside the top-10 in half of his starts this season; Sepp Straka has been top-20 in more than half; Russell Henley only has one result outside the top-20 since last spring.

Not everyone, though, is simply fine-tuning their games.

Of the 23 who are teeing it up in San Antonio, there are some who have a little something to prove – whether to the observing masses or just to themselves. Let’s take a look at five who are hoping to find a little something in advance of next week.

Collin Morikawa

[Editor’s note]: Morikawa withdrew Tuesday morning.

When we last saw Morikawa, he was pulling out of The Players Championship after just one hole, feeling a tweak in his back while taking a practice swing on his second hole of Thursday morning.

We’ll have an idea before the opening round – when Morikawa does his pre-tournament interview session – as to exactly what the diagnosis was and how close he is to 100 percent right now, but his performance will likely tell us more than those words.

At a course which tends to benefit the best iron players, his absence from the leaderboard would be conspicuous. For a two-time major champion who hasn’t finished outside the top-20 at Augusta in the past half-decade, this week’s extra reps are much more than a luxury.

Jordan Spieth

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been a full 10 years since Spieth was the defending champion at the Masters, then took a five-stroke lead on the second nine, only to lose it and finish in a share of second place.

Ever since then, Spieth has struggled to retain his status as one of the game’s best players, though Augusta often brings out the best in him, with three top-fives in the last eight years to go with a trio of top-twos in his first three starts.

So far this season, there have been a lot of two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back kind of performances from Spieth – the kind where, seemingly out of nowhere, you see his name on the leaderboard, only to watch it fall from the first page almost immediately.

A bevy of circles and squares on the scorecard might make for entertaining television, but if the 2015 champion has designs on contending again, he’ll need to clean up the mistakes – and that starts with this week’s Valero.

Ludvig Aberg

This year’s Florida Swing created plenty of scar tissue for 54-hole leaders, as none of them parlayed that advantage into victory the next day. That includes Aberg, who was not only in front at the beginning of the final round at The Players, but led by multiple strokes before perhaps the most egregious errors of his young career.

The 26-year-old Swede hit his second shot at the par-5 11^th hole into the water hazard, then repeated that mistake off the tee on the par-4 12^th, essentially ruining his opportunity to claim what would’ve been the biggest win of his career to date.

With a runner-up and solo seventh in his two Masters starts so far, it’s difficult to believe Aberg will let those mistakes bother him in Augusta, but a week of golf beforehand should easily clear his mind after that tough loss.

Hideki Matsuyama

The Masters champion five years ago, Matsuyama might entice some bettors as a sneaky play at an inflated outright price next week, but of course, that price is inflated because of his recent spate of inconsistent play.

Not that it’s been terrible for Hideki by any means, but after a final-hole bogey led to a playoff loss at the WM Phoenix Open, he bounced back with a T-8 the next week, but hasn’t finished inside the top-25 in three starts since.

If there’s some consolation for him, it should come in the fact that he didn’t have a single top-10 in 10 starts prior to his Masters win, including a T-30 in San Antonio the previous week, but you’ve got to believe he would at least like a little momentum this time around.

J.J. Spaun

A year ago, Spaun was one of the best stories in golf – a career grinder who propelled himself into the game’s upper echelon, punctuated by a U.S. Open victory that was shocking in a few different ways.

In his attempt to keep that going, he’s gotten off to a slow start, missing the cut in more than half of his starts, while posting a season-best T-24 at The Players after having dealt with a case of vertigo.

If there’s a perfect “get-right” spot for Spaun, it might be at the Valero, which served as his lone PGA Tour victory before last year’s major, having won the 2022 edition by four strokes. He’s undoubtedly hoping those good vibes lead to better results next week, as he owns a T-23 and solo 50^th in two tries at Augusta.