Golf fans have reason to be optimistic following Tiger Woods’s opening-round 69 at the Hero World Challenge Thursday in the Bahamas, his first competitive round in about 10 months.
And the oddsmakers? They’re psyched, too.
Enter Paddy Power, an Irish gambling website, which as of Friday morning give Woods better odds to win the Masters than — wait for it — Phil Mickelson.
Woods is listed at 33/1 to win the Masters, and Mickelson is 35/1. Woods also currently has the same odds or better odds to win than Henrik Stenson (33/1), Paul Casey (33/1), Brooks Koepka (35/1) and Tommy Fleetwood (100/1).
Woods’s last victory came at the 2013 Bridgestone, and Mickelson’s last win was the 2013 British Open. They have seven Masters green jackets between them.
But only one round into Woods’s return, look for these odds to bounce around for a while.
