The Masters: Tournament betting specials, odds, tips and analysis

Louis Oosthuizen has gone the distance in the Masters before, losing a playoff for the Green Jacket to Bubba Watson in 2012, and the South African is playing well enough to be a factor at Augusta again this year.

Oosthuizen looks a bargain at a shade of odds-on to end the Masters as the leading South African, a six-man section for which he fully deserves his status at the head of the market. He has made five consecutive cuts at Augusta and three of those five visits yielded a top-20 finish.

A runaway victory in the South African Open just before Christmas – an exhibition of brilliance in which he finished six shots ahead of the runner-up – provided a timely confidence boost for a sweet-swinger who has underachieved over the last few years. And Oosthuizen has carried that form into the new year.

Fourth place in Abu Dhabi has been followed more recently by a tie for second in the Valspar Championship and a run to the quarter-finals of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, where he was defeated by the eventual champion, Kevin Kisner.

Oosthuizen is a proven Majors performer, who won the Open in 2010 and has finished second in each of the other three Majors, and he can leave Branden Grace, Charl Schwartzel, Justin Harding, Trevor Immelman and Jovan Rebula in his wake this week.

Grace is not well suited by Augusta and has missed the cut in half of his six Masters starts, Schwartzel has missed six cuts this year and dropped outside of the world's top 100, Harding and Rebula are Augusta debutants, while Immelman has missed the cut in the last five Masters and has little to offer these days.

The other special-category prices which appeal involve Norwegian sensation Viktor Hovland, the power-packed US Amateur champion. The 21-year-old slugger has a game which could immediately yield birdies at Augusta and he could prove different gravy to the rest of his fellow part-timers in the top amateur market. Rebula, Takumi Kanaya, Alvaro Ortiz, Kevin O'Connell and Devon Bling may be left behind.

Hovland is also worth chancing as outsider in the top Scandinavian market. Henrik Stenson needed 13 visits to the Masters before registering a top-ten finish and looks a vulnerable short-price favourite after a lacklustre start to the season.

If Hovland takes the expected shine to Augusta, then Stenson, Alex Noren, Thorbjorn Olesen and Lucas Bjerregaard are all beatable.

Recommendations
L Oosthuizen top South African
3pts 19-20 RedZone
V Hovland top amateur
2pts 7-4 general
V Hovland top Scandinavian
1pt 18-1 bet365

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