The Green Jacket Goes To…? Using a Data Science Approach to Picking the Winner of The Masters

Spring is the time when many sports fans are glued to their brackets in hopes of asserting their ability to correctly select amongst the 150 quintillion permutations of Teams who will win the NCAA Basketball Championship (see our blog post on this subject). My personal highlight of the spring sports calendar is the Masters Golf Tournament, which is held every year at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia. The professional golf schedule contains four major tournaments each year: The Masters, The US Open, The Open Championship, and The PGA Championship. Of these tournaments, only the Masters is played on the same course every year and its champion is awarded the iconic Masters Champion green jacket. Having participated in a number of fantasy sports leagues and being a Data Scientist at MapR gives me a unique perspective on my approach to choosing who I think will most likely "win" the tournament.