DORAL, Fla. — The takeaway from the World Golf Championships event here is that the Masters cannot start soon enough. Can we press the pause button and freeze the PGA Tour until April 7, the opening round of the Masters?

The first few months of the wraparound season have seen so many players assert themselves, the lead pack is more of a scrum as golf rounds the final curve toward Augusta National. The defending Masters champion, Jordan Spieth; Justin Thomas; and Hideki Matsuyama have claimed victories for millennials, and another, Rickie Fowler, has four top-eight finishes in five PGA Tour starts in 2016 and a win on the European Tour.

The last few weeks of the wraparound season have seen so many former Masters champions assert themselves, it is hard to settle on one pretournament favorite. Three times in the past five years, Bubba Watson has finished second at the World Golf Championships event at Trump National Doral. The first two times, he went on to win the Masters.

Watson, 37, whose runner-up finish Sunday came on the heels of a victory at the tour stop outside Los Angeles two weeks ago, should be the prohibitive favorite at Augusta National, according to Adam Scott, the winner at Doral.