Open Championship Predictions: Conservative/Aggressive Plays for Every Type of Bettor

When the world’s best golfers last convened at venerable Royal Troon, two of them stood above all others in a duel for the ages, as Henrik Stenson defeated Phil Mickelson by three strokes, with nobody else better than a few touchdowns away.

In attempting to prognosticate this week’s festivities, some might try to extrapolate something from this golf course which lends itself to a head-to-head battle, but it would be unwise to chase that outlier.

A dozen years earlier, it was mega-longshot Todd Hamilton who surprised Ernie Els in a playoff; prior to that, Justin Leonard and Mark Calcavecchia each presided over the crowning achievement of their lengthy careers.

Without any specific trend to chase at this venue, it would be wise to at least understand the types of players who have captured the Claret Jug over the past decade

Past British Open Winners

Total it all up and you’ll find three times as many winners from 80/1 or longer (Johnson, Lowry and Harman) than those who were the favorite (Spieth). The average pre-tournament price during this time is 45/1, which suggests a lean toward longshots over the Masters (24/1 average winner’s odds over the past decade), the PGA Championship (53/1, but 31/1 when Mickelson’s massive 2021 price is excluded) and U.S. Open (32/1). 

For this reason, I’ve included a few players with bigger prices below, but I just can’t get away from my favorite play on the board – a guy trying to bookend majors by winning for the first time in the aforementioned decade, from the second-favorite position, just like that previous occasion.

Open Championship Outright Picks

Conservative: Rory McIlroy (+800)

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me 37 times, shame on me. McIlroy’s major championship drought has extended for so long that it’s become a social media punchline. (The best one goes something like this: Rory is +800 this week, which means if you place $100 on him to win, you’ll make exactly zero dollars.) There’s no doubt that he’s had his chances and endured some heartache, notably at last month’s U.S. Open, when a couple of missed short putts on the last three holes led to a one-shot loss – and another layer of scar tissue.

He’s also, as he pointed out last week, made a habit of bouncing back from these close calls. When he blew it at the Masters in 2011, he countered with his first career major title at the U.S. Open a month later. When he missed the cut in his native Northern Ireland at Royal Portrush in 2019 and shoulda/coulda/woulda won at St. Andrews three years later, there were no more majors for the remainder of the summer, but he did claim the FedEx Cup in the aftermath of each.

If you remain skeptical that Rory can finally turn the odometer over from four to five, I won’t talk you out of that hunch. What I will remind you about, though, is that we’ve seen a handful of trends get reversed this year, especially when it comes to elite-level players attempting to close out events. All of the tangibles point in Rory’s favor, as his ball-striking has been terrific for months. If he can master the mental side and stay out of his own way – a big if, for sure – that lengthy drought can finally end this week.

Aggressive: Jason Day (+10000) and Nicolai Hojgaard (+10000)

Instead of offering one longshot at something around 50/1, I’ll give you two at twice the price. When examining triple-digit potential for outrights, I’m essentially just weighing a specific player’s ceiling. I want someone whose best golf is good enough to win, because anything less is a losing ticket anyway.

With Day and Hojgaard, I believe we’ve identified a couple of these players. I’m actually a little surprised about Day’s number here, considering he finished in a share of second place last year, but a string of middling results kept this price from getting shorter. His ball-striking has paled in comparison to his putting lately, which isn’t the type of trend we prefer to target, but the upside still obviously exists even at this later stage of his career. 

Hojgaard is still very much in the early stages of his, yet owns a tremendous amount of offensive firepower. A pair of opening 66s had him in contention entering the weekend at the Scottish Open, and it’s not difficult to imagine him replicating those totals this week. A 23rd-place finish at The Open last year and T-16 at this year’s Masters should have us realizing that a major championship spotlight isn’t too bright for the 23-year-old.

Open Championship Top-5 Picks

Conservative: Tyrrell Hatton (+450)

Common wisdom suggests that Hatton’s best chance at winning a major would come at The Open, considering he’s from England, knows links golf, and tends to own a lower ball-flight than many of his peers. The reality is that his record in this event might surprise you in that it only includes a pair of top-10s in 11 starts, his lone top-five coming back in 2016. Of course, that was the last time this was held at Royal Troon, and Hatton feels like a guy who should be ready to contend once again, fresh off a third-place finish in the LIV event at Valderrama this weekend, which unlike some LIV major predecessors might be a decent barometer for impending success 

Aggressive: Tom Kim (+700)

Last year, Kim parlayed his relative inexperience on links courses into a share of sixth place at the Scottish Open, then injured his ankle at his rental house and still finished tied for second at The Open. This time, he comes in after a T-15 result, but one which yielded a final-round 64 when he was fourth in SG: Off the tee and second in SG: Approach. During a stretch when he played nine weeks in a row, Kim started to find a little something, leading to a playoff loss against Scottie Scheffler at the Travelers Championship. It’s not difficult to envision him continuing that momentum at this one, to the tune of another title contention.

Open Championship Top-10 Picks

Conservative: Ludvig Aberg (+110)

I’ll be the first to admit that “conservative” and “obvious” can be a confounding overlap, so if you’d like to reply to this selection with, “No duh!” then I’ll gladly accept the criticism. That said, even obvious plays can cash tickets, and if you’re playing some bigger prices this week, then it can’t hurt to try to hit a few bankroll plays at something closer to even-money.

While I know Aberg was disappointed with his final-round 73 at the Scottish Open, as an Aberg investor, I might be more excited that he got an ugly round out of the way before this week. This guy is going to win majors, plural, and he’s going to win ‘em soon. Playing him for a top-10 makes a ton of sense.

Aggressive: Shane Lowry (+320)

He might’ve been out of sight last week, but Lowry shouldn’t be out of mind for this one. Full disclosure: I almost included him as part of the staking plan for the Scottish Open, only to realize that – and this is usually an important detail when backing a player – he wasn’t in the field. No worries, we’ll just back him this week instead. Lowry has been low-key fantastic from tee to green this year and obviously loves this tournament.

Just as Bryson DeChambeau picked off a second U.S. Open before winning one of the other three majors, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the 2019 Open winner put his hands back on the Claret Jug sooner than any of the others. The play is for a top-10 here, but the 33/1 outright number is worth a long look, as well.

Open Championship Top-20 Picks

Conservative: Ryan Fox (+350)

I was the president of the Ryan Fox Fan Club last week, and we were still accepting applications after he started with a pair of 67s. While a couple of 70s on the weekend doesn’t sound terrible, it all added up to a T-57 result, which – oh, by the way – doesn’t even pay for the fan club membership. All of that said, I’ll stick with him this week, based on a terrific links record. A tougher course should also probably suit him better.

Aggressive: Matteo Manassero (+600)

True story: About a dozen years ago, when I was working at Golf Channel, I spearheaded a “Golf Draft” that we conducted around the NFL Draft, during which anchors, analysts, writers and producers from the channel each made a draft selection. The random draw left me with a mid-first round pick and I chose Manassero, who at the time was only 19 or 20 and already had three or four DP World Tour wins. That’s how much talent he once had.

Flash forward to now and the Italian is 31 years old and has exactly five wins, the fifth coming this year, more than a decade after the most recent one. To say it’s been a circuitous route is a massive understatement, but he’s starting to play elite golf once again. Last week, he finished T-15, ranking second in the field in strokes gained on approach shots. At a very big price, I like him to mirror that effort here.

Open Championship First-Round Leader Picks

Conservative: Aaron Rai (+6600)

Fun story for you: Back in 2011, I walked into a betting shop not far from Royal St. George’s on Wednesday afternoon of tournament week and plunked down a few pounds on Darren Clarke as a sentimental play for first-round leader. The next day, he shot 68 – pretty solid, but three strokes out of the early lead. He would then go on to share the second-round lead, hold it outright after the third round and win the tourney by three strokes. All of which meant I won exactly nothing off my FRL wager.

Moral of the story? Pick a better FRL bet. Or back up your FRLs with outrights. Or, and this is a very likely solution, we should stop carrying the dead weight of bad beats around with us for 13 years. Anyway, on to Rai. Once you look past the quirks – yes, he wears two gloves and uses iron covers – it’s easy to see him as an emerging ball-striker who seemingly improves on a weekly basis, with five straight top-20s and three straight top-10s.

Sure, he’s had a few final rounds while in contention which left something to be desired, at both the Rocket Mortgage and John Deere, but his openers have been something close to impeccable lately, posting a Thursday scoring average of 67.63 over his past eight starts. An obviously strong links player, I like him for a four-round investment, but not as much as a single-round play.

Aggressive: Tommy Morrison (+30000) and Ernie Els (+25000)

Let’s go with a couple of massive longshots here – one of the youngest players in this week’s field and one of the oldest. Just a few weeks ago, the 6-foot-9 Morrison (that’s right… 6-foot-9!) took his talents overseas from the University of Texas and won the European Amateur, becoming the first American to capture the long-standing event. If you’re one who measures golfers by height, Ty Webb-style, then he might offer some comparisons to Christo Lamprecht, the 6-foot-8 Georgia Tech product who held a share of the first-round lead at Royal Liverpool last year.

Els, meanwhile, is fresh off winning a major on the senior circuit this past weekend – his third victory on that tour in the past two months. A two-time winner of The Open, he hasn’t posted a top-25 since his victory in 2012 and hasn’t made a cut since 2019, but The Big Easy looks rejuvenated recently, and while it might be too much to expect him to hang around for four days, he certainly fits the profile amongst great Day 1 stories which we’ve seen in recent memory.