Ah the final #GolfMajor of the year, The Open Championship. I would like to apologize, I had typed this out Tuesday and forgot to post it yesterday, so here we are. I was too busy playing in a golf outing yesterday and decided to wake up at 5am to make sure I hit 100 range balls and replicate the pre round prep that some of the #PGATour and #LIVTour players do before their #OpenChampsionship rounds. My group finished 9 under at the home of the 2025 Ryder Cup, Bethpage State Golf Course (not the black course).
Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods are the last two Claret Jug hoisters at Hoylake, and coming off a Scottish Open victory last weekend, McIlroy enters this week as a significant favorite to repeat his 2014 Open victory at this venue. Rory is famously winless at majors over the last nine years, and that Open was his penultimate such victory as he doubled up with a PGA Championship the next month. As I said on Monday, we are fading Rory this week.
After crunching the numbers, the data is calling for at the Open Championship 2023: Jordan Spieth, a three-time major champion and one of the top favorites, stumbles at Royal Liverpool and doesn't even crack the top 10. Spieth hasn't won a tournament since April of 2022, and while he has been close to winning a handful of times this season, he has frequently missed cuts when he hasn't been in contention. Since he finished fourth at the Masters, he has two top-five finishes and three missed cuts. He was 29th at the PGA Championship.
Here are my picks:
Outright Winners:
Jordan Spieth (+3000): I'll round out this year's majors by picking Spieth once again. He vibes in the U.K., his adaptable play and creative shot-making just works on links courses. (Yes, I watched the Scottish Open.) Since his Open debut in 2013, he's 9-for-9 with four top 10 finishes.
Brooks Koepka (+1800): I know what you're thinking... Did YH really make the same pick three majors in a row? Yeah, I did. It's called playing the hits. The reigning PGA Championship winner will persevere against all odds to secure the Claret Jug, and second major of the year.
Rickie Fowler (+1200): The trend is our friend. Close in LA. Won in Detroit. Played well on this course finishing T2 in '14. Seems like he checks plenty of boxes.
Cameron Smith (+1700): For those who have been following for a while, Smith and I were mullet bros in Augusta (complimented my mullet, nbd). And there is nothing sweeter than a repeater. I project the LIV guys to have a massive showing this week, considering that a lot of their season has been contested on European links-style courses similar to what we will see at Royal Liverpool. Smith is fresh off a win at LIV Golf London, a performance that capped off a monster four-month span. Over his past eight tournaments, he boasts seven Top 10 finishes, including his fourth-place finish at the U.S. Open and ninth at the PGA.
Sahith Theegala Top 10 (+1100)
Often for young up-and-comers in the sport, finding success at a major tournament is an entirely different beast than posting a strong finish at a standard Tour event, but that's not the case for Theegala, who finished ninth at the Masters and made the cut at both the PGA Championship and U.S. Open. The 25-year-old is a terrific all-around player, especially once he gets off the tee box. That's important to note because everyone is going to struggle off the tee anyways this week with the swirling winds that make these links-style courses so unpredictable.
Taylor Moore Top 20 (+700)
Moore secured his first Tour victory this season at the Valspar Championship. He utilized that performance as a launchpad for his T11 finish at the RBC Heritage, T4 finish at the Zurich Classic, and a T4 finish at the Rocket Mortgage. However, over that same span, he's missed four cuts and finished T72 at the PGA Championship, but at 7/1, I think it's worth taking a shot that Moore has one of his “boom” weeks in England. He's a solid all-around golfer that truly excels on the greens, which is a common profile of a “boom-or-bust" guy as putting is the most volatile aspect of this sport.
Tommy Fleetwood Top 20 (+115)
He’s missed just three cuts in 25 major tries dating back to the 2017 U.S. Open, a stretch that includes six Top 5s and — for the purposes of my pick this week — 11 Top 20s. And those results have only improved in recent years, having recorded three Top 5s among five Top 20s in the seven majors since the beginning of last season. That includes a T5 at LACC and a T18 at Oak Hill in 2023. He’s seventh in the field in total strokes gained over the last three months and his sixth-place finish at the Scottish Open last week means he’s particularly well-positioned to thrive at Hoylake.
Robert MacIntyre Top 30 (+140)
The bright spot for Robert MacIntrye at the Scottish Open was a putter that gained 5.24 strokes for the event, but he also gained 2+ shots in every other major category in a performance that followed up a T4 in Denmark the week prior. Rory McIlroy stole the Scottish Open title out from underneath him with back-to-back birdies down the stretch but Bob’s final-round 64 in the tricky conditions once again proved he has the chops to succeed at these venues.