Best bets
2pts each-way Tommy Fleetwood @ 20/1
1pt each-way Matt Fitzpatrick @ 20/1
1pt each-way Min Woo Lee @ 33/1
1pt each-way Rickie Fowler @ 16/1
0.5pt each-way Arron Rai @ 66/1
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Open champion Cameron Smith couldn’t have timed his first victory of the year, in the LIV extravaganza at the Centurion Club in St Albans, any better with his defence of the Claret Jug only a week away at Hoylake but you won’t find him in the cast list for the $9m Scottish Open this week.
That’s because the Scottish, at the same Renaissance Club at North Berwick which has hosted this star-studded tournament for the past four years, is part of the PGA as well as the DP World Tour and LIV’s aces are still persona non grata on the US circuit, although hopefully not for much longer now that the two sides are close to rapprochement.
So while the Scots have a fabulous field for their big week, with only Jon Rahm and LIV rebels Smith, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson notably missing, there are more than enough superstars from all corners of the globe, Rory McIlroy and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler topping the bill, to whet the appetite for the main event on Merseyside.
New US Open champion Wyndham Clark, last year’s winner Xander Schauffele, past Open kingpin Jordan Spieth and comeback man Rickie Fowler, fresh from breaking a four-year victory drought in Detroit, are just four of the Americans warming up for the Open on this modern-day links but not only that as it counts for Ryder and FedEx Cup points.
So they will all be in the zone rather than just here for the haggis and neeps, a shopping/sightseeing spree for the wives and the Scottish hospitality as was sometimes the case in the old days. We saw the Americans ruling the roost last year with Schauffele chased home by fellow Americans Kurt Kitayama and Patrick Cantlay – and this week’s raiding party is even stronger.
Mounting a staunch European defence behind McIlroy will be Tyrrell Hatton, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood, Viktor Hovland, Shane Lowry, Justin Rose and 2020 winner Arron Rai and while the Aussies will miss Smith, who finished T10 last year before going on to win the Open in his pre-LIV days, they still have 2021 champion Min Woo Lee and Adam Scott representing them.
And that’s before mentioning Justin Thomas, Max Homa, Sungjae Im, last year’s co-runner-up Tom Kim, Sunday’s Danish hero Rasmus Hojgaard and the thrilling new kid on the block Ludvig Aberg, who mightily impressed Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald when they were drawn together the other week.
Aberg duly slotted into fourth place at the John Deere Classic last weekend to confirm all the hype for the 23-year-old is justified. The good news is he’s Swedish and one of ours for future Ryder Cups, maybe even this upcoming one in Rome. True, one fourth doesn’t make a summer, but an eyecatching performance in this week’s exalted company and it could be a different story.
Meanwhile congrats to 50/1 Austrian Sepp Straka who threw his hat more forcefully into the Ryder Cup ring by winning the Quad Cities tournament with an extraordinary final round. No one is saying Donald is spoilt for choice and Europe is still lagging behind in the betting, Fitzdares calling it 11/20 USA, 9/5 Europe, 12/1 the tie.
I’d make it a bit closer than that. Americans have won fewer than 50% of PGA tournaments since January 1 and I’m hoping 20/1 shot Fleetwood will follow Straka’s lead and give Europe another shot in the arm in Scotland on a course he’s performed well on before.
The pride of Southport was beaten by Rai only after a playoff in 2020 and tied for fourth behind Schauffele last year. Forget the missed cut at the Travelers last time out – he was jiggered after contending strongly at the US Open (5th) and going down to local hero Nick Taylor in extra time at the Canadian Open. His game is in great shape. On a course he likes, a fast-running 7237-yarder that’s not a test of length, this has to be a great opportunity to open his PGA Tour account – and not before time.
Light rain and a fair breeze at the weekend should make Tom Doak’s layout, a par 70 these days (was a 71 in 20-21 until they turned one of the three par fives into a four, hence last year’s modest seven-under-par winning score), a decent test. With five short holes and only three par fives, strong iron players like Fleetwood are favoured.
Past course form and/or good current form has been key in the past – champion Schauffele had won the Travelers on his previous outing last year – so I’ll risk leaving out the two favourites, Scheffler and McIlroy.
Scheffler was 12th when he came over in 2021 but missed the cut in last year’s tougher conditions while Rory’s two attempts, 34th in 2019 and an early exit two years later, don’t exactly advertise his claims. Admittedly, Scheffler is a much more complete golfer these days but recent flat-stick performance has been unconvincing. Course form points to Matt Fitzpatrick, T6 last year and pipped in a playoff by Min Woo Lee in 2021 as a serious threat to Fleetwood, as must be the brilliant Min Woo.
I expected the big-hitting young Aussie to win the British Masters after his US Open fifth and top 20 in the previous major. Even so, 15th at The Belfry wasn’t exactly a disaster and now that he doesn’t have the burden of trying to defend the title, as he did when missing the cut last year, it’s reasonable to expect him to show some of the magic that gave him the biggest victory of his career two years ago.
Cantlay, fourth last year, merits consideration but 11/1 is too short for a guy who doesn’t win often enough. I can’t have his pal Schauffele either at 12/1 as he doesn’t look too robust under pressure. But the new version of Fowler commands the utmost respect – that Rocket Mortgage triumph has been coming for a while – and Spieth is always of interest.
Have a bit on Fowler at 16/1 because who knows what he can achieve now that he believes in himself again. And 2020 course winner Rai, ninth to Fowler in Detroit after a Canadian Open third, fits the criteria. At 66/1 this grafting Brit looks the best outsider.
Best bets
2.5pts each-way Lucas Glover @ 20/1
1pt each-way Peter Kuest @ 25/1
1pt each-way Andy Sullivan @ 60/1
1pt each-way Akshay Bhatia @ 28/1
First-round Leader
0.5pt each-way Sebastian Garcia @ 100/1
This week’s two tournaments, the Scottish Open and the Barbasol Championship, are both PGA Tour-DP World Tour co-productions. Both have fields of 156. Similarities end there. One boasts most of the best golfers in the world, the other has nobody you’d pay to watch unless you were friend or family. But a winner’s a winner whatever the level.
For want of anyone better, Fitzdares are making Canada’s Presidents Cup player Taylor Pendrith their 16/1 favourite for the Barbasol but he’s had only one top-ten this year and when presented with a clear chance at last month’s Rocket Mortgage Classic couldn’t handle the last-day pressure and slid back to 14th.
Nor does he have outstanding claims on course form. His two previous attempts to conquer the 7231-yard par 72 Champion course at Keene Trace show finishes of 13th and 11th, no disgrace but he should have done better to be favourite for this.
It’s that sort of tournament: every contender you put up, you can knock down again because the negatives outweigh the positives. That’s why the vast majority have never won. One who has is 43-year-old Lucas Glover whose four victories feature a Major, the 2009 US Open. But the South Carolinan would have had a hatful more if only he could putt. Sometimes the yips were so bad you simply had to avert your eyes.
“I had been struggling with short putts for so long I knew I needed a new idea if I wanted to stay in the game” Glover said last month. So he consigned all his failed putters to the garage and stuck a new broomhandle-style instrument in the bag. The results: fourth place at the Rocket Mortgage immediately followed by sixth at the John Deere on Sunday. For the yipper ranked 179th on the putting charts, he transformed into fifth-best for the week in Detroit.
So catch the 20/1 veteran while he’s still hot on the greens in a tournament where the flat stick is the main club in the bag judging from the 26-under Jim Herman needed when winning in 2019 and the 25-under Trey Mullinax required last year to hold Kevin Streelman at bay. Streelman, another old boy at 44, is one of the favourites this week although it’s nine years since he won – at least with Glover it’s only two years since his last success in the JDC – and there’s nothing on Kevin’s 2023 record to suggest he’ll improve on last year’s second, ninth at Colonial his lone top-ten.
There are possibilities with Swede Vincent Norrman who has been on a few leaderboards this year but of the younger generation Akshay Bhatia and Peter Kuest are preferred. Bhatia has caught the eye more than once in weak second-tier events like this one but it is newcomer Kuest who has impressed more recently.
In just five main-tour starts this year, he’s posted three decent efforts, fourth at the Rocket Mortgage being the pick. He went into the packed final-round leaderboard at Deere Run on Sunday with every chance of another top-five finish but couldn’t quite hold it together. That wasn’t against top opposition but this is easier still.
Bhatia’s claim rests on his prominence in similar weak-field events like his second in the Puerto Rico Open, fourth in Mexico and 17th in Bermuda. He will never be a superstar but is perfectly capable of being a big fish in a little pond.
There is a good turnout of Europeans and DP World Tour players in Kentucky with Norrman and four-time winner Andy Sullivan probably the pick. Cheeky chappie Sullivan has been throwing in some really low rounds recently without being able to put four good ones together. What price an English transatlantic double with Fleetwood and Sullivan? It’s 1280/1 with Fitzdares if you’re interested!
If you see S Garcia among the entries, don’t confuse it with the great Sergio. This one used to be called Sebastian Garcia Rodriguez but he’s dropped the Rodriguez now but still making birdies galore (sadly, along with a surfeit of bogeys). Highly likely to be on the leaderboard at some stage but not at the business end which accounts for his massive 250/1 quote. The 100/1 on the First-Round Leader market is more realistic.
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