Best bets
2pts each-way Tom Kim @ 22/1
1.5pts each-way Xander Schauffele @ 15/2
1.5pts each-way Tommy Fleetwood @ 18/1
1pt each-way Robert MacIntyre @ 40/1
1pt each-way Min Woo Lee @ 25/1
0.5pt each-way Eric Cole @ 125/1
Place FIVE pre-tournament bets and get an in-play matched FREE BET! T&Cs apply.
At last golf is coming home as we welcome the Scottish Open as the first tournament of 2024 on British soil – and what a five-star field full of top-class Americans alongside Europe’s finest we have as a curtain-raiser to next week’s daddy of them all, the Open Championship at Royal Troon.
This week’s high-class action is at the plush Renaissance club at North Berwick, a modern links, a 7237-yard par 70, which has hosted the Scottish for five years, showcasing a quintet of cosmopolitan winners in Austrian Bernd Wiesberger, Englishman Arron Rai, Australian Min Woo Lee, American Xander Schauffele and the pride of Northern Ireland, Rory McIlroy.
When the wind gets up, it can be daunting but the course is not as severe as what awaits them at Troon. When Schauffele won two years ago, seven under par got the job done (yet somebody shot a 61 on day one before the wind got up), whereas in Wiesberger’s year 22 under was the mark.
With four cool days of light rain and gentle breeze promised, expect this year’s winning score to be closer to 22 than seven.
In the absence of Scottie Scheffler (third last year), the US raiding party is headed by Schauffele and Collin Morikawa and they will be taking dead aim at McIlroy’s crown.
‘With four cool days of light rain and gentle breeze promised, expect this year’s winning score to be closer to 22 than seven.’
In his current barnstorming form PGA champion Schauffele will take some stopping. Fifteen top-25s in 16 starts, every cut made – that’s why he’s at single-figure odds.
At much the same price McIlroy has a similar claim and who could forget the two magical late Rory birdies that broke Bob MacIntyre’s heart last year just when the man from Oban thought he’d be the first home-grown winner this century?
Having gone unbeaten through the Ryder Cup and won the Canadian Open to open his PGA Tour account, MacIntyre has come a long way mentally since that Scottish setback and might turn the tables on McIlroy. Bobby Mac looks a decent each-way punt at 40/1.
For the main bet I’ve had Korean youngster Tom Kim in mind ever since he placed sixth at Renaissance last year and followed up with a T2 behind Brian Harman in The Open, taking to links golf like a duck to water. Add to that recommendation his third to Schauffele as a raw novice at Renaissance two years ago and you have a guy who relishes links golf.
All that would be of little account if Kim was out of form and for most of the year Tom has been disappointing. But his mighty effort in matching world No. 1 Scheffler shot for shot at the Travelers last month, almost leading from start to finish before going down only in sudden death, wiped the slate clean of doubts.
We shall be hearing plenty more from this ever-upbeat 22-year-old chatterbox who knows how to win.
This is a course that also suits Tommy Fleetwood, pipped in a playoff by Rai in 2020 and since fourth to Schauffele in 2022 and T6 alongside Kim last year. The Southport star gets plenty of flak for not winning as often as he should but he did beat Rory first time out this year in Dubai and there has been much to admire on the PGA Tour since, not least his third at the Masters.
Course winner Min Woo Lee arrives on the back of a strong showing in Detroit (T2 behind Cam Davis) and must have a shout. He edged out Matt Fitzpatrick and Thomas Detry in a three-way shootout for the 2021 Scottish Open and has improved since.
Looking for a big price? Why not try the 125/1 for last year’s top rookie Eric Cole who has hit form with a vengeance after a slow start to the year, posting a sixth in Detroit and a seventh at Deere Run on his two latest starts.
His father Bobby almost won The Open in Scotland in 1975, finishing just a shot outside the playoff between Tom Watson and Jack Newton at Carnoustie.
Japanese ace Hideki Matsuyama and Ryder Cup heroes Viktor Hovland, Ludvig Aberg, Justin Rose and Matt Fitzpatrick all have claims while Ben An’s T3 behind Rory last year catches the eye.
An almost won in Hawaii at the start of the year and made hay in May with a brace of top-fours at the Nelson and Quail Hollow. Yet it is nine years since he ran away with Europe’s five-star BMW PGA at Wentworth as a virtual unknown. Amazingly we are still awaiting win No. 2…
Best bets
1.5pts each-way Sergio Garcia @ 14/1
1pt each-way Jon Rahm @ 13/2
1pt each-way Abraham Ancer @ 28/1
0.5pt each-way Carlos Ortiz @ 22/1
The LIV bandwagon rolls into Europe for its next two assignments, the first in Spain this week at a world-class venue, iconic Valderrama, host to the unforgettable 1997 Ryder Cup and scene of umpteen Volvo Masters and Andalucia Masters, a couple of WGC-American Express Championships and a Spanish Open.
Just a few miles from Gibraltar in upmarket Sotogrande, it’s beautiful, immaculate and fiendishly tricky. At 6990 yards not long for a par 71 but a tight course that makes you use every club in the bag, a thinker’s track where position off the tee is essential, otherwise a tree in the fairway will be blocking your view of the small, hard-to-get-at greens.
It’s a test of patience with four tough par threes and takes plenty of knowing. Nobody knows it better than Sergio Garcia who first played it when he was 13 and still loves it to bits. And why not? He’s won three tournaments there.
The latest of those victories came six years ago and at 43 he is not quite the golfer he was but if ever Sergio is going to open his LIV account, it will surely be at Valderrama. I said the same thing last year and what did Garcia do? He finished 11th.
This year he has twice been beaten in LIV playoffs and put in a good T12 shift at Augusta. In the hope there’s still plenty of petrol left in the tank, he rates one more chance.
Garcia is not the only Spaniard with something to prove. Signed for a record fee, at least $400m, Jon Rahm has now gone winless for nine LIV tournaments and his Saudi paymasters must be getting restless. Worse, his game seems to have dipped for the Majors. After a nondescript Masters, a missed cut at the PGA.
A T3 last time out when teammate Tyrrell Hatton won in Nashville equalled his best finish and he can improve on that even on a course he may find awkward. The LIV short format, 54 holes and a shotgun start accompanied by thumping pop music, takes a bit of getting used to but he has to get there one day and where better than in front of an adoring Spanish crowd.
‘Jon Rahm has now gone winless for nine LIV tournaments and his Saudi paymasters must be getting restless.’
Talor Gooch won at Valderrama last year solving all the problems posed by the course with the accuracy of driving and steadiness on the glassy greens but that was the third win in nine weeks for the quiet American. He doesn’t arrive with the same momentum.
Nobody could say that about last year’s runner-up Bryson DeChambeau, now the US Open champion and starting to distance himself from other big names who are past their prime. Bryson is just hitting his and looks a worthy favourite.
Speaking the same lingo, the Mexicans can be fancied to play above themselves on Spanish soil. Abe Ancer in Hong Kong and Carlos Ortiz in Houston are both LIV winners this year and look dangers to all on a course made for their precision play.
The rain in Spain may fall mainly in the plain but not this Friday. It’s going to be hot stuff at 31 degrees but cooling into the high 20s for the last two rounds.
Best bets
2pts each-way Luke Clanton @ 12/1
2pts each-way Michael Thorbjornsen @ 16/1
0.5pt each-way Neal Shipley @ 40/1
0.5pt each-way David Skinns@ 50/1
0.5pt each-way Daniel Berger @ 28/1
Tipping an amateur to win a PGA Tour event, the newly-named ISCO Championship on the Champions course at Keene Trace, Kentucky, is a bold call but so spectacular has 20-year-old Luke Clanton been these past two weeks, tenth in Detroit and T2 at the John Deere, that punters can expect a big run from the classy Florida State student.
We have already seen one amateur, Nick Dunlap, also 20, duffing up the professionals at the American Express tournament in January, then turning pro immediately, and a similar breakthrough by Clanton this weekend will undoubtedly hasten his departure from the amateur ranks.
The field for what used to be called the Barbasol Championship is significantly weaker than the two where Luke showed up so eyecatchingly as this tournament is a $4m consolation prize for those golfers not involved in the two-week exodus of the highest flyers to the UK for the Scottish Open and The Open. Yet one of them might yet be at Troon as there’s a flight to Scotland laid on for the winner.
Having Brooks Koepka as a mentor for the mental side of the game, Clanton looked totally at home and stress-free when only Davis Thompson, a 20/1 pick for Fitzdares followers, finished ahead of him in Illinois on Sunday.
Sharing second spot with him at Deere Run was Michael Thorbjornsen, another star amateur. The Stanford graduate turned pro last month at 22 after ranking No. 1 on the PGA University ladder.
Sunday’s share of second place came on only his third outing since taking the plunge but we’ve known of his potential for a while as he was fourth as an amateur in the 2022 Travelers Championship and he finished 11th to McIlroy in this year’s Dubai Desert Classic.
‘The grey-haired Brit from Lincoln is having the time of his life at 42 and could be the big outsider we’re looking for.’
He’s a 310-yard driver with a fine touch around the green and the successes of Ludvig Aberg on both main tours in an amazingly short time will have been an inspiration as they play a similar game.
A former amateur star, Englishman Nathan Kimsey, almost won last year’s Barbasol, losing out only after a playoff with Vincent Norrman, and Clanton and Thorbjornsen probably have more potential than Kimsey.
Neal Shipley, runner-up in last year’s US Amateur who finished low amateur in this year’s Masters and US Open, could also take a hand while the two talented Coody twins from Texas, Parker and Pierceson, will see this tournament as the perfect opportunity to live up to the hype and collect their first W.
For the older generation, late bloomer David Skinns could strike gold. Fourth at the Cognizant, seventh in Houston and with a couple of strong showings recently in Canada and in Detroit, the grey-haired Brit from Lincoln is having the time of his life at 42 and could be the big outsider we’re looking for.
Daniel Berger would have been favourite for this pre-injury but getting back to the level that brought him four wins between 2016 and 2021 is a slow old process and he has not achieved much since embarking on his comeback after a long layoff. At 28/1 he is just worth risking as we know the talent is there.
When you look at the five past winners at Keene Trace, Norrman, Trey Mullinax, Seamus Power, old Jim Herman and Troy Merritt, it’s hardly a who’s who of golf but whoever becomes No. 6 had better bring a hot putter with him as this flat, parkland course is ripe for birdie hunters. All five champions shot a minimum of 21 under and deadeye Herman got to 26 under.
For all your bets on the golf, visit our dedicated golf betting page.
