Best bets
Not even modern showman extraordinaire Bryson De Chambeau would have the effrontery to sign a young spectator’s ball “Open Champion 2025” BEFORE teeing off his final round at hallowed Royal Portrush on Sunday. Even if he was six clear.
But that’s what Max Faulkner did in 1951. And the flamboyant Englishman in his canary yellow plus twos got away with it. He won The Open. A spectator came up before he teed off on his final round and asked him to sign a golf ball “Max Faulkner Open champion 1951” for his son. Faulkner thought “well, none of those buggers are going to catch me so why not?” And despite severe late-round jitters and a sprinkling of bogeys he hung on to win by three – the last Englishman to lift the Claret Jug until Tony Jacklin in 1969, 18 years afterwards.
It wasn’t The Open as we know it today. Americans were thin on the ground because Open qualifying clashed with their PGA Championship. Faulkner never won another Open or played in any other Major. In those grey, austere post-war years, British pros often needed club jobs to augment meagre tournament earnings from irregular tournaments.
Faulkner, a fine putter with plenty to say for himself, brightened up the scene. I didn’t see him win. At nine, I was interested only in debonair Denis Compton lighting up English cricket and wanted to be like him. Fat chance. It was four more years before I got into golf – 133 around Bothwell Castle in Lanarkshire, I still have the card.
But I did hear Faulkner when he was guest speaker at a club dinner and just as well it was an all-male affair as the stories were as fruity as the language. Maxie was what they call ‘a character’. Oh yes – he collected putters, had 300 of them.
Slow forward 68 years to 2019 and the second Open on the Dunluce Links. Politics and the Troubles prevented one in between and anyway the Harry Colt masterpiece didn’t have the infrastructure to host massive modern-day crowds. So the old 17th and 18th were handed over to the tented village and two new holes created from the neighbouring Valley course. The revised layout seemed to suit another ‘character’, a larger-than-life Irishman from the other side of the border, the jovial Shane Lowry.
He shot a 63 on day three almost putting the Open to bed, then finished off the job in vile weather the next day, extending a four-shot lead to six. The 66/1 shot brought Irish romance to a week that could not have started more disastrously for home fans with their hero Rory McIlroy shooting himself in the foot with a lost ball leading to a quadruple-bogey eight on the very first hole. Then he compounded the clanger by absent-mindedly missing a tap-in at the 16th, crucial as it turned out as his brave rearguard-action 65 the following day to make the cut failed by just one stroke.
Over 53 years I’ve reported Open Championships at every links on the rota … bar Portrush. And played every links on the roster too … bar Portrush. So I’m not the most qualified man to tip you the winner of this 153rd edition and my last.
But as I started with one in 8/1 Lee Trevino for The Sporting Life in 1972, I’m hoping to bow out with one in 11/2 McIlroy, in the right mindset now to make amends for the pig’s ear he made of it as favourite six years ago on these famous links where he somehow shot a record 61 as a flop-haired 16-year-old.
Having climbed his personal Everest with that Masters-Slam double in April and needing time to reset his goals for the rest of the year, he has arrived in a good place at the right time to do justice to the tools he wields so spectacularly.
It has been an unforgettable year with earlier success at a sort-of links in Pebble Beach and the Players Championship too and while he failed to win in Scotland on Sunday he did the next best thing in chasing home 60/1 surprise packet Chris Gotterup, professing himself happy with all areas of his game after a two-week break. One Claret Jug already in 2014 and six other top-six finishes – it’s been a long road. He’d due another, so roar Rory on as all Ireland will.
His main market rival, Scottie Scheffler, ranked 115th in putting last week which is a red flag to anyone thinking of piling in at 9/2 and although he was, as usual, first in tee to green, an unspectacular Open record (8-21-23-7) suggests links golf with its luck element does not quite fit in with his game.
I am against the Americans this week – Gotterup apart, they performed moderately at the Renaissance with Europeans in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th places and some of their biggest names, including Morikawa, Schauffele and Cantlay, are not playing at peak.
That said, Spaniard Jon Rahm could be the chief threat to Rory. After his second to Talor Gooch at Valderrama on Sunday, Rahmbo said his swing was in its best shape for a year and a half. He’s won Irish Opens on two classic links, Portstewart and Lahinch, was third in the 2021 Open and runner-up two years later. Never out of the top-ten with LIV, this former world No. 1 is far too talented never to win an Open.
I like players who show up in Majors so I’ll be supporting Bob MacIntyre and Tyrrell Hatton, both close behind JJ Spaun at the US Open and both with good Portrush memories as they shared sixth place there in 2019. That was Mac’s first Open too – he’s become a worldwide winner since and vastly more confident. It’s a bit of a downer that he played so poorly in his Scottish Open defence last week but if we put that down to trying too hard to please, he’s worth making excuses for.
Hatton, a three-time winner of the Dunhill Links Championship, is just a very good big-occasion golfer as is Viktor Hovland who was fourth in the 2022 Open and third in this year’s US Open. Boldly taking on flags can lead to a bogey run but a 12-4-13 Open run before last year’s missed cut when his game was in tatters suggests he’s a links lover. The signs are all there, including a T11 in Scotland on Sunday, that the Norwegian means business.
Jordan Spieth, who became a dad for the third time last week, knows how to win an Open and may be inspired to do so again. With him, you just never know but the class is there.
Others I give a shout to are in-form Kiwi Ryan Fox, Sepp Straka, Patrick Reed, Tommy Fleetwood, runner-up at Portrush last time, and, of course, the man himself, Lowry who has been getting plenty of links practice on a tour of Ireland these past ten days. Could lightning strike twice? The pressure will be enormous. To do it again six years apart in front of all those Irish fans would be more than a fairytale. Putting hasn’t been great for a while and I can’t quite see it.
The weather on that July Sunday in 2019 won’t be far removed from what’s in store this Thursday when storms and lightning are forecast. Again on Saturday heavy rain is expected. The course is 7381 yards par 71, there’s $17m to be won, narrow fairways and tough rough to be negotiated and two holes near the end called Calamity Corner and Purgatory. You have been warned!
Best bets
Final countdown to the 153rd Open Championship and Fitzdares have enough markets to fill all 53 bunkers at Royal Portrush. Royal Lytham with 206 has the most.
The threeballs draw for the opening two rounds with the early-lates probably going to get the better deal with the wind may give Scottie Scheffler (10.09 with Shane Lowry and Collin Morikawa) and Jon Rahm (9.58 with US Open champion JJ Spaun and defending champion Xander Schauffele) an edge over late starter Rory McIlroy (3.10 with Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Thomas). But who knows with weather forecasters?
My threeball picks come elsewhere. Beefy Englishman Dan Brown, winner last time out in Munich, loves Northern Ireland – he made his tour breakthrough there in 2023 – and 7/5 for him to beat old Zach Johnson and Daniel Hillier at 11.58 is more than fair, while canny Patrick Reed, tenth at Portrush back in 2019 and bang in form on the LIV circuit, rates 13/10 value to see off fellow Americans Austin Eckroat and Denny McCarthy a little earlier at 10.31.
Play starts at 6.35am – local hero Padraig Harrington has the honour of the opening tee-shot – with the last threeball going out at 3.21 and Sky will be showing the lot. There’s so much to bet on and I like Rahm at 9/1 in the Betting without Scheffler and McIlroy market and Jordan Spieth at 25/1 for Top US if you want an each-way alternative to 12/5 favourite Scheffler. Both understand links golf and Spieth has had just enough time to prepare following the birth of his third child.
There’s a tongue-in-cheek match-up between Matt Fitzpatrick and Collin Morikawa with the America now being guided by Fitzpatrick’s old caddie Billy Foster, dismissed after six years in March as a result of the sulky Englishman’s long barren run. Caddie-to-the-stars Foster was on Fitzpatrick’s bag when he won the 2022 US Open. The new link-up with Morikawa didn’t end well in Scotland as Morikawa missed the cut for the first time since March last year. That will have come as a shock to the system in a year already lacking conviction.
Fitzpatrick’s Open record is not great but his best finish, 20th, came at Portrush in 2019 and he’s just starting to appear on leaderboards again. After a T8 in Detroit and T4 at the Renaissance, the Sheffield grump has finally got something to smile about. His price, 23/20, gives punters plenty to smile about too. It’s over the odds now he is holing his share of putts.
Home advantage should help Harrington to overcome Stewart Cink and Phil Mickelson for Top Senior. He has just pipped Cink in the last senior Major.
Best bets
Twenty two months is an eternity in golf. Twenty two months ago Max Homa was the star of America’s admittedly hammered Ryder Cup team. This week he’s not even playing in The Open. Instead he’s down among the dead men and the bright young things at the Barracuda Championship at the Old Greenwood club at Tahoe Mountain high up in the Sierras in California.
Two years ago he’d have been a warm favourite for this $720,000 first prize (live on Sky after blanket coverage of The Open is done and dusted). Now he’s a 25/1 chance in a field where nobody stands out. His descent from the peaks of the game has been hard to watch but a fifth at the John Deere Classic last time out suggests he’s emerging from a long slump. And he’s a four-time winner in California.
Homa won’t be the most confident golfer on the grid but form is only temporary, class is for ever, so they say. This week we’ll find out if that’s a load of garbage or not. I’m willing to chance it and put him up along with Patrick Fishburn, the wild Alejandro Tosti, Cameron Champ and Vince Whaley in my five to follow in this unique event which is decided on a modified Stableford system.
Pars score nothing, birdies two and eagles five. Bogeys cost you points. Young Nick Dunlap, now suffering like Homa, won last year with a score of 49, the best winning total since Erik Van Rooyen hoisted the half-century to ease home by five in 2021.
In the rarefied air, low scoring is the order of the day so this is tournament where a couple of eagles (10pts) turn the leaderboard upside down. Once in a blue moon, somebody will get a double eagle (or albatross as we call it over here) and there’s eight points for that. But a double bogey or worse get you docked three, so it’s a hard tournament to keep tabs on.
Whaley and Fishburn finished second and third to Dunlap last year and arrive on the back of high finishes at the ISCO – Whaley T4, Fishburn T6 – and Whaley, a 30-year-old Kentuckian whose impressive consistency has seen him make nine straight cuts, looks cast-iron each-way at 22/1.
Champ is a triple main-tour winner and at 320 yards one of longest drivers around. He’s in a decent run of form starting with ninth at the Canadian Open and coming up to date with a T14 at the ISCO. This is his level.
Tosti hits it miles, often to places not previously visited by humankind, but his exciting type of birdie-eagle-bogey golf will get it done one day and this is the perfect setting. The unorthodox Argentinian may have missed his last five cuts in better company but on his March/April form which featured second place at the Corales and two high placings in Texas, he’d make a good outsider.
The tournament is also open to DP World Tour challengers but as most of them are teeing it up in Ireland there’s only a select few with a chance, Englishmen Sam Bairstow and Dan Bradbury probably the pair to have a small interest in.
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