Best bets
6pts Scottie Scheffler @ 12/5
2pts each-way Joaquin Niemann @ 22/1
1pt each-way Sepp Straka @ 33/1
1pt each-way Sam Burns @ 60/1
view odds
Two Majors down, two to go. Next up: the US Open at Oakmont Country Club, Pennsylvania.
Not for nothing is it called The Beast. Juicy, five-inch-deep rough where you’ll be lucky to find the ball never mind advance it far; firm, slick, contoured greens running at 14.5 on the Stimpmeter, crazy-fast even by Augusta standards; tight fairways protected by 175 bunkers (Augusta has 44) – it’s a course where a 10-handicapper would struggle to break a hundred.
Laid out by Henry Fownes on the outskirts of Pittsburgh in the early 20th Century after he sold his steel business to Andrew Carnegie, it started as a no-nonsense par 80.
“Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artist stand aside,” declared the owner. “A poor shot should be a shot irrevocably lost.”
This week it presents as a 7372-yard par 70, thousands of trees have been taken down in the intervening years, there are no lakes and only two par fives.
But if the pros were counting on gimme birdies there, at well over 600 yards long they can think again.
The greens will wreak the most havoc unless there’s enough rain to slow them down.
In the last Open there in 2016 a young, loud Bryson DeChambeau had a 40ft putt for birdie on one hole, tapped the ball a fraction hard and faced a 35-footer back to save par.
There will be much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth but it’s all in a good cause: to separate the best from the rest and identify the champion golfer.
The winner will probably have to hit it long and straight, just as Angel Cabrera and Dustin Johnson did when winning the last two Opens there.
DJ was the longest and straightest of his time in 2016 and still won by three even with a penalty shot, helped by a collapse by Shane Lowry who led by four after 54 holes but threw in seven bogeys on black Sunday to slide back to joint second, yet was one of only four players to beat the par of 280.
That was when Oakmont had been softened up by rain; this year it could be similar conditions with a damp Saturday followed by a thundery Sunday.
If the rains stay away, as they did in Cabrera’s year, 2007, we’re looking at an over-par winner.
Five OVER did the trick that week. That was the exception rather than the rule as the average score of the five preceding post-war Opens was four under.
It will be a week when patience and a ready acceptance of a bogey here and there will be worth much gold.
The big enigma this week is Rory McIlroy.
A month ago, before his underwhelming T47 at the USPGA, we were musing about the possibility of Europe’s finest landing a same-year Slam; now after last week’s extraordinary missed-cut malfunction in Canada where his mind seemed barely on the job, punters have no idea what sort of Rory will turn up on Thursday.
If he misses half the fairways as he did in Toronto, he could miss the cut again – as he did in 2016 (so too did Scottie Scheffler when he was an amateur).
Just when we all thought he’d kick on with that career Slam monkey off his back, he’s got an orang-utan as his jockey and is reported to have said that having found paradise at Augusta he is finding it hard to get motivated for anything else. A real head-scratcher.
What about Scheffler then? He has breezed three of his last four, including the USPGA, and looks perfect for the course.
He is likely to “do a Nicklaus” racking up pars and letting the others beat themselves. Many will be beaten before they hit a ball as this looks too much like hard work.
“His putting is now red-hot in a week when anybody with a flat-stick hang-up will be in trouble.”
DeChambeau heads the 14-strong LIV delegation and is the defending champion.
Who can forget last year when McIlroy missed two putts measuring a total of five feet in the last few holes and DeChambeau swooped with that amazing up-and-down out of a greenside bunker to nick it?
He knows the course, having finished T16 in 2016, and is playing the Majors well but there were plenty of mistakes in his T5 with LIV on Sunday and he will need to be more disciplined to contend.
If there is to be a LIV winner again, preference is for money-machine Joaquin Niemann who posted his fourth win of the year in Virginia with a storming finish and has the confidence for a serious Majors tilt after his first top-ten at top level at the PGA.
His putting is now red-hot in a week when anybody with a flat-stick hang-up will be in trouble.
Rahm played well at Oakmont to make the cut as an amateur but looks uneasy on the short putts these days and slow to take the club back.
I hope I’m wrong as he could be a real threat but another Ryder Cup star makes greater appeal and that’s the big Austrian Sepp Straka.
He’s a streaky putter who can miss a few short ones but he’s twice a winner this year and, more important in a rich vein of form with victory at the Truist in May and third place at Memorial this month.
It’s a concern that he’s fluffed his lines in both Majors to date but he’s more reliable under pressure than Lowry who also has terrific recent form and can obviously play the course – he’d have won back in 2016 over three rounds – and there are just too many Sunday fade-aways to trust him.
He did it again in Canada. After four holes of the final round he was briefly leading, then he limped back to T13 to cost his legion of supporters even the each-way money.
Apart from that pairs tournament in New Orleans last year when he had quite a useful partner, his mate Rory, to lean on, the bluff Irishman has not won on American soil for a decade. Hard to believe but true.
Sam Burns is ranked No. 1 on the putting stats but you’d barely believe it the way he messed up his playoff with 50/1 winner Ryan Fox in Toronto.
Although smarting at losing a 28/1 winner, I’m giving the American the chance to redeem himself as he’s come back to life with a decent run of form and 60/1 is a fair price.
I don’t think Ludvig Aberg putts well enough to win and he hasn’t looked right since that shocking Masters finish when he had a chance to win and there enough queries about Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa and Tommy Fleetwood to leave them alone.
Justin Thomas waxes hot and cold and would be a danger on a going week but the bottom line is that unless McIlroy has got his mojo back, Scheffler, 60 under par for his last four starts, is different class and should win back-to-back Majors.
Best bets
2pts Joaquin Niemann @ 14/1 w/o Scheffler, DeChambeau, McIlroy, Rahm
2pts Victor Perez @ 6/4 Top Frenchman
1pt Marc Leishman @ 9/2 Top Australian
2pts Phil Mickelson @ 21/20 Top Senior
1pt Justin Rose @ 18/5 12.40pm Threeball
2pts Richard Bland @ 5/6 1.13pm Threeball
view odds
There’s little doubt slimline Chilean Joaquin Niemann is a world top-ten golfer, and it’s a shame he cannot be recognised as such because the golf rankings pretend LIV doesn’t exist and only award their players ranking points when they appear in Majors.
Although Bryson DeChambeau is LIV’s poster boy and former world No. 1 Jon Rahm their flashiest signing, it is Niemann’s sublime wins-to-runs ratio — largely under the radar — that has taken him to the top of the LIV pile with six victories.
Four of them came this year, the latest in Virginia, where a closing 62 sent him hurtling up to top the leaderboard.
In a special market, Fitzdares have him at 14/1 to win the US Open once you delete the scores of Scheffler, DeChambeau, McIlroy and Rahm.
When you consider he’s only 22/1 with that quartet included, the ‘without’ price looks big.
It may be the best way to get with Niemann, who placed T8 in the last Major. Deceptively long off the tee and much improved with the flat stick, this is his time.
Victor Perez, a very straight driver playing his best golf of the year, looks the pick of the top French trio, and the 6/4 is very fair for this elegant swinger to outscore Matthieu Pavon and Frederic LaCroix. Sunday’s ninth in Canada sets him up nicely for this assignment.
A winner with LIV in Miami in April, Marc Leishman is in a good place at the moment, as a top ten in Virginia on Sunday underscored, and the big Victorian — a 9/2 shot — could well upstage better-fancied rivals for Top Australian.
In some eyes, Phil Mickelson is well past his sell-by, but the old fella keeps proving the cynics wrong and almost won for the first time since joining LIV on Sunday.
He needs a US Open to complete his career Slam and although he’s playing more consistently, it’s not likely to happen for this five-time Open runner-up.
But he’s still competitive enough to win Top Senior laurels at 21/20 in what looks a virtual match with steady but limited Richard Bland.
Englishman Bland could be a better bet in the first-day threeballs, where he’s 4/6 to beat Lanto Griffin and an amateur in the 1.13 game. Don’t confuse Lanto with the much superior Ben Griffin — this Griffin misses more cuts than he makes.
The marquee morning match on Thursday is the McIlroy-Lowry-Rose get-together. Given the uncertainty over Rory following his two latest sub-standard efforts, there could be a bit of value in opposing the favourite here.
Rose, the 2013 US Open champion, took McIlroy to a playoff at the Masters and is frequently a fast starter in Majors. A repeat of his opening 65 at Augusta would be just the job — but 65s don’t grow on trees at Oakmont, even if the great Johnny Miller did somehow shoot a 63 to wrap up the 1973 edition.
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