If the U.S. Open taught us anything, it is that the outsider still has a chance to win a major championship. Following a run of winners that read Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy, it was J.J. Spaun who reigned supreme at Oakmont Country Club.
The U.S. Open has had a way of producing surprising winners, as has The Open, but tread cautiously when scrolling down the odds board trying to identify a potential winner. Last time at Royal Portrush, it was then world No. 33 Shane Lowry who surged ahead of the pack and into the winner’s circle to claim the title of Champion Golfer of the Year.
But Lowry did not exactly come out of nowhere (neither did Spaun, who nearly won the Players Championship). The Irishman was playing brilliant golf as well ahead of his trip to Northern Ireland and entered the championship fresh off close calls at the PGA Championship and the Canadian Open. The signs were there … as were the trends.
So, while there may be a surprising name that jumps to the top of the leaderboard and persists like Dan Brown did a season ago, the cream should rise to the top of both this leaderboard and your coffee as the tournament goes on.
With all that in mind, let’s take a look back at the 10 most recent winners of The Open and identify what trends exist as we attempt to narrow down the field of 156 players to pinpoint this year’s champion.
1. Official World Golf Rankings
Of the 156 players in the field, some do not play on tours which receive Official World Golf Rankings points. But, for those that do, the system remains accurate. Each of the last 10 winners have been inside the top 50 in the OWGR with Zach Johnson (No. 25), Brian Harman (No. 26) and Lowry (No. 33) among the lowest. The rest of the lot were inside the top 15, including top players such as Xander Schauffele and Jordan Spieth. With this in mind, the top-50 cutoff for those players on circuits that do accumulate OWGR seems like a good starting point.
Eliminated: Non-LIV Golf players outside the top 50 of the OWGR — notably Aldrich Potgieter, Michael Kim, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tom Kim, Si Woo Kim, Harry Hall, Rickie Fowler
2. Courses change, stakes do not
For only the third time in the history of The Open, the Claret Jug will be awarded somewhere outside England or Scotland. Returning to Royal Portrush for the third time and for the first time since 2019, The Open will take on a different look than traditional links golf courses, but competence in this setting still remains a requirement. Nine of the last 10 champions had a top-20 finish to their name with Collin Morikawa winning in his championship debut.
Eliminated: Keegan Bradley, Ludvig Åberg, J.J. Spaun, Ben Griffin, Maverick McNealy, Sam Burns, Wyndham Clark, Nick Taylor, Andrew Novak, Max Greyserman, Taylor Pendrith, Min Woo Lee, Akshay Bhatia, J.T. Poston, Denny McCarthy, Sahith Theegala, Chris Gotterup, Nico Echavarria, Jason Kokrak, Tom McKibbin, Joaquin Niemann, Carlos Ortiz
3. What have you done for me lately?
Major champions rarely pop up unannounced. Spieth (2017) and Francesco Molinari (2018) had multiple victories before claiming their Claret Jugs, while Schauffele (2024) already had a major championship under his belt. In fact, eight of the last 10 Open winners already had a win on the season with all 10 having at least one podium finish under their belts during the calendar year.
Eliminated: Xander Schauffele, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, Henrik Stenson, Lee Westwood, Aaron Rai, Adam Scott, Cameron Young, Jordan Spieth
4. Major-championship pedigree
Harman may not have been known as a big-game hunter on the golf course at the time, but he had factored in previous major championships before his win at Hoylake. A runner-up finisher to Brooks Koepka at the 2017 U.S. Open, the left-hander is among Open winners to have had prior experience in major contention. Five of the last 10 winners were already major champions, while all 10 had at least one runner-up finish in a major championship.
Eliminiated: Russell Henley, Patrick Cantlay, Tyrrell Hatton, Corey Conners, Ryan Fox, Daniel Berger, Tony Finau, Byeong Hun An, Dean Burmester, Lucas Herbert, Akshay Bhatia, Thomas Detry
5. Let’s get technical
We’re down to just 23 players without touching a statistic, but that won’t be the case much longer. The last 10 champions all averaged at least +1.16 strokes gained per round in the three months leading up to their victories. Schauffele tops this list with +2.95 last year with McIlroy, Molinari, Lowry and Morikawa all north of +2.00 strokes gained per round. All together, the last 10 winners averaged +1.95 strokes gained per round — the figure we will be using as our benchmark, much to the dismay of many recent major champions and many potential contenders.
Eliminated: Sergio Garcia, Brooks Koepka, Marc Leishman, Phil Mickelson, Louis Oosthuizen, Patrick Reed, Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas, Sepp Straka, Viktor Hovland, Hideki Matsuyama, Robert MacIntyre, Shane Lowry, Harris English, Justin Rose, Sungjae Im, Brian Harman, Jason Day
That leaves us with … four golfers
Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Tommy Fleetwood
If the trends prevail, then a first-time Open winner will be in store at Royal Portrush. Each of these players are not without some question marks, however, as DeChambeau has been brutal in this championship outside of his top-10 finish at a benign St. Andrews. If the conditions waver, the two-time U.S. Open champion may be able to find a path to victory.
That path has eluded Fleetwood, who has been held winless on the PGA Tour, but perhaps a switch in the timezone can switch his luck as he posed as Lowry’s closest combatant in 2019 when he finished runner-up to the Irishman. Meanwhile, Scheffler and Rahm both look the part.
They are the only two players to finish inside the top 15 in all three major championships this season, and they arrive in sensational form following quality tournaments just last week. Scheffler has never putted well on links golf-style courses, while the same club held back Rahm from seriously threatening at Oakmont.
This news was originally published on this post .
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