This week, we head to the season's final major championship: The Open at Royal Birkdale GC.
Royal Birkdale is a Par 70 course and hosts one of the oldest and most prestigious tournaments in all of golf this season. Last year, Scottie Scheffler walked away with the Claret Jug with dominant play, ousting Harris English by four strokes. VegasInsider's Patrick Everson breaks down Scheffler's chances to repeat and sneaky valuable picks here.
Let's dive into our staff's The Open Championship picks and PGA Tour best bets for this week. Not only that, be sure to check out VegasInsider's breakdown on The Open as well.
First Round Leader Pick: Rory McIlroy (+2200)
By: Tony Sartori
Royal Birkdale places a premium on accuracy. The fairways are narrow, and the course is lined with deep bunkers that are difficult to escape.
Avoiding those hazards is essential, and players will need to hit fairways and greens to prevent costly mistakes. That setup makes Rory McIlroy a strong target in this market.
Entering this week, McIlroy ranks 36th on the PGA Tour this season in greens-in-regulation percentage.
His driving accuracy has been inconsistent at times, but it appears to be improving.
McIlroy has been more accurate off the tee than the field average in each of his past two tournaments, including last week’s T7 finish at the Genesis Scottish Open. He was also tied for the first-round lead in that event.
Fast starts are nothing new for McIlroy, who has been the first-round leader twice at this tournament (2010 and 2014), and this week could bring more of the same.
Outright Winner Pick: Wyndham Clark (+3900)
By: Kyle Murray
You can argue Wyndham Clark is the hottest player on tour right now. He won the CJ Cup Byron Nelson and the U.S. Open, followed by a third-place finish at the Memorial Tournament and a tie for fifth at the Travelers Championship.
He also just played well at the Genesis Scottish Open. While he didn’t threaten to win that tournament, he successfully carried his momentum forward.
Yet, his current odds suggest he is barely a top-15 option to win outright.
Does the public simply dislike him that much? What is the explanation for this price, because the math is not mathing.
If you did a blind resume test without his name attached, you would probably price him closer to 25-1.
It is actually easier to argue that Clark is the hottest player on tour right now than to argue he is not. His game is peaking, and he is in absolute elite form.
From a strokes-gained perspective, he ranks third thanks to an incredible run over the past few months.
Over his last 12 and 24 rounds, he ranks first in total strokes gained. Looking back over the last six months, he still ranks seventh in total strokes gained in this elite field.
He has been playing incredibly well, and while some of that is tied to exceptional putting, the numbers back it up. He ranks third in strokes gained putting over his last 24 rounds.
He is also getting it done from tee to green, ranking fourth in tee-to-green performance over those same 24 rounds.
Looking at how everything is lining up from a form perspective, Clark strikes me as a highly streaky player who is currently red-hot.
Outright Winner Pick: Russell Henley (+5400)
By: Jake Zach
This was the first click of the week for me.
Henley has quietly become one of the most reliable performers at this championship, with a fifth and a T10 in his last two Open starts. It's clear he loves it over here and that links golf caters perfectly to his game. And Birkdale might be the best fit of all.
You need to keep it in the fairway? Check. Henley is one of the most accurate drivers in the world. You need to be dialed on approach? Check.
He’s gained on approach four straight weeks, including his win at Colonial where he gained eight. For a player who has proven he can win at the highest level, this is a prime spot, and there is so much win equity baked into this price.
Top 20 Pick: Patrick Cantlay (+460)
By: Derek Farnsworth
There's no doubt that Cantlay has been one of the most frustrating golfers to bet on this year.
Every time it looks like he has turned a corner and is going to contend, he ends up missing the cut in his next event.
However, his ball striking continues to be excellent and his long-term skill set suggests that his short game should improve sooner rather than later.
I'm trusting my model on this one, as he projects as one of the best bets (relative to current odds) on the entire board.
Matchup Pick: Maverick McNealy Over Brooks Koepka (+105)
By: Spencer Aguiar
It is a weekly struggle to find one of these matchups with limited enough movement to fit within this article. I don't love posting content where all the value is gone.
Everything I am on this week has severely shifted, but I will give one where I thought just above -150 was the proper going rate, which means you might be able to find value in the market if you shop around.
Consider this another major where I am higher than most on Maverick McNealy. His lack of high-end finishes continues to keep his price in check, but six straight majors of posting a top-40 finish, including what should have been three top-20s in a row if it weren't for his weekend collapse at the U.S. Open after sitting within the top-10 after the cut, is looming large for me in all iterations of my model.
Injury reports in golf have a long way to go. I don't know what is going on with Brooks Koepka and his hand injury, but what I do know is that the markets decided to focus more on Koepka's historical pedigree in majors and ignore the trending form and buzz around what might be wrong with his hand.
I am going to try to create safety at this volatile tournament by backing a top-40 machine and hope it comes with one of Koepka's recent volatile showings.
That does mean there is increased upside for him to put the pieces together for a top finish, but any of the negative buzz isn't being baked into the totals here.
Outright Winner Pick: Keita Nakajima (+44000)
By: Jake Zach
This one is for the bettors who love a real longshot pick.
One of the most reliable trends at the Open Championship is from the week prior in Scotland, and Nakajima just finished T3 at the Genesis Scottish Open. Talk about a player who knows how to paint fairways, which is exactly the skill set Birkdale demands off the tee.
The form line is trending hard too: T3, T46, T20, T28 in recent starts. There should be no world where this number is this long. I didn't even have to think when I saw it; I pounced heavy.
At 440/1, even a whiff of weekend contention makes this one of the best value plays on the board.
