Ben Coley's golf betting tips: The Open Championship preview and best bets
Ben Coley has found three of the last five winners of the Open Championship. Don't miss his preview and best bets before play begins on Thursday.
Golf betting tips: The Open Championship
3pts e.w. Dustin Johnson at 35/1 (bet365, BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
2pts e.w. Shane Lowry at 30/1 (Betfred 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
2pts e.w. Jordan Spieth at 33/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Hideki Matsuyama at 80/1 (Paddy Power 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)
1pt e.w. Corey Conners at 100/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Chris Kirk at 300/1 (Sky Bet, BoyleSports 1/5 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
Nine years is how you'll hear it described. Three thousand, two hundred and sixty-four days and counting, up to an even 3,270 come Sunday. That's how long he has waited, that's how long he has made us wait. When Rory McIlroy captured the PGA Championship one month after he'd won the Open right here at Hoylake, nobody could have reasonably argued that those four majors he'd gathered in little more than three years would be his lot.
This is a dramatic and in some ways improper way of measuring the supposed failing of one of the best golfers of his generation, one who will be remembered a hundred years from now, never mind nine. The reality is that there are four tournaments of historical significance for every one trip round the sun. It is a nine-year wait, but it's those single days which each are worth three months that have us where we are now.
Sunday April 8, 2018, when he lost out to Patrick Reed at Augusta. Sunday July 17, 2022, when he hit every green from the lead but let slip the Claret Jug at St Andrews. Sunday June 18, 2023, when one man, Wyndham Clark, took one shot less than he did in the US Open. Days on the calendar, scars on a resolute character. McIlroy should have won one or two of these and could have won all three.
Now, he has one last opportunity to put an end to it all, to spare us the debate, to stop us counting in years before we go back from nine and start again at one. One decade, should it come to pass, is too long. The greatest players deserve the respect which underpins the highest standards and the harshest criticism. Perhaps they also deserve our faith.
McIlroy certainly has the faith of the betting and why wouldn't he after what he did on Sunday. Standing on the 17th tee having just missed a short birdie putt at the last real birdie hole, he hit two of the finest approach shots you will see, the kind which give lie to the idea that this is a player who must be able to hit it high and land it softly to produce world-class golf. Note that he has more Open top-fives than he does any of the other three majors, including at a rock-hard Carnoustie.
Some will argue that he's peaked too soon but there's no reason he should agree. Two of the last 10 Open champions had won on their previous start, Scottie Scheffler did it in the Masters, and Jon Rahm as good as did it in the US Open, when he'd been six clear before Covid intervened prior to the final round of the Memorial. For the best players in golf, wins have often come in bunches. McIlroy will recall that the gap from major number three to major number four was a matter of weeks and took in more silverware in a high summer hat-trick.
There are two other factors that may just have turned in his favour: the weather and the shape of Royal Liverpool, stretched to a par 71 which isn't far short of 7,400 yards, and whose back-nine is the longest in Open history. The course is much greener than had been anticipated during a red-hot May and dry June by England's standards. Rain at the weekend and more in the forecast mean that suddenly, this looks a lot more like 2014 than it does 2006, the year that Tiger Woods hit just one driver and plotted his way to victory at a firm and fast Hoylake.
McIlroy hit six during the second round of his Open win, plus a couple more three-woods, and there's no doubt that the more he has driver in his hands, the greater his prospects. With the elongated par-fives on the back-nine sure to be integral to the outcome of the tournament, plus some chunky, even-numbered par-fours from 10 through to 16, the relative greenness of Royal Liverpool suggests McIlroy will arrive to conditions that match his form.
Perhaps he does deserve to be favourite after all, ahead of the relentless ball-striking of Scottie Scheffler, further ahead of Jon Rahm and his quiet preparation. These are golf's big three, which you can make a four by adding Cameron Smith or a five with Brooks Koepka. It's a quintet with so much in common, yet there is one golfer among them, the one who thrilled us all on Sunday, who may have forgotten what winning one of these feels like. One more major would change everything.
Should it fall to Koepka or Rahm, they'd join McIlroy as players who are four rounds from golfing immortality, but that also applies to my headline selection. Value in the strictest sense can be hard to find in major championships these days, but at 30/1 and bigger you're certainly on the right side of the argument if you back DUSTIN JOHNSON.
Among my selections for this event last year at a time when very much the face of the emerging LIV Golf, Johnson finished sixth to enhance what's a fine Open record. Five top-10s in 13 should read six, as he was inside the top five here at Hoylake in 2014 only to drop three shots over the final two holes, one of those to find the internal out-of-bounds at the par-five 18th especially costly.
That nevertheless was a good indication that Johnson has the game for Hoylake, particularly when it isn't as firm as had been the case previously. His second-round 65 is a score nobody has bettered in an Open at this course and it took him into contention behind McIlroy, at a time remember when he was considered golf's nearly-man rather than the two-time major champion he is today.
Perhaps more revealing when it comes to his prospects of hitting the frame is how often Johnson has given himself a chance in this major. No fewer than 11 times he's started the final round inside the top 30, and you can count the Opens of 2010, 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2022 as renewals in which he teed off on Sunday with a somewhat realistic chance to win. On three other occasions (2013, 2015, 2021) that's been true ahead of Saturday's third round.
It's an extraordinary return for a player who has all the shots and while I've been a little underwhelmed by his performances at times throughout the past year, I felt that the US Open was a big step in the right direction. Whereas at the PGA he'd been spared an early exit by his putter, at LACC it was only that club which confined him to a quiet 10th. Johnson ranked fifth in strokes-gained tee-to-green.
I wonder whether the victory of his former gym buddy and rival Brooks Koepka at Oak Hill might have played a part in Johnson redoubling his efforts. It's often said that he made the very most of his time off before the 2023 campaign began in late February and he's certainly improved as the weeks and months have passed, winning a LIV Golf event in Tulsa and arriving here having been eighth at Valderrama and fifth at Centurion.
Winning earlier in the year has always been a good Open pointer, one which led to surprise winners Louis Oosthuizen and Darren Clarke, plus Ernie Els, McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Smith, and a few others too. These old rules will need revisiting now that we've a very different tour to analyse, one with perhaps 20 realistic winners on any given week, nevertheless this time last year Johnson had gone almost 18 months without lifting silverware. It has to be a positive that he's done so twice since.
And while the embryonic strokes-gained data which is being collected over there isn't yet widely available, Johnson was among the best iron players at Valderrama, and better still when ranking second at Centurion. That and the fact he's fifth for greens and first for birdies is further evidence that he's playing to a standard which suggest he shouldn't be forgotten about at twice the price of Smith and close to that of Koepka's.
Texas stars can shine
Forced to choose among those at the front of the betting I'd edge towards Scheffler, whose strength off the tee is almost as much about how accurate he is as it is his power. He's had two nice Open primers, including when on the fringes of contention at Royal St George's and close enough at St Andrews, and his form throughout 2023 has been extraordinary.
But while this week's forecast suggests members won't get their wish, which is to see the world's best battle strong winds whipping through the Dee estuary, there's enough breeze in the forecast to enforce the most basic of Open rules: bet each-way, eyes wide open to the possibility that any player can be blown off course if finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Perhaps the man best equipped to deal with whatever comes his way is JORDAN SPIETH and I'm very happy to avoid complicating things and side with this fine links golfer.
Spieth could reasonably claim to be the best Open Championship player in this field, perhaps with the exception of McIlroy and one or two veterans, having made the cut on all nine appearances dating back to his 2013 debut.
Fourth in 2015 paved the way for his thrilling victory at Birkdale two years later, and he was favourite and 54-hole leader when defending that title at Carnoustie before settling for ninth. On course to place again in 2019, another poor final round saw him fall to 20th, but he's been back on track with second and eighth in the last two years.
Plot these finishes alongside his overall form, and those Sunday struggles at Carnoustie and Portrush begin to make sense. He'd gone MC-MC-42 in 2018 then 7-65-MC in 2019, so while he didn't quite see things through it was in fact a return to Open conditions which sparked significant improvement during two years of general struggle.
Since returning to winning ways in April 2021 he's been a factor in both renewals, forcing Morikawa to dig deep at Royal St George's to give us that potentially correlating form line, and then staying on at the Old Course. Of those currently on the Open rota, I would argue that St Andrews suits him least of all despite almost winning there once.
With his credentials under these conditions established and an encouraging first try here in 2014, the questions are more around his form and his health, both of which carry some uncertainty. That said, he missed the cut by one in the US Open after he'd been fifth in the Memorial, was fourth in the Masters, and has six top-six finishes in 14 starts since February.
It's been a feast-or-famine year which continued with a missed cut in the Scottish Open, but perhaps 27 holes on Tuesday at least tells us his wrist is fine while also undermining his prospects once the tournament began. In the end, a second-round 69 was a step in the right direction and came despite the fact his putter remained cold.
And while it's true that Smith had been 10th in the Scottish Open before winning, and Phil Mickelson captured both titles, that doesn't tell the whole story. Morikawa, Els and Clarke were all well down the field, Louis Oosthuizen had missed the cut at Loch Lomond, and if we rewind just 12 months, Cam Young and Viktor Hovland had both been very poor at The Renaissance before contending at St Andrews.
Trends tend to focus on winners but Young went from shooting 76-77 to almost winning the Open and I don't think Spieth will feel like his preparation has been lacking. I'd rather focus on the fact that this championship so often goes to a player with magic hands and a creative mind, which explains why for Spieth it's been the one major in which he's always produced.
Backing him to do so again is an easy enough decision at the odds, which are notably bigger than was the case in both 2021 and 2022.
Play it again, Shane
Partly, this reflects the fact that the Scottish Open felt like it could easily have been the Open itself. So many of the best links or seaside golfers in the game came to the fore, so many prospective Open winners seeming to enhance their claims. Broadly speaking, those who played well there have since hardened, those who didn't have drifted.
My natural inclination is to lean towards those whose prices are getting bigger and it's why I was very close to siding with Patrick Cantlay, who like Spieth stepped forward last Friday. It seems Cantlay just took a while to adjust to the speed of the greens and rounds of 72-67 likely set him up for another strong major, which is what he's produced in all of them since last June, while his friend Xander Schauffele has also edged out to 25/1.
However I do marginally prefer SHANE LOWRY, whose short-game was superb last week. In a sense that raises concerns over his long-game as he finished just outside the top 10, but to me it felt like he might've discovered the missing piece of the jigsaw ahead of his long-term target.
Winner in stunning fashion at Portrush, Lowry has since confirmed himself a superb majors golfer, contending for the Masters in 2022 and generally producing something approaching his best. All told he has 10 top-25 finishes in 14 starts as a major champion, his current run standing at five and including the Open, where he's been 12th and 21st.
Lowry was also ninth here in 2014, his first top-10 in a major championship. He closed with a round of 65, one of just four players to shoot seven-under all week (Hoylake played to a par of 72; the 10th has now been changed to a par four), and played beautifully as the world number 68 who had prepared similarly in Scotland.
His scrambling stats for the year are down on 2022 but he's been improving lately and gained more than 10 strokes with his short-game and putting last week, having arrived at The Renaissance with his driving and approach work having underpinned a run of four top-20s in five which now reads five in six.
Although Sunday's bogey-bogey start meant any hope of winning soon disappeared, it was in some ways reminiscent of his Irish Open performance four years ago, where he started well, stalled thereafter, but arrived at the Open feeling like he might well have timed things perfectly.
So it proved, and it would not surprise me to see him emulate his friend and mentor Padraig Harrington by becoming a two-time Open champion.
England expects, but will Rose prove best?
Despite all this I thought long and hard about siding with Lowry, shorter in the betting than you'll often find him, and would not have gone lower than 25/1. He does though seem set to go really well and let's not forget that when he wins, he wins big, which does give him the edge over plenty of others in this price range.
England's search for another Open winner has gone on far too long and this is a great chance for Tommy Fleetwood or Tyrrell Hatton to end it, especially the former whose caddie knows this course perhaps even better than he does. Fleetwood has been banging loudly on the door all year and while short enough in the market, that reflects his reliability. He would make a fine Open winner and is more than capable.
There's arguably better value in an out-of-sorts Matt Fitzpatrick just as there is Justin Rose, these two both having won on the PGA Tour in 2023. Rose in particular made some appeal as his experience counts for plenty in this, as does his scrambling, and 10 years on from becoming the first Englishman in an age to win the US Open, perhaps he can end another long drought.
Max Homa and Wyndham Clark add depth to the US challenge, Justin Thomas remains on my radar even if he isn't on yours and five of Tony Finau's 10 major top-10s came amid a poor run of form. That I felt was worth noting when you can take upwards of 50/1 about a player without an Open missed cut, with a win this year, and who has been half the price for majors on many occasions recently.
Speaking of Finau, Homa and Clark, one of the best pointers towards any major winner, but particularly this one given its place in the calendar, has been a victory earlier that year. It has applied to every Open champion since 2010 bar Els and Zach Johnson, both already major champions, and would've helped point towards Oosthuizen, Clarke and Lowry at relatively big prices.
There are of course many candidates including from the DP World Tour where Victor Perez for instance will attempt to emulate Lowry, who also captured the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. He has to be respected as a place candidate having been 12th at the US PGA, while Matt Wallace drove it much better and shot a second-round 65 to make the cut last week and he too has won in the wind in 2023.
However, I'll go with options who are also from the world's top 50, typically where we find major winners, with COREY CONNERS first up.
It's been a fine season for Canadian golf in general with Nick Taylor (another for whom a case be made) winning their national championship after Mackenzie Hughes and Conners himself had won titles of their own, and Brooke Henderson kicked off with a victory on the LPGA Tour, too.
Conners' win came in Texas thanks to a typically assured ball-striking display and he's been generally excellent since. Most notable of course was a contending 12th at the US PGA, where he was in front prior to a late disaster in round three, while more recently he has three top-20s in his last four starts.
One of them came last week, where he shot 65 in round two and 66 in tough conditions on Sunday, a performance not dissimilar to that produced by Cam Smith a year ago. They are though very different golfers and the main worry with Conners, second in fairways up in Scotland, is that his short-game is not as sharp as is typically required to win this.
He is though a viable candidate to lead the ball-striking stats for the week and he putted very well on Sunday, where he ranked inside the top 10 in driving, approach play and putting to improve massively on previous finishes of MC-61 at the same course, and if that's the case perhaps chipping is an issue he can overcome.
He's shown more than once now that he can adapt to these slow, links greens, putting much better than he often does at St Andrews last year, while back in 2021 he was right in the mix entering the final round at Royal St George's. Though ultimately fading, it means he arrives here looking for his third Open top-30 in succession.
Outside of the US Open, a tournament in which he always struggles, Conners in fact has seven major top-30s in 10 over the last three years and this languid throwback may be best suited to an Open Championship. Given his form coming in and the fact he's felt what it's like to be in contention at a recent major, he's a great each-way option at a big price.
Major winner offers major value
HIDEKI MATSUYAMA hasn't won this year, but he has drifted to a price I can't turn down and largely because of a missed cut in the Rocket Mortgage Classic last time out.
Prior to that, Matsuyama had been 13th in the Travelers to extend a run of good form which dates right back to fifth place at Sawgrass. In eight stroke play starts from one to the other, only once did he finish outside the top 30, and that by a single stroke when ranking 65th in putting at the US Open.
In fact Matsuyama's majors in 2023 have all been frustratingly similar. He was 16th in the Masters when producing a top-five tee-to-green display, 29th in the PGA when ranking eighth in that department, and 32nd in the US Open when ranking sixth. He's the only player in the sport bar Scheffler to have ranked inside the top 10 in all three.
Now if all this sounds oh so very Matsuyama, that's fine, but not for a very long time has he been this kind of price. Ignore what happened in a soft shootout in Detroit, one he probably didn't really want to play in, and it's astonishing that one of the best ball-strikers in the sport could be dangled at close to 100/1 to win the Open.
His record in it is good, albeit the pick of his form is dated, with sixth on debut in 2013, 39th when teeing it up here, 18th at St Andrews and then 14th at Birkdale. Since then he's not been a factor, but few have flawless records in the Open and the pick of his form is excellent, as you'd expect from a master scrambler who flushes it and has won the Masters, which asks some similar questions in a different way.
Matsuyama's scrambling stats for this season are again second only to Scheffler among the elite golfers in this field and while yes he remains a health risk, and yes he could have another shocker with the putter, both are accounted for in the odds. His fitness does appear to be improving and I'd note that he's putted well several times this season including either side of the US Open last month.
Value-wise, I just can't leave out a player who not only has the back class, but whose recent play is of a far higher standard than the odds suggest. Over the last 36 rounds Matsuyama is 17th in strokes-gained total, splitting Smith and Fitzpatrick, with Rose just behind. He should be no bigger than 66s to follow Zach Johnson's lead and double his major tally.
Finally, though Perez, Wallace and Ewen Ferguson are all respected among a strong European challenge and Robert MacIntyre can again play well, CHRIS KIRK is a class act from America who has been underestimated in the betting.
Kirk has a dynamite short-game, ranking 14th in strokes-gained around the green, but in truth every aspect of his game has fired this year. Though by no means a long driver he's gained strokes off the tee, he's 53rd in putting, and his iron play remains of a top-40 standard which makes him among the top 20 percent on the PGA Tour.
He showcased his scrambling skills when 19th on his Open debut here at Hoylake, shooting 68-69 across the weekend, and following a couple of narrow missed cuts did well to climb from 119th after day one to a respectable share of 42nd at the far less suitable St Andrews last July.
Since then Kirk has been 23rd in the Masters and 29th in the US PGA, performances similar to those he'd produced prior to coming here in 2014, and he's been back to form of late with finishes of 14th and 21st on the PGA Tour including when seeing his travelling housemate Sepp Straka capture the John Deere Classic.
It's easy to underestimate form in these very different US events but they were a fine way for Francesco Molinari to prepare, ditto Spieth and Zach Johnson, but the form line I really like comes from February when Kirk won the Honda Classic at the expense of Eric Cole.
That event has been won by McIlroy, Els, Harrington, Adam Scott and Rickie Fowler, each of them Open winners or runners-up. Fleetwood could've won it in 2020 as could Mackenzie Hughes, who contended for the Open in 2021, while Lowry was close to doing so in 2022.
It's always been a really good pointer towards golfers who can cope with tough, breezy conditions, and we saw further evidence of that through Cole, Brian Harman, Ben An, David Lingmerth and more last week in Scotland.
Kirk is ranked 40th in the world having been up to 32nd following that play-off success and he's a tough, experienced player, with a fine short-game, some course form, and a chance of squeezing into the money after preparing with some links golf at West Lancs on Sunday.
While that was happening, while players not involved in the Scottish Open completed their own preparations, McIlroy somehow did the one thing that could further enhance the sense that this might be where he finally gets his fifth major. It wasn't enough to win – McIlroy had to produce the kind of drama that, along with his absurd talent, helped make the boy from Holywood a golfing superstar.
Perhaps on Sunday that superstar will be back where be belongs, forcing us all to set our personal financial interests to one side and remember what really matters. This is the final men's golf major of 2023 and there is one cast-iron certainty: we're in for a thriller.
Posted at 1700 BST on 17/07/23
Open Championship links
- Ben Coley's in-depth outright betting preview
- Specials and prop bets for the Open
- Outright Open Championship tips at-a-glance
- Expert Picks: Panellist predictions for the Open
- Player profiles: Our guide to the entire field
- Royal Liverpool hole-by-hole course guide
- Tee times for rounds one and two
- Five memorable moments from Royal Liverpool
- Matthew Jordan on home course advantage