Ben Coley previews the third round of the Open Championship, where the outcome of the tournament depends plenty on how Brian Harman copes with rain and pressure.
Golf betting tips: Open Championship round three
2pts Bjork to beat Kim at 7/4 (Sky Bet, Coral, Ladbrokes)
2pt double Lee and Fleetwood at 21/10 (Coral, Ladbrokes)
1pt treble Woodland, Clark and Day at 3.95/1 (General)
Tommy Fleetwood is 4/1 for the Open. He trails by five. Sepp Straka is around a tenth of his pre-tournament price at 18/1. He trails by six. Jason Day has collapsed from three-figure exchange prices to less than 20. Seven. Jordan Spieth is 16/1 from 33s. Eight. Rory McIlroy is third in the betting and not much bigger than when the tournament began. Nine.
Brian Harman's five-shot Open lead is a little bewildering, the betting byproducts are remarkable, and nobody quite knows what to expect from here. When players lead by this margin they win at a rate of more than 70%; Harman is priced as though his chance significantly less than that. When players lead by this margin in majors they win, or at least they have on the handful of occasions it's happened in memory. And yet right now the betting says the field holds the edge.
Those keen to see real drama, or simply to see Harman get beat, can take greatest comfort in the 1982 Open Championship, when Bobby Clampett was five clear and shot 78-77 to share 10th. In the last 50 years there have been three such leads in the event and the other two won, Louis Oosthuizen the most recent. When you're looking back so far for encouragement, you know strange things are afoot.
In 1981, Jack Nicklaus led by four in the Masters and was beaten, but since then Jordan Spieth and Scottie Scheffler have converted from miles clear. In the US Open, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Martin Kaymer have done so, and you can add Brooks Koepka in the 2019 PGA even if that got hairy for a time. Harman stands out among this group and there is one key difference: unlike those named, it's a very long time since he won anything. Six years, almost.
The other major factors working against him are local. One is the weather – it seems set to rain all day long. That will make Hoylake a downright unpleasant test and while you could argue it makes life difficult for anyone looking to hunt down a leader, it also makes the course long for someone who relies on run. Harman's chance goes down if the forecast proves accurate; the idea of him dropping five shots in six holes or something similar becomes more believable if there's thick, wet rough to thrash around in.
Two is Tommy and the legions of fans who will gladly get soaked through as they roar him on. Fleetwood might be thinking about Portrush, when the locals played a huge part in Shane Lowry's win, one achieved in front of Fleetwood's very eyes. What finer inspiration could he ask for, and remember this is a player who hung tough that week and later came off the course in the pouring rain in the 2020 Scottish Open with a twinkle in his eye.
Although he'd go on to lose a play-off, how about what Fleetwood said following a brutal third round, while carrying a bright yellow Open Championship brolly? "My ultimate dream is to win the Open and I might have to do it on a day like this."
Attitude counts for so much when you find yourself exposed to the worst of Britain's elements while standing in the middle of a big field, trying to achieve something you've wanted for the best part of 30 years. Like many, I'll be watching on as a massive Fleetwood fan, hoping that he can close the gap on Saturday. Do that, even by a single shot, and he'll be in with a huge chance entering Sunday's final round.
Taking 4/1 is another matter altogether. Spieth said it best after his frustrating 71, a round which saw him build a platform and then fall off it rather, a blend of poor putting, bad luck and the odd errant shot seeing him undo all of his good work. "I understand a lot can happen at an Open," he said afterwards, far from dejected but certainly frustrated. "...but eight shots is a lot of shots to spot a player who's playing really well."
My bottom line is that Harman is probably slightly overpriced if you can take 2/1 on the exchanges. For the record, DataGolf make him about an even-money chance, so their model suggests there's serious value on offer at around 3.0. Still, 36 holes is a very long time in golf, longer in filthy weather, and there are so many unknowns concerning every player. As Spieth said, rain brings with it factors even they can't control.
The obvious two-ball starting point is ALEX BJORK (1320). He plays with Tom Kim, who suffered a grade one ankle tear on Thursday night yet somehow came back to shoot 68 on Friday. "I'm barely walking," he declared afterwards, defiantly insisting that he would not give up. Kim said he had low expectations and had to make 'a lot of half swings', but that things improved as the temperature climbed.
With cold, wet conditions ahead of him it's going to be an extremely difficult weekend, if indeed he can continue. The caveat is fairly straightforward: those who got wind of his ankle ahead of round two and acted accordingly were left wishing they hadn't. Bjork has though been ultra-consistent all year and is on paper an inferior player to Kim, which is a nice combination – it means you get a bit of a price (7/4 with Sky Bet at the time of writing) and a degree of reliability.
Watch out too for top Korean markets. Kim is an odds-on favourite now but his lead is just a single shot over Byeong Hun An, with Sungjae Im a further stroke behind. Those gaps will be immaterial if he can't complete the tournament. Guesswork is part of the deal but he'll do very well to produce a good level of golf for 36 holes based on what we know.
I will finish off by returning to my hunch, and it can only be a hunch, that Royal Liverpool will play long in the conditions. It's not so much the receptive fairways but the fact that the ball could just go nowhere in the rain and make this a slog. Punters with the benefit of waiting to see how the first hour or two unfolds would be wise to do that and get a feel for conditions.
Power mismatches come in the form of GARY WOODLAND (1145 BST) versus Christiaan Bezuidenhout, WYNDHAM CLARK (1355) versus Henrik Stenson, JASON DAY (1510) versus Shubhankar Sharma and then the final two favourites, MIN WOO LEE (1520) and TOMMY FLEETWOOD (1530), against Sepp Straka and Brian Harman.
There are a handful of others, including for instance Christo Lamprecht against Andrew Putnam, Laurie Canter against Richard Bland, Kurt Kitayama against JT Poston and Romain Langasque against Brendon Todd. However, the Woodland, Clark, Day treble is preferred and pays close to 4/1, while I do like the look of Lee and Fleetwood in those final two groups.
Minimum stakes are a given in the circumstances and my focus will be on enjoying what could be carnage, safe from the comforts of my living room. Hopefully come the end of the round we've something to look forward to on Sunday, but that depends much on Harman.
Posted at 0700 BST on 22/07/23