Steve Bamford

Steve Bamford's Open Championship Tips

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The Open Championship stands on a pedestal, sharing it only with The Masters as the Major Championship that professional golfers covet the most.

The 2025 Open Championship takes place in Northern Ireland this year at Royal Portrush Golf Club, County Antrim, which we last saw in 2019 when Shane Lowry got his hands on the famous Claret Jug.

The 153rd edition of the Open Championship takes place from Thursday 17th July 2025. Now into our 16th season, Golf Betting System will as ever be hunting for profit with our Open tips from Paul Williams and Steve Bamford. Golf Betting System has full 2025 coverage with Open Championship tips, long-shot and alternative market selections, a full range of free course and player statistics, plus of course our famous free statistical Predictor Model.

You can also listen to our weekly Golf Betting System podcast (published every Tuesday of the golfing calendar), which is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and on the Steve Bamford Golf Channel, as well as across all popular podcast players.

The Open Championship winners list here at Royal Portrush is a short one – Max Faulkner (1951) and Shane Lowry (2019). Lowry is the last European winner of The Open, with Americans winning three of the last four Open Championships with Collin Morikawa (2021), Brian Harman (2023) and Xander Schauffele (2024) proving victorious. In between, Australian Cameron Smith (2022) beat Rory McIlroy at St Andrews.

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Open Championship Insight, Stats and Tips Research

It’s worth remembering that the Open Championship (or British Open, if you’re reading this on the other side of the Atlantic) and links golf in general is very niche: it’s a defined golfing specialism which in itself produces opportunities from a betting perspective. Mistakes can be costly, however select the right player or player portfolio and the rewards can be strong.

Golf Betting System’s goal is to provide you with informed Open Championship tips, free tournament research tools, insight and information that will help you make educated decisions about which players to back at the 2025 Open Championship. Better still, we can even help with what players to avoid in a Major where plenty of big names will not feature.

Course Information:

Royal Portrush Golf Club – Dunluce Links, Portrush, Northern Ireland: Designer: Harry Colt, with Martin Ebert renovation in 2017; Course Type: Coastal, Links; Par: 71; Length: 7,401 yards; Fairways: Fescue, Bentgrass and Meadow Grass; Rough: Fescue, Bentgrass and Meadow Grass; Greens: Bentgrass (50%), Fescue (30%), Annual Meadow grass (20%).

Course Scoring Average:

  • 2019: 72.16 (+1.16), PGA Tour Difficulty Rank 4 of 49 courses.

What to Expect at Royal Portrush

The Dunluce Links at Royal Portrush has been described as a course that rewards pure golf and rejects bad shots with harsh consequences. A Harry Colt masterpiece, the Dunluce will play as a challenging Par 71 at 7,401 yards – extended by 64 yards since 2019.

Set within amazing dunes which frame holes perfectly, the course has undulations across its routing but also on the green complexes too. It’s a course which is well known as being ‘right in front of you’ and not ‘tricked-up’ in golfing parlance, but to play well around here you need a game which is totally on point. Oh yes, and a 17-year old at the time by the name of Rory McIlroy held the course record on the old course with a 61 shot in 2006. His compatriot and close friend Shane Lowry then shot -8/63 on Saturday of the 2019 Championship to set the current course record on the current format.

Padraig Harrington knows a thing or two about the Open Championship. The 2007 and 2008 Open Champion, Harrington is synonymous with playing links golf to the very highest standard. Asked back in 2012 about the green complexes on the Dunluce course, he answered, “The greens are reasonably receptive, which is a godsend for us, because we are just not used to the ball moving around inside the green complexes and trying to cut the ball into a right‑to‑left green, and you have to trust that, yes, the wind will move it and things like that.  When you are playing in warm weather, the ball doesn’t do anything like it does here. I think having had the rain over the last couple of weeks, it’s going to help us out a little bit that the greens are not too firm. It would certainly ‑ it’s not that the golf course wouldn’t play well if the greens were firm or the course was firm.

The greens are undoubtedly the star here on the Dunluce Links as they are undulating and devilish when firm. Naturally the R&A will have control over them, but a dry build-up would turn this into a hugely technical challenge. Royal Portrush though is also known for its weather. You can experience all 4 seasons in a single day on this stretch of the North Atlantic coastline, and this part of the world is well-known for strong winds. As we always say in the build-up to any Open Championship, the weather will be the key to unpicking the Open Championship, and undoubtedly this is the kind of venue where a player’s chances can be severely impacted if they are the wrong side of the draw weather-wise.

With only 64 bunkers on the course, Royal Portrush has the lowest number of sand traps on the Open rota, however its difficulty is generated by the wind, the creativity of Harry Colt’s masterful greens, and the courses length which has been extended to 7,401 yards for 2025.

As ever though the challenge really will be as difficult as the weather which presents itself across 17th to 20th July 2025. If the turf is soft and the wind is down then this is a scoreable course where mid-to-high teens will be the target required. If the Northern Irish weather is unkind then a repeat of 2019 when the Dunluce Links turned into a real brute is very possible.

Below are some revealing comments about the course from the 2019 Open Championship:

Justin Rose (2019): “The 17th is an interesting hole, especially for a 17th hole of an Open. I feel like it’s a quirky hole, for sure, because it’s not really drivable. You hit driver over the top there about 300 yards and it gets down within 20, 30 yards of the green. It plays quite narrow because of the way the camber tilts right-to-left. You’ve got to really thread the driver up the right edge of the fairway to get it down short of the green there. But it’s very tempting. If the wind is — unless the wind is hurting I’ll hit driver. Pin placements will be a factor. I think the only tricky pin if you do hit driver is the left pin where they can stick it behind the bunker, that may be better to lay up on top of the hill and have something where you can control your spin coming into that pin. But it’s a really sort of unique hole, especially at that point of the championship.

To this point I’ve only played the 18th closer with no wind. 300 yards is a good number off that tee. There’s still plenty of room at 300. Now, 300 down a little bit of a breeze is probably an iron. But I thought it was a 3-wood hole for me. Because you want to be far enough on that hole to be able to get a full, clear sight of the green. It makes it a much more inviting second shot. It’s a great hole if you have four to win. By hitting an iron, even if you pull it left, you’re not reaching the trouble. Obviously if you hit driver and pull it left you are reaching the trouble. So I feel like 3-wood was a hedge there somewhere in the middle. But if you need birdie to force a playoff, for example, you’d probably hit driver.

Rory McIlroy (2019): “I think there’s a lot of approach shots here that are visually a little more intimidating than they play. Thomas Bjorn walked a few holes with me yesterday, and I hit sort of a nice little draw over the right-hand bunker on 3, it looks like it’s going to miss the green by a mile, and then he gets up there and the ball is in the middle of the green. He said, I wouldn’t have thought that’s where the ball would end up. But just little things and knowing where the lines are. I’m maybe a little more comfortable doing that stuff around here than some of the other Open venues.

And then with the rain, you know, I think when this course gets crosswinds, so today it’s out of the south. I think the rest of the week it’s sort of southwest. And there’s a lot of crosswinds in that sort of wind direction, and that’s what’s going to make it tough. Because you’re already hitting across a lot of fairways, sort of slight doglegs. So that will make it tough.

And I think the big key this week is just to keep it out of the fairway bunkers and keep it out of the rough. Even if you’re giving yourself a little longer second shots in. You’re able to play this golf course from the fairway. And with the way the rough has grown over the past couple of weeks, you’re not going to be able to score hitting it off line.

As you know in links golf, different wind conditions and different wind directions can completely change what you do and how holes play. For example, the second hole here you’ve got those collection of the three bunkers, around 280, 290 off the tee, but then you’ve got a bunker on the left-hand side that’s 310. And the only way I’d ever hit driver there is if I knew I could carry that bunker on the left. For the most part I’ll lay it up.

I think one of the great things about this golf course is, and I sort of realised this last Saturday when I came to play, off the tee it makes you challenge at least one bunker. If you try to take all the bunkers out of play, it’s going to be very difficult. You’re leaving yourself a lot of long shots. I think a lot of tee shots here you challenge one bunker but you sort of stay short of the next. You sort of have a little area to hit it into. So you still have to concentrate on the tee shot.

But, yeah, there is flexibility. There’s some holes in certain winds I can hit driver, in certain winds I’ll just hit an iron and play it that way.”

Shane Lowry (2019): Yeah, I hit the ball well. I hit it in play. You really need to hit it in play out here. If you start finding the rough off the tee, you kind of start chasing it a little bit. On the downwind holes you need to be clever where you hit it, because the ball is going quite a long way downwind. You don’t necessarily need to hit a lot of club off some tees.

It’s a course where I feel confident around here. Look, I’ve played all right here in the past. Yeah, I suppose I was quite anxious going out there this morning. The wind was up early. I felt very unconfident on the first tee, I’m not going to lie. I was very happy it was downwind with only a 3-iron. I hit a good tee shot and from there on I was off and running.

I’m sitting here after shooting 63, which is incredible. And look, obviously, it is one of the best scores I’ve ever shot, but I think the golf course, we got very lucky with the weather today. The wind laid down and it played quite easy towards the end. The greens are perfect and we’re playing links golf in no wind. It virtually had no real protection out there. If you were hitting decent shots you were getting good results.

On Calamity (par-3 – 16th Hole) I’m not going to lie, I pushed it about five yards, ten yards. But it was a perfect 4-iron, to be honest. I knew I couldn’t go long. I knew if I pushed it on to the flag that it would carry. I decided to hit a little fade up the green. It came — the moment it came off the club face I knew it was pretty close. I thought it was close walking up there and it was about maybe 8 or 10 feet. And to roll the putt in was really nice, as well. Every time I had a putt today I just wanted to hole it because I wanted to hear that roar, it was just incredible. It was an incredible day.”

Henrik Stenson (2019): “We played plenty of golf in kind of similar toughness over the years. But it was certainly a very tough day out there. I said this when I first saw this golf course, If you get winds like this, it’s going to be a tricky one because you’ve got to flight the ball in, you can’t run it in like you can on a lot of other links courses.

A lot of greens have big runoffs, sits a bit higher, and big elevation. You’ve got to flight the ball in at the same time you’ve got to keep it down and into these winds. It’s not an easy golf course when the wind starts pumping. I think overall we got lucky with the rain. We didn’t play that many holes in the downpours as I feared or expected. But the wind got extremely strong here.

The last couple of holes you’re hitting, you barely touched the ball from 170 yards downwind with a sand iron and then you can’t get a 2-iron anywhere when you turn around. So it’s tough enough.”

open championship tips

Royal Portrush hosts its third Open Championship.

Greens In Regulation Was Key

Let’s take the final skill statistics from Shane Lowry’s 2019 Open Championship victory at Royal Portrush. This gives us a little more insight into the requirements for this test:

  • 2019, Shane Lowry (-15). 301 yards (12th), 62.5% fairways (22nd), 79.2% greens in regulation (1st), 46.7 % scrambling (39th), 1.60 putts per GIR (2nd).

Check the traditional statistics from 2019 here and Greens in Regulation was critical. Shane Lowry topped the category across a windy renewal, hitting a pretty remarkable 59 of 72 greens (79.17%). Tony Finau and Lee Westwood hit 56 of 72 greens (75%) which placed them T3 for Greens Hit – Finau finished 3rd overall with Westwood 4th.

Ultimately – and so often the case at an Open – Lowry’s hot putter was the difference maker though, making 23 Birdies across the week which was 4 better than anybody else in the field.

Open Championship Pedigree - Once Critical, Now Not So

Maybe it’s the modern game, or maybe it’s been recent Open Championship venues, but lifting the Claret Jug was up until recently the preserve of players who had finished in the top 10 of a previous Open at the very least. But that hasn’t been the case of late. Collin Morikawa in 2021 became a member of the ‘no Open Championship experience required club’ when he lifted the Claret Jug in Kent. It was the 24 year-old’s first ever appearance in an Open Championship, which he won at 40/1.

Cameron Smith in 2022 had Open form of MC/78/20/33 when arriving at St Andrews for his fifth British Open. Scratch the surface with the Australian and you would have seen he’d been 5th after 36 holes at Royal Portrush before finishing 20th, plus 9th at Sandwich after 54 holes before slumping to 33rd. From a broad brush perspective, Smith could have been struck off a punters list if a top 10 finish was any form of selection criteria.

2020-2022 certainly breaks the cast-iron Top 10 rule, but Xander Schauffele last year at Royal Troon had finished 2nd at the 2018 Open played at Carnoustie. The Californian had also finished 3 more times in the top 20 across a total of 7 Open Championship appearances. He’s the latest in an Open Champions list including all winners from 2011–2019, plus 2023, all of whom had shown a level of top 10 pedigree at the ultimate links golf test prior to lifting the trophy.

Brian Harman at Hoylake in 2022 won off the back of finishing T6 the year before at St Andrews. Shane Lowry, winner here in 2019, had finished 9th at the 2014 Royal Liverpool (Hoylake) Open that Rory McIlroy won. Francesco Molinari had a top-10 and 2 top-20s to his name before winning at Carnoustie in 2018. Jordan Spieth had a 4th place finish at St Andrews on his CV prior to victory at Birkdale in 2017, which was only his 5th Open appearance. 2016 Champion Henrik Stenson had garnered 3 top-10s and another top-20 from 11 appearances before beating Phil Mickelson in their famous Troon duel.

It’s also fascinating to note that on average across the past 12 winners that they had appeared in 10 Open Championships prior to winning. Collin Morikawa on his Open debut, Jordan Spieth and Cameron Smith with 4 Open appearances and Ernie Els with 21 are the outliers statistically. And where experience was once all important, in Spieth, Morikawa and Smith across 3 of the past 5 Open renewals, we are starting to witness the needle moving towards Major Championship talent overcoming links golf experience, when weather conditions allow.

2024 Champion – Xander Schauffele

  • 6 Open Appearances – Top 10s = 1, 2nd Carnoustie 2018; Top 20s = 3, 20th Royal Birkdale 2017, 15th St Andrews 2022, 17th Hoylake 2023

2023 Champion – Brian Harman

  • 7 Open Appearances – Top 10s = 1, 6th St Andrews 2022.

2019 Champion – Shane Lowry

  • 7 Open Appearances – Top 10s = 1, 9th Hoylake 2014.

2018 Champion – Francesco Molinari

  • 11 Open Appearances – Top 10s = 1, 9th Muirfield 2013; Top 20s = 2, 13th Turnberry 2009, 13th Hoylake 2014.

2017 Champion – Jordan Spieth

  • 4 Open Appearances – Top 10s = 1, 4th St Andrews 2015.

2016 Champion – Henrik Stenson

  • 11 Open Appearances – Top 10s = 3, 3rd Birkdale 2008, 3rd St Andrews 2010, 2nd Muirfield 2013; Top 20s = 1, 13th Turnberry 2013.

2015 Champion – Zach Johnson

  • 11 Open Appearances – Top 10s = 2, 9th Lytham 2012, 6th Muirfield 2013; Top 20s = 2, 20th Carnoustie 20th, 16th St George’s 2011.

2014 Champion – Rory McIlroy

  • 6 Open Appearances – Top 10s = 1, 3rd St Andrews 2010.

2013 Champion – Phil Mickelson

  • 19 Open Appearances – Top 10s = 2, 3rd Troon 2004, 2nd St George’s 2011; Top 20s = 2, 11th St Andrews 2000, 19th Birkdale 2008.

2012 Champion – Ernie Els

  • 21 Open Appearances – Wins = 1, Muirfield 2002; Top 10s = 11, 5th Muirfield 2002, 6th St George’s 1993, 2nd Lytham 1996, 10th Troon 1997, 2nd St Andrews 2000, 3rd Lytham 2001, 2nd Troon 2004, 3rd Hoylake 2006, 4th Carnoustie 2007, 7th Birkdale 2008, 8th Turnberry 2009.

2011 Champion – Darren Clarke

  • 15 Open Appearances – Top 10s = 3, 2nd Carnoustie 1997, 7th St Andrews 2000, 3rd Lytham 2001; Top 20s = 3, 11th Lytham 1996, 11th Troon 2004, 15th St Andrews 2005.

Will World Number 1 Scottie Scheffler win at Royal Troon?

Tempted to get on the World Number 1 (at the time of writing) Scottie Scheffler at the Open Championship? Well here’s a word of warning for all those tempted to jump on. No World Number 1 since 2000, apart from Tiger Woods (who else), has won The Open.

Scottie, fresh from a 2025 campaign which has seen him win 3 tournaments including the PGA Championship, will naturally be the short-price favourite at The Open. But, for the record, Brian Harman was 26th when he won in 2023, Cameron Smith was 6th, Collin Morikawa was 4th, Shane Lowry was 33rd, Francesco Molinari was 15th, Jordan Spieth was 3rd, whilst Henrik Stenson was 6th, Zach Johnson was 25th, McIlroy was 8th and Mickelson was 5th in the OWGR at Muirfield in 2013. The previous 5 winners in Els, Harrington, Cink, Oosthuizen and Clarke were all ranked outside of the World’s top 10 when triumphing.

It would also me remiss of me not to point out that I raised this trend continually before The Masters as well, until that is World Number 1 (at the time) Dustin Johnson captured the 2020 November edition. Scottie’s 2022 and 2024 Masters Tournament wins, plus this year’s PGA Championship, came with the Texan ranked as the best player on the planet.

Open Championship OWGR Analysis

YearOpen Championship WinnerOWGR Ranking
2024Xander Schauffele3rd
2023Brian Harman26th
2022Cameron Smith6th
2021Collin Morikawa4th
2019Shane Lowry33rd
2018Francesco Molinari15th
2017Jordan Spieth3rd
2016Henrik Stenson6th
2015Zach Johnson25th
2014Rory McIlroy8th
2013Phil Mickelson6th
2012Ernie Els40th
2011Darren Clarke111th
2010Louis Oosthuizen54th
2009Stewart Cink33rd
2008Padraig Harrington14th
2007Padraig Harrington10th
2006Tiger Woods1st
2005Tiger Woods1st
2004Todd Hamilton55th
2003Ben Curtis200th
2002Ernie Els3rd
2001David Duval7th
2000Tiger Woods1st

 

 

Recent Form Is Key

Xander Schauffele’s first Open Championship win at Troon in 2024 adds even more gravitas to the fact that in-form players are the guys to follow at the Open Championship. It makes sense that those who are struggling with their games are unlikely to find them on a links course and in the last 12 champions, namely Schauffele, Harman, Smith, Morikawa, Lowry, Molinari, Spieth, Stenson, Zach Johnson, McIlroy, Mickelson and Els, we can see a pattern that’s easy to extrapolate.

Xander Schauffele won his second Major Championship of 2024 at Royal Troon 12 months ago. Despite winning the PGA Championship in May and finishing in the top-8 across all three 2024 Major Championships, Xander was available at 14/1 – or 4th favourite behind Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Ludvig Aberg. Following his first Major win, 8th at the Signature-level PGA Tour Memorial Tournament, 7th at the U.S. Open, 13th at the Signature-level Travelers Championship, and 15th at the Scottish Open the week before Troon was the kind of solid form that many still overlooked.

Brian Harman took the Claret Jug back to St Simons Island, Georgia from the north-west of England in 2023 at 110/1. He was the largest priced winner of the Open Championship since Zach Johnson in 2015 and the highest priced winner of a Major since Phil Mickelson won the 2021 PGA Championship at Kiawah Island. Yes Brian was undoubtedly a shock winner, but plenty of sage backers had noted that Harman had been in great nick leading into The Open and had the driving accuracy to navigate Hoylake’s main defence – big trouble off the tee. 2nd at the Signature-level PGA Tour Travelers Championship behind Keegan Bradley, Harman had backed that up with 9th at the Rocket Mortgage Classic and 12th at the Scottish Open the week before Hoylake, where he’d been T3 heading into Sunday, going out in the 2nd from last Group at the Renaissance Club.

Cameron Smith’s 2022 had undoubtedly been the very best year of his career prior to even lifting the Claret Jug on the 18th green on the Old Course. He’d won the first tournament of the year at the Sentry Tournament of Champions and The Players Championship in Florida in March, prior to going very close to winning The Masters in April. A 36-hole leader and Final Group on Sunday performance at the Memorial Tournament (finished 13th), plus a fast-finishing (2nd for weekend scoring) 10th at the Scottish Open the week before, had many backing the Australian for The Open at 28/1 prior to the off.

Collin Morikawa in 2020, despite being both a Major (2020 PGA Championship) and WGC (2021 WGC Workday Championship) champion, shocked many when he won the Royal St George’s-hosted Open at 40/1. The reason was twofold: 1) It was his Open Championship debut. 2) He had finished 71st at the Scottish Open the week before. Unravel that recency bias though and Collin had finished 4th at the U.S. Open, 2nd at Memorial, 8th at the PGA Championship and 7th at the RBC Heritage all within his past 6 appearances. 40/1 looking back was outrageous!

Shane Lowry in 2019 had won the stellar year-opener, the Abu Dhabi Championship on the DP World Tour and backed that up with his most successful period on the PGA Tour. 3rd at the RBC Heritage (coastal), 8th at the Bethpage Black-hosted PGA Championship and 2nd behind Rory McIlroy at the RBC Canadian Open had preceded top-30 and top-40 outings at the US Open and Irish Open.

Francesco Molinari, like Zach Johnson in 2015, arrived in Scotland directly off the John Deere Classic charter flight from Illinois, and boy his confidence must have been sky high. A huge win (his 5th on the DP World Tour) in May at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth was followed by 2nd at his home Italian Open when defending. But the Italian’s summer got even better when he flew out to Washington in July to player Tiger’s tournament at TPC Potomac which he won, in the process winning his first tournament in the United States. And he arrived in Scotland having just shot a field best -7/64 in the final round to finish T2 in the John Deere Classic.

Jordan Spieth flew into the northwest of England fresh from his 10th PGA Tour victory, which he had racked-up at TPC River Highlands, when clinching the Travelers Championship in a spectacular play-off victory over Daniel Berger. Spieth had never previously played at the Travelers, but made short shrift of the River Highlands course shooting -7/63 in Round 1 to take control of the tournament from the very outset. From there he held off the attentions of Boo Weekley, Troy Merritt and finally fellow ‘Bro Group’ member Berger to win the title at 10/1. In Strokes Gained parlance he was 7th for Approach, 2nd for Around The Green and 1st for Tee to Green, whilst he was not bad with the putter finishing 3rd for Putts per GIR.

Henrik Stenson arrived in Ayrshire fresh from a free-wheeling 13th at the Scottish Open played at Castle Stuart. 76 in Round 1 was then followed by rounds of 69-66-70. However a fortnight prior to the Scottish Open, Stenson had won the BMW International Open at Gut Laerchenoff with a -17/271 total. His performance in Germany, and his 3-shot winning margin, was made even more impressive by the fact that he topped Driving Accuracy, Total Driving, Greens in Regulation and All-Round categories; he was also 2nd for Scrambling. Henrik had also finished 4th at Bro Hoff Slot in June. All of this made him very backable, especially as his Open record contained 2nd (Muirfield 2013), 3rd (Birkdale 2008) and 3rd (St Andrews 2010) place finishes. 30/1 was a cracking price to land.

Zach arrived at Edinburgh airport on the charter flight direct from Silvis, Illinois where he’d just finished a single shot behind Jordan Spieth at the John Deere Classic. 5th at Las Colinas and 6th at TPC River Highlands in preceding PGA Tour outings highlighted a player at the top of his game, so even now the fact that he was available at 110/1 to win at St Andrews is jaw-dropping!

Rory had won the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth in May, a track which had always been his nemesis, until his closing 66 destroyed the field. He then limbered up with a free-rolling 14th at Royal Aberdeen the week before triumphing in Cheshire, where a horrible 78 on Friday was surrounded by rounds of 64, 67 and 68. Rory was 18/1 second favourite  prior to the tournament.

Phil Mickelson had already won at TPC Scottsdale and finished 2nd on the tough tests of Merion (US Open) and TPC Southwind before he touched down in Scotland. Arriving at Castle Stuart the week before The Open, Phil was a 20/1 shot to win the Scottish Open, which he duly did, before travelling down the east coast to Muirfield, where he shot an incredible -5/66 on Sunday to win by 3 shots from Henrik Stenson, again at a healthy 20/1.

Ernie Els was available at 45/1 prior to Royal Lytham in 2012 and quite rightly we tipped him up as a great Top 20 bet in my Open Longshots column that year. With 4 top-5 finishes (Fancourt, Copperhead, Bay Hill and New Orleans) plus a 7th at Wentworth and 9th at the US Open just prior to the Open, he had huge momentum and was in the right place at the right time when Adam Scott collapsed over the closing 4 holes. It’s fact that Ernie was the latest in a long line of form players to triumph at the British Open.

17 Champions from the last 24 renewals (71%) had won a tournament in the season prior to triumphing at The Open. Tiger Woods (00, 05, 06), Ernie Els (02), Todd Hamilton (04), Padraig Harrington (07), Louis Oosthuizen (10), Darren Clarke (11), Phil Mickelson (13), Rory McIlroy (14), Henrik Stenson (16), Jordan Spieth (17), Francesco Molinari (18), Shane Lowry (19), Collin Morikawa (21), Cam Smith (22) and Xander Schauffele (24) had all won in the season prior to lifting the Claret Jug.

This is Steve Bamford’s pre-event preview. Paul Williams will be back with his final Open Championship tips on the Monday before the event.