A Comprehensive Guide to Royal Troon with Steve Bamford
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Final major preview of the year. It is myself. It is Steve Bamford. We are breaking down absolutely everything that you need to know about Royal Troon. Super pumped for this one. And I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. So without further ado, let's bring on Steve. All right. Steve Bamford is here. This is our final major championship of the year. The Open Championship at Royal Troon. Steve, thank you for joining me as always.

Andy, how are you? You good?

I'm excellent. Yeah, I'm in New York right now. It's it's boiling hot. New York City is a sauna at the moment. We're going through a bit of a heat wave. And this upcoming week is supposed to be one of the hottest, if not the hottest weeks of the summer. So it's actually a great time to settle in and wake up a little bit early and watch some coffee golf. Golf. How about yourself?

Well, we've got Wimbledon over here at the moment. Anyone that knows Wimbledon and the UK, it rains for two weeks as soon as Wimbledon starts. So they've had to put two roofs on the main courts of Wimbledon because there's so much rain in the UK in the summer. So, yeah, we've had wet, pretty cold weather. So I wouldn't have thought it'd be much different on the Ayrshire coast either. So I'm not predicting a...

very sort of burnt brown, yellow fairway golf course. It's a true next week. Let's start there. Perfect transition, because I think that every single conversation that we have about Troon going forward needs to be with the caveat of what the weather is doing, because this is the, the number one major, probably the number one professional golf tournament that we see all year that we're

that is impacted by the weather both in the weeks leading up to the major and during the major week. So what are you seeing thus far in terms of what's going on, as you mentioned, on the South Archer coast of Troon, Scotland? Did I get that pronunciation right?

Potentially. Although I've actually got relatives that live in Ayrshire. Okay. I know this sounds ridiculous, especially with my ridiculously southern accent, southern in terms of the UK. I am actually called to Scottish. And...

That part of my family live literally about five miles from the course of Troon. So I have actually seen the course, been on the train going past the famous railway hole. So I've got a little bit of inside knowledge. But yes, it was one thing that grabbed me catching the action from the 2016 duel between Henrik and Phil.

was just how soft that golf course actually was and how much spin. Even on the Sunday, they were getting on their approach shots into the greens. And I think turf-wise, I don't think we're going to be a million miles away from that again in 2024.

Yeah, I'm looking at it right now, and I've been monitoring the weather pretty much every day for the Troon area in the past couple of days since I started really diving into Troon a few days ago. And it's changed. Yeah.

You know, drastically, even like this is my first time looking at it in 24 hours. And even the difference between yesterday and today, it seems like it's calmed down quite a bit. Now, again, we're recording this Friday morning, 10 a.m. Eastern time, eight days out or sorry, six days out from opening T-Shot on Thursday morning.

I'm a bit concerned, Steve, that if this weather holds, which what I'm seeing right now is wind gusts and consistent wind speeds in the 10 to 15 mile per hour zone with maybe a touch of rain on Wednesday, but

Sort of overcast skies, temperatures in the high 50s. It'll be cold-ish, especially in the morning. You'll get temperatures in the low 50s around 7 to 10 a.m. for some of those morning tee times. I have a hard time believing that we will see a carnage-filled Open Championship this year. Yeah, don't see that. Don't see that at all. Not from a weather forecast perspective. One thing of note, though,

And one thing that I've gleaned, they've had a very wet, and this goes against the grain, but bear with me, they've had quite a wet and warm build-up to the tournament over the preceding months. Yeah. One thing that is clear here is that the rough is going to be a lot more, a lot longer, a lot thicker on the golf course compared to 2016. Yeah.

a lot more apparently. I saw a video a few weeks ago with the professional there and he was stating that in terms of 16 to 24, in terms of the rough length, which is only on a lot of these holes,

They have fairway, then a cut of around about three to four yards, and then you're into thick rough. He's saying that it is far, far thicker and a lot more trouble off the tee from a rough perspective than what we saw here in 2016, which apparently in the build-up had been very dry. And then literally as they got towards tournament week, it started to rain.

Yeah. For what it's worth. Also, they did make a fairly concerted effort to make the golf course harder between 2016 and 2024. We had our guy Martin Ebert and McKenzie come in. He's, he's been sort of the modern open championship venue doctor over the past, uh, past couple of years. He made some changes to Liverpool between 2014 and 2023. I thought, uh,

For the most part, those changes worked out pretty well. He's made some changes to Portrush prior to the 2019 Open. So what are some of the things that you've noticed we don't need to get super deep into every single thing?

hole and yardage that changed. There's been nine tee boxes, but that, that have been added, but from a, uh, from a bird's eye view, how would you, um, characterize and summarize some of the changes, uh, on the golf course from what we saw in 2016 versus, uh, what we'll see next week.

Well, to look at what they've physically done to the course, let's take an overview of winning scores here. So, Kalkovec here in 89, 13 under. Not, you know, a decent championship score. Justin Leonard in 97, 12 under. We then had a particularly kind of wacky, tough year when Todd Hamilton...

uh came from absolute blindside to win it at 10 under and then of course we moved to recent history and henrik stenson

He clearly shot 20 under in his duel with Phil Mickelson. And then I believe Ty third was something like minus six. Yeah, he was 14 shots clear of the place. Yeah. Crazy stuff. Absolutely crazy. He was at 20, Phil at 17, and then JB Holmes of all people at six under par.

So they completely played on a different planet that week. But what that does suggest to you, that even then, if you were playing golf of the highest quality...

double digits and medium to large 20 under par was achievable on this golf course. So clearly, Ebert got the memo to strengthen the golf course. What they've effectively done here, and you have mentioned it, nine new tee boxes. They've added circa 200 yards to the golf course.

So they've extended it from 7,190 yards in the Stenson victory year to a quoted 7,385 yards for this 2024 Open. They've added some significant length

to the uh the par fives on the outward outward nine yeah big changes to four and six yes yeah i think they've extended they've they put over 40 yards on the on the first par five yeah i still think it'll be reachable steve though yeah it's that one's downwind

Where it's downwind. And they've also added the, they've made the second par five on the front nine over 620 yards. Longest hole in Open Championship history. That one may not be reachable. That's 623 now, even if we get the prevailing wind, which is, you know, the first six holes are downwind, seven through 12 are crosswind, and then 13th

13 through 18 run parallel to one through six and the other direction. It's a, it's a very classic links routing, right? It's kind of out across and then back in. And so you have the golf course split into, um, these three, six hole stretches where the golf course kind of builds and you, you really have to score on one through six, which has three very short par fours and two par fives. Then you get into some, uh, hillier, uh,

More elevation changes, some more gore, some more vegetation, and you're playing into some tough crosswinds there. And then you kind of have this big closing stretch where you're hiking back into the wind with a couple super long par 4s.

The predominant wind here is northwesterly. So as you said, the way the course works is very traditional in and out style. So the golf course, the furthest extreme of the golf course is actually the first tee to the northwest. It then follows the coast in a south easterly direction.

One through six, as you said, wind behind. That's where you score. You then turn on an easterly direction on seven, which is the first...

there's five really tough holes here seven this the par four and seven is is very tough yeah they then walk off seven green up a very steep sand dune to the tee box on eight clearly the the very famous postage stamp which they they reckon one round this year they're gonna the rna are gonna try and get that sub 100 yards so they're going to move the t forward and

to a front pin, which is surrounded by some of the deepest bunkering on the golf course. 9, 10, not too tricky. And then, of course, 11 is the infamous railway hole. Right. Which they added to expand upon some of the changes you were talking about. That was the hardest hole on the golf course in 2016. And they added 20 yards to that.

They've added 20 yards. They've moved the tee box even closer to the railway line. Sure. Yeah, the wind kind of even pushes that one towards the outabouts.

Exactly. This is the point. Prevailing wind is actually taking the ball straight onto the railway tracks. And that's also approaching... If you've got a back right pin, the railway is also in play on your approach shot to the green as well. But it's a blind tee shot. All you see in front of you is a ridiculously tall block of gorse bush.

It's then into the prevailing northwesterly and all of the fairway counters from left to right and also pinches in from the left to the right on the landing area. And believe me, some of the content I saw a couple of weeks ago on the course

All of the rough and the gorse, if you're losing it on the left-hand side of the hole, is some of the thickest on the golf course. So I'd be amazed if the 11th, the railway hole, wasn't, if not the one of the top two or three toughest holes on this golf course. Very tough 11th. Yeah, you know, when I looked at these changes, Steve, on paper, I thought to myself, I'm

This is a good job. Like this golf course got objective, uh, objectively more difficult on paper. This golf course, uh,

What's pretty challenging is that the changes that they enacted when you add up the added length to the certain holes that they added length to, they actually took holes that I think with added length changes the strategy of them. Like I think that the added length on six makes that a much different hole. Some of the par fours that they added length to on the back nine really changes the complexion of the hole.

You know, I've heard some rumblings, as you mentioned, about the rough being thicker in some spots. They redid some of the bunkers. I think one of the cool characteristics about Troon is the fairway bunkers are a real, real hazard, right? Like that is a one-shot penalty if you're in most of those bunkers. You can't see a lot of those bunkers from the tee. So I think...

during the practice rounds, it's going to be very valuable for players to be able to get out and get familiarized with the golf course. Because if you've never played that golf course before, you're probably going to have some issues and struggles with depth perception. And there's going to be a couple of tee shots where you're going to hit it out there. You may think that you have a perfect drive and then it's going to roll right into the bunkers. The problem that I'm kind of having, Steve, is we've kind of

entered the zone with modern technology, where you really need to bank on pretty spicy weather to get close to that winning score that we've seen at Opens in the past in the single digits. I mean, I was looking at the stat the other day. I found this shocking.

Last 10 years, Steve, the last 10 open championships, five of them have been won at 15 under par or better. Between 1860 and 2013, four of them have been won at 15 under par or better. So first 165 years of the open championship, four times a player has shot 15 under par or better.

50% of the time in the last decade, a player has shot 15 under or better. Oh, and by the way, two of those four that happened before 2013 was Tiger Woods going kind of ballistic on the golf course. So, you know, for better or worse, Steve, we have entered an era where we need to presumably believe that if we are not seeing 40 mile per hour wind gusts,

This golf tournament is not going to be one at single digits under par. We are not in that era of the open championship anymore. No, my gut feel is you're looking at your 17s, 18 under potentially. Yeah. It's not going to be single digits. Nowhere near. Yeah. Like, for example, St. George's was 15 under par. St. Andrews was 20 under par.

Correct me if you disagree with this on paper, Trune is a harder golf course than Royal St. George's. Yeah. Um, on paper, it's definitely a harder golf course than St. Andrews. Um,

I don't know if it's a harder golf course on paper than Liverpool, which was Brian Harmon, 13 under par with second place being seven under par. So if I had to make an educated guess based on what I'm seeing in terms of the weather six days out, which is pretty benign, to be honest with you, I'm with you. I'm kind of circling that 13 to 17 under par range.

Yeah, just I've literally brought up my weather recording here just to put this into context. Hoylake last year, round one, gusts up to 18. Round two, gusts up to 25 miles an hour.

And on the Saturday, it calmed down 12 to 14. Sunday was a bit gustier again, 21 miles an hour apparently was the peak gust. So you had effectively there three rounds or two rounds at least, 36 holes that I personally would classify when I'm categorizing and taking data to windy rounds there of 20 plus.

If we are seeing a forecast where literally, and as you've said at the top of the show, and it's very, very true, forecasting and looking at forecasts when we're recording this is pretty pointless.

But if we are seeing weather conditions where we're not going to see winds over 15 miles an hour, that to me suggests we will be getting a winning score in that 15 to kind of 17 under 18 under kind of trajectory. That's, that's my, that's my guess on it. I'm, I'm entirely with you. I, um,

Transitioning a little bit into the actual type of skill set that we are looking at at Royal Troon. Because I found some very interesting similarities to some of the last couple Open Championship venues that we've seen and some pretty stark contrasts and differences. Yeah.

What type of golf course is Royal Troon to you? Is it more of a accuracy over distance golf course? Is it more of a long iron test or short iron test? Is it more of a short game versus lag putting golf course? What are some of the key skills that are jumping out to you about Royal Troon compared to some other previous open venues we've had? For

For me, there's a similarity to Liverpool and Hoylake last year. Agreed. For me, I think the line off the tee this week is going to be far more important than distance off the tee. Entirely with you. So I think accuracy, strategy, finding the short grass, avoiding the cavernous...

fairway bunkers is step one to actually being able to build a base camp where you can actually go for the title here. I think bombs away strategy and full aggression is

will not work on this golf course whatsoever. And I'll tell you the number that grabbed me. Now, clearly we had the duel in 16 between Henrik and Phil. And you think about it, well, if you're looking for two players that are completely kind of opposite poles, Henrik Stenson, who was a ball-striking machine...

versus Phil Mickelson, who was far more bombs away, creative, fantastic approach player with an amazing short game. Yeah. Pretty...

differential player types, if you like. But the way they played this golf course was very, very similar. Phil was super measured that week. Phil lost. I went back and watched 16 in preparation for this. Phil did not hit a lot of drivers on this golf course. And you know Henrik Stenson and his infamous three wood. They played the golf course in a very similar way in terms of their approach. Yeah.

I mean, they were literally playing a very similar strategy, but in different ways. Henrik, clearly lots of irons, but he was using that trusty three-wood where he knew he could get away with it. And that made him both relatively long for the week...

but also ridiculously straight. So he was fifth for driving accuracy. He hit over 70% of fairways and a 297 driving distance average actually put him in the top 11 for the week for driving distance. Phil, on the other hand,

was basically using, apart from the par fives and the very long par fours, was using iron off every tee. That meant that he was pretty much at the bottom of the charts for driving distance, but even for Phil, he was in the top 15 for driving accuracy. I think he was literally three fairways behind Stenson for the week, which then put both of the guys in a great position to let their long approach play out

really come to the fore. So Stenson, first for greens in reg, Phil, third for greens in regulation. What to me, especially with this 200 circa yard extension, might be wrong, but in my view, there's a lot, there's a lot, and you can just see it in the coverage, a lot of mid to longer irons into fairways, into greens rather. And speaking to, just expanding upon that point a little bit further,

To me, we think about the last two open venues that we've had in Royal Liverpool and St. Andrews, and we have more accurate strokes gain data on those last two open venues. A lot of these open venues in the past were dealing with more traditional metrics like fairways hit greens and regulation versus the strokes gain data that I have.

for Liverpool and St. Andrews. When I went back and looked at Liverpool versus St. Andrews the last two years, the keys at those golf courses were dramatically different, right? So the key at St. Andrews was the

hour off the tee and putting hour off the tee and lag putting and St. Andrews actually heavily devalued approach play because there were something like six greens that you could get up there and drive close to the green. And your second shot is a 40 yard pitch shot, or in some cases, you know, a la Rory McIlroy and Cameron young, a 70 foot lag putt, right now, Liverpool, uh,

much darker contrast of accuracy, approach play and short game, right? Liverpool, smaller greens and St. Andrews, far more narrow than St. Andrews, a very, very high missed fairway penalty at Liverpool, lot of deep pop bunkers, lot of high fescue. And you saw the players work their way to the top and

your Tom Kim's your Brian Harmon's your SEP Strakas. What do those three guys all have in common? Incredibly accurate drivers of the ball. Great approach players. Great short to middle iron approach players. Brian Harmon, phenomenal accuracy that week. He was third in the field and driving accuracy. SEP Straka, incredibly accurate driver of the ball. Tom Kim, incredibly accurate driver of the ball.

and a lot more chipping than lag putting because the greens are a lot smaller. Now, Troon, in my opinion, is far more closer to the Liverpool roadmap than the St. Andrews roadmap. Troon, keep in mind, the putting surface is at Troon steep, a quarter of the size of the putting surface is at St. Andrews. I actually think...

that roadmap that we saw at Liverpool and actually to a certain extent, Portrush as well, where you remember Portrush and it was Shane Lowry dominating off the tee with his accuracy, Tommy Fleetwood dominating off the tee with his accuracy. To me, that is the roadmap again this week at Troon, where it is approach play, accuracy off the tee and short game.

I know that we always talk about lag putting, lag putting, lag putting at these open venues. The greens at Troon for an open venue are actually pretty small, and a lot of them are pinched up in front. So a lot of those pins up in front that are guarded by bunkers.

You're going to have to hit some delicate pit shots. You cannot cut from 80 feet out all the time like you can at, at St. Andrews. So I would throw a bit of a, a caution flag on using anything that we kind of saw at St. Andrews as this heavy indicator, because that is a dramatically different golf course in the type of style of play that a

that it allows versus your liverpools and your port rushes. Does that track for you? Completely. Just to put that into context, Brian Harmon was in the top 15 last year at toy lake for strokes gained off the team. And that was on the basis of actually driving distance, 38 driving accuracy second in the field. Yeah. Tom Kim, similar to those stats, uh,

What Harmon did brilliantly was navigate from tee to fairway brilliantly. He then was decent enough with his approach. He was good around the greens and he putted lights out. He was first for strokes game putting across the week. Tom Kim, finishing tee second last year, was also second for strokes game putting. I think that roadmap is only going to be enhanced this year

at Troon because these fairway bunkers are at the very least 0.6, 0.7 of a stroke penalty when you're in them. Could be a full shot, just dependent on your line. And the other thing to note here is I think these green complexes are far more tough, toughly defended

by pot bunkering that is around these greens. Some of the great, some of the bunkers here are absolutely humongous. Yeah. Yeah. And I also, so this idea that you can drive it to within 30 yards of the green and just chip on like it's an Andrews that just isn't going to happen. No, I entirely agree with you there. I I'm very curious to watch the first, um,

Three holes because the first three holes are 367 yards, 390 yards, 377 yards. Um, and into the prevailing wind, they,

Kind of play down, down cross, depending on the wind. I do think there will be kind of like we saw with J.B. Holmes at Troon in 2016 and a little bit like we saw with Cameron Young at Liverpool last year, where there's always one player, even like

I was diving into how Rory attacked Liverpool last year, and even Rory was pretty conservative off the tee at Liverpool last year. Cameron Young was not. Cameron Young was bombing the ball. Cameron Young tried to play Liverpool the way that he played St. Andrews, and it almost kind of sort of worked for him. I do think it's fascinating and will be interesting to watch. I think there will be one or two guys that...

take a super, super aggressive strategy and maybe try and get up close to driving the green on one, two, and three. I'm not sure that's the optimal strategy. I mean, those are three holes where you can lay back off the tee and have a pretty straightforward wedge shot. But to me, Steve, like, again, it's the same thing we talk about every single year at some of the U S open venues that heavily emphasize power. Like,

There's always going to be that one guy that hits the ball 275 yards off the tee and makes a million putts and still finds himself in the top 10 of a U.S. Open at 7,700 yards.

There is going to be a Cameron Young this week or somebody that takes an incredibly, a J.B. Holmes, somebody that takes an incredibly aggressive approach and it works out for them. But what we've seen at Open Championship venues in the past, like I was looking at Harmon and what Harmon was doing leading in and the similarities between him and Zach Johnson in 2015, I

are there's a big contrast there of a lot of the time, you know, these winners at the open championship, these guys that play well at the open championship, look for guys that are playing incredible golf at the moment. And you can talk about some of the lead and stuff you're looking for in terms of previous trends for open winners, but,

But what Brian Harmon was doing was Brian Harmon was driving the ball incredibly straight, and he was playing just incredibly solid golf. A lot of top 10 finishes. Second at the Travelers, ninth at the Rocket Mortgage, 13th at the Scottish Open, second to last group heading into the final round. And I do think a very good roadmap to look at this week is very accurate drivers of the ball that are just perfect.

T10, T11, T15. That was Zach Johnson. That was Brian Harmon. That was Colin Morikawa to a certain extent. I think that you're going to be able to identify these players that are hitting the ball straight off the tee and are playing good golf. That is a strong resume at the Modern Open Championship. I agree 100%.

I agree. The one player, when you were talking there about kind of boom or bust strategy, the one player you didn't mention was Bryson DeChambeau. Yeah. And I find the dynamic for him at Troon to be probably the most intriguing. Number one player I'm most excited to watch. Do we see Bryson...

At his buccaneering best, or do we see a kind of hybrid Bryson where he might pick one or two of the opening three holes and from that point on play as he classifies it boring goal from that point on? Interesting to see because he has matured a hell of a lot, Bryson DeChambeau, this year. He has, yeah. And you can't say the guy isn't in hot form right now.

No, I, I make, I I'm probably more excited to watch him than any other golfer this week, just because I'm always so fascinated to see players like Bryson and Rory navigate a golf course where they're

Our is not necessarily the optimal strategy yet. If you are able to thread the needle and hit it incredibly long and incredibly straight, you can still gain a significant advantage. I'm fascinating, fascinated to watch the decisions that Rory and Bryson make off the tee and we'll know early. We will know early how they are looking at this golf course based on the decisions that they make on the first three holes.

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One other viewpoint on this course that might not be mentioned elsewhere, the fairways here are incredibly uneven. So pretty much most fairways you get an incredible amount, a lot of mounding. There are very few fairway points where you get a flat line.

And that is something that some players do have a weakness with worthy of note. In my opinion, that is particularly on the back by the way. Like, yes, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. The, the opening six, as we know, but yes, when, when this course gets tough from seven onwards, I think information like that, players that struggle with uneven lies, hanging lies, ball above the feet, uh,

there's going to be lots of situations where they hit a good drive, but they end up in a position on the fairway, which is tricky to say the least. Preston Pysh : The other thing that I wanted to mention too, I think one of the cooler things about

Royal Troon. We've alluded to this a little bit, even just in what you were most recently saying there a second ago, there's like this foreboding sense of doom on this golf course where it's going to be, it's going to be interesting. And, you know, Ernie L's had a, had a good quote about this. Players have talked about this, but I can't think of another golf course that has such a strong and stark juxtaposition between what's

where it's scoring opportunities are in the round. Like a lot of golf courses, you see it's spread out, right? And, and a tough two hole stretches reprieve three hard holes reprieve. You really Steve need to get out

in front on those first six holes. You have two par fives. At least one of them is going to be reachable. And three par threes that are under 400 yards. And then once you get to seven, you're starting to get into hang on for dear life mode with very sparse scoring opportunity. I mean, the par five 16th hole is a scoring opportunity coming home. But even that, uh,

They have a bit of a berm at the 320-yard mark. So with the back tee that they moved back now, that may be a three-shot par five still coming home on 16. So...

what I think is, is interesting to watch this week is how players navigate that pressure to get off to an extremely hot start. And what happens if we don't see, you know, players take advantage of those first six holes. If they start to press and get their hand caught in the cookie jar a little bit on seven through 18, which are, are really just, you know, good holes to par, uh,

I think if I was a player and I was looking at how to break down this golf course, I would look at it in three, six hole stretches. And I would, I would say to myself, Steve, I would say, okay, I want to try every day to be three under through the first six.

one under through seven through 12 and even through 13 through 18. And if I do that every single day and shoot 67 with, you know, basically all of that scoring coming on the first six holes, if I shoot four rounds of 67, um,

and get to 16 under I'm probably either right there or holding the trophy. Would you agree with that assessment? Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Seven, 17 and 18 on the way in that they're no gimmies. You've got, you've got 240 yard par three and 17 freshly extended for the championship just to, uh, just to twist the knife a little bit. They've added 22 yards from two 20 to two 42. Uh, so like I said, long irons, not a bad look this week. And, uh,

I know 18 isn't overly onerous in terms of its length, 458, but one of the most well-defended fairways in terms of landing position and ridiculously deep fairway bunkers. I think Stenson in the final round apparently came within two yards of going into one of those bunkers on 18 on Sunday with his trusty three-wood.

The thing there is, clearly, you're probably left there with something like a 120, 130-yard approach into the 18th. OB out the back as well, interestingly enough, on 18th. So for a couple of back pins that they will put across the four days, if it doesn't take you to be too long over the back of the green and you're actually out of bounds on an 18th,

So that is 17, 18 finishes is pretty tricky. But yeah, I agree with you. Three under through the first six. If you can squeak another birdie through the middle seven through 12,

And then clearly 13 through 18 is a very tough finish. Apart from that 16th, where most of the field will go onto the 16th tee, hoping for a birdie. And that, that does put pressure on a lot of the field to get a very fast start. And what, what players will manage that and what players won't. Anything else that you want to touch on, on the golf course? I think we're close to the same page in terms of I'm looking at,

accuracy, long iron play. I think these greens are actually pretty easy. Like I think that once you get on the putting surface, they're slow. There's not a tremendous amount of internal subtle contouring to them and, and a ton of humps and hollows to them. I think that you can hold prop hole putts pretty, pretty easily on, on these greens and,

And so, you know, I'm kind of devaluing putting a little bit for me based on the way that I think a lot of people look at links golf courses and think, Oh, lag, putting, lag, putting, lag, putting, lag, putting to me, I I'm looking a lot at general overall short game, mainly accuracy off the tee and middle to long iron play. And what, I mean, it's a, it's actually like a.

There are a lot of high leverage wet shots and long iron shots. There's like almost six holes where you're going to have an approach shot from 125 yards and in. And then there's, you know, seven to eight holes where you're going to have an approach shot from 175 yard plus. Like there's not a lot of true eight and nine irons on this course. It's a lot of like sand wedges and sticks irons.

So anything else on the golf course before we dive into the odds board? Not overly. I think I agree with that. It's quite a, it's a golf course where you've got two specialisms with you. Yeah. It's either wedge play and long irons, mid irons, like eight through nine, the bag seven, potentially not going to be used a great deal. One other point. And then we'll move on. The club pro did say,

Middle of the green at Royal Troon is never a bad spot to be. And Wayne questioned on that. He said, basically, if you're hitting middle of the green here, you're pretty much then going to be left with 15 to 20 footers all day.

So, yeah, that highlights how small these greens are relative to the length of the course. The difficulty here, of course, is having that accuracy with your approach play not to be bringing in a lot of this very severe green bunkering into play. So if you can avoid both the fairway bunkers and the bunkering around the greens here, I think that's stage two of your approach.

trajectory towards challenging this week. So avoid trouble off the tee, avoid bunkers and surrounding runoff areas and rough around the greens. If you're hitting middle of greens and avoiding trouble off the tee, you have built those first two core levels that give you the opportunity to actually challenge next week.

Well, the best total driver of the golf ball in this field, when you combine distance and accuracy and probably the straightest driver of all the players towards the top of the odds board outside of maybe Colin Morikawa, as well as the best wedge player in the field, as well as the best long iron player in the field, as well as probably the best short game player in the field. And if we say these greens are a little bit easier, I would suppose that that is

Still the weakest part of his game, relatively speaking, is a player named Scotty Shuffler or Steven. Yet I don't think that the, the betting community's relationship to Scotty Shuffler this week mirrors what we saw at the U S open. I've just been talking to a couple of friends, talking to a couple of betters, talking to a couple of folks around the industry and

And it doesn't seem like there's that consensus fear around Scotty Sheffler this week the same way that we felt at the U.S. Open. Now, I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the fact that he burned a ton of us at the U.S. Open. We didn't think it was possible that Sheffler could finish outside of the top 10 at Pinehurst, and he ends up finishing 40th, losing six strokes putting.

But I wonder if the pendulum has swung too far on, you know, us being not afraid, not as afraid of Scheffler as we should be on this golf course. I don't think anyone's looking completely past him, but I don't think we're having the same conversation this week about how we need to bet him at four to one the way we did at Pinehurst, are we?

No, he's five to one in a spot over in the UK at the moment. But statistically, I mean, yeah, don't forget you and I on our US Open pre-podcast were both waxing lyrically about spotting. I know, don't remind me. But it was the perfect golf course. It was the perfect agronomy.

And then, yeah, clearly the reason he didn't contend was because the failings with the putter came back with a vengeance. I think he was still... You might...

He might shout me down, but I think he was still in the top five or six for approach play. I think he was top three. Yeah. He literally led the field and approach play and he didn't drive the ball great either. Right. Like he, he, um, and he talked about this after Steve. And I think this might be part of the reason why people have a little bit more skepticism in Sheffler this week is that one of the things that Sheffler talked about after Pinehurst was he did not like the,

The variability that came into play at Pinehurst when he missed a fairway, he didn't like those waste areas, giving him different lies, not giving him the ability to hit that same recovery shot that he's used to hitting out of thick rough.

And I think that kind of encapsulates what links golf is, is right. It did the, the variabilities of conditions, your balls rolling into fairway bunkers that you may not be able to see off the tee. So I think that might be a reason why folks have a little bit more skepticism in, in Sheffield this week is that, you know, when I think links golf courses, I think uncontrollable, right. The opposite of track man golf. Um, and we saw that stifle Sheffield a little bit in fairness at Pinehurst.

Yeah, the other thing, of course, is you've just got to look at his Open Championship record over the three goes that he's had at it. I mean, if you just look at the surface on the results, 21st, 23rd last year, actually, look at his sandwich performance in 2021, his first ever Open Championship record.

outing, ninth after round one, fourth after round two, fourth after round three and eighth at the close. Even at St Andrews in 2022, and I know this is the same course, I get that, but it was fifth, sixth and fifth heading into Sunday. So it's not as if Scotty hasn't been close to the top of leaderboards at two of the last three Open Championships.

And he made the cut on the number at Liverpool and played great over the weekend, moved up 30 spots over the weekend. Listen, I'm not betting Scheffler either this week at 5-1. I don't think either of us are. I think we can move past him on the betting board. But I was ready in my head to...

Kind of just not be afraid of him this week based on, I don't know, an inexplicable feeling that I had. Maybe still would a bit of a bad taste in my mouth from from Pinehurst. And I broke down this golf course in terms of the skill set that I'm looking for this week.

This is like every bit as good of a golf course in terms of the required skill set for Scotty Scheffler than nearly any other golf course that we've seen on tour. Like he you want Scotty Scheffler on golf courses with a high miss fairway penalty off the tee. You want Scotty Scheffler on golf courses with.

with where short game is tremendously important instead of lag putting like this open venue is way better like a hundred times better of a course fit for scotty sheffler skill set than say st andrews right and so it's probably not a bet for either of us at five to one but i i just i

I worry about a scenario where the pendulum swings a little bit too far on us saying, oh, you know, Scotty can finish T40th. I think he is close to a lock to finish top 10 this week, in my opinion. Yeah, agreed. If Rory McIlroy was to win the Scottish Open this week,

Do you think that Scott is priced in any way, shape or form might drift half a point? Yeah, I do. Or is constructs just literally just they'll just lengthen the DeChambeau's, the Zander's and the likes. No, I do. I do, Steve. Schaeffler, I'm seeing in the U.S. here.

the highest odds that I can get on him is plus four 60 at FanDuel Rory's eight to one. Now the second round of the Scottish open, uh, is going on right now. Rory McIlroy is T seven right now. He's a three under through his first seven holes on Friday morning. I think there's a pretty safe bet that he's going to be at least relevant over the weekend. Yeah, I could see, I could see a scenario where Rory gets down to seven to one and Sheffler gets up to plus five 50, uh,

God, what do we do with him? What do we do with Rory? It's a no for me, but we haven't even gotten a chance to debrief what happened over those past final four holes at Pinehurst, Steve. Wow. You're taking us into deep water here. It was pretty tragic, wasn't it? The one thing I will say about Rory is

is this guy has had so many peaks and troughs over his career. And he does have this kind of Teflon ability that I think the very highest echelons of sportsmen have got to kind of just brush disappointment away and just see the positives and

move forward because you know you've just got to look at what he's doing in Scotland and I know that Renaissance has no way shape or form of kind of link to what we're likely to see next week because he's pretty benign it's likely to be something close to 20 under that wins blah blah blah but to see McElroy just sitting there like you said T7 just four shots back of Ludwig at the moment who's top of the leaderboard just shows you that you know he shot an opening 65 and

I'll be honest with you, and this was something that we put out yesterday on our Golf Betting System research podcast for the Open. I actually backed Rory yesterday at 8.2 on Betfair Exchange, and I backed him when he birdied the par 5 on the opening 9 of the Scottish Open. I think that put him out to 4 under par.

I just thought to myself, turning down a price slightly bigger than 8-1, I just don't think that price is going to be there come tournament week. I don't know. I've got a sneaky feeling that this could be... I know this is ridiculous. This could be... This could be...

Rory's time. Yeah. You're in a safe space here, Steve. I, I, it's a no for me. And, and, you know, only simply because kind of after what I went through at the masters, I kind of just said, I'm, I'm, I'm done with expecting Rory to win these major championships at these short prices. It,

For the foreseeable future, I continue to play him at every single major in daily fantasy. And I will do it again this week at Royal Troon. Most likely he does not get enough credit for his floor in major championships. Like he has he went through a stretch there in the late to 2010s.

kind of that 2015 to 2020 zone where he was missing some cuts in majors. Rory has become like he is a top 10 machine in majors, and he's got a great open championship record. He played okay at Troon in 2016. He obviously was in the mix at St. Andrews and finished sixth last year at Liverpool. I think there's a very high likelihood that Rory is relevant

um in the in this golf tournament steve listen to this and you listen to this henrik stenson okay clearly won here in 2016 he had we had another three top 10 finishes with stenson on different um open rotor courses um though those uh he finished third at burkdale uh third of st andrews in fact top three finished third at st andrews and second at muirfield okay

So if I look at the last visits to those respective golf courses, 2017, Birkdale, Spieth won, Rory McIlroy fourth. 2018, Carnoustie. I'm throwing Carnoustie in here because Justin Leonard had a second at Carnoustie. Francesco Molinari won that in 2018. McIlroy was second with Justin Rose, Xander, Schofle.

And if you then look at St. Andrews in 2022, where, of course, Stenson had a third there as well, Cam Smith first, Cam Young second, Rory McIlroy third. So McIlroy, across those three courses, has finished third, second, and fourth. That's incredible. Yeah, yeah. It's true. It's just if there's one place on the planet that Rory may break,

this major who do jinx. Surely it's got to be the British. Yeah, I think there's okay. Well, to put a bow on Rory, um,

The two keys for him this week is smart decisions off the tee. There's going to be times where it's going to be far more optimal for him to lay back and take his medicine. And he can't get his hand caught in the cookie jar. He's going to have to play this golf course a little bit differently than he played St. Andrews. And I trust him to do that. His strategy off the tee in these recent majors has been quite strong. Uh,

He attacked LACC in a very mindful way. He attacked Pinehurst in a very mindful way. He attacked Liverpool last year in a very mindful way.

And he's going to, there's going to be three holes on the front nine, Steve. And, and I am so fascinated to watch how he plays these opening three, where if he decides not to hit driver, it is going to be, you know, bun to driving iron out there and have a hundred yards in. And, and,

He's going to have three wedge shots in the first three holes where he's going to have a very straightforward wedge from a hundred yards out. And he's got a birdie. Those we've seen times in the past where Rory gives up shots with his wedges. Um, and there are three, uh,

clear scoring opportunities on the first three holes where you are going to see Rory hit wet shots. Um, and he's going to need to take advantage of those. The final thing that I think is working in his favor, Steve. Um, and we saw this at Pinehurst. We saw this at LACC. I like the major championships more for Rory, not that he isn't going to be a tremendous

storyline this week. I like the major championships for him where there isn't that serendipitous connection to it the way that there is at Royal Portrush, our venue next year, the way that there is at

Valhalla side of his last major championship win the way that there is at Oak Hill where he met his wife the way that there is at Valhalla where he won before he doesn't have this deep intrinsic connection to Royal Troon the way he does at the romanticism of St. Andrews where he broke onto the scene obviously Royal Portrush and so I

I think his chances of winning are probably higher at Troon than they are at Fort Rush next year, or maybe even Quail Hollow, where he's the king of Quail Hollow. I think that's working in his favor, too. Yeah, get that.

One thing I will say about Rory in 2024, his driving is so accurate at the moment. He must be close to a career best in terms of accuracy across the PGA Tour this year. One thing I'll also say, and yes, I do take the valid point there about wedge play, especially on the opening three holes. If you actually go back to 2016, and I quoted Henrik Stenson's driving distance, Rory was fifth.

hit the ball on average exactly the same distance off the tee as Henrik Stenson did. So he was ninth off the tee for driving distance, which would suggest even in 2016, Rory wasn't taking that buccaneering style off the tee. He was actually playing far less driver off the tee, far more irons off the tee and utility clubs.

So if that sticks, it literally does come down to the point that you raised. Can he be good enough with the wedges on those scoring holes on the way out?

So I think you might be a little bit more hamstrung in this conversation. I haven't made a single bet. You may be a little bit. Yeah. So, so you've still got some room, but you're pretty, yeah, you're, you're, you're exposed at the top with Rory, but I want to get through this next tier. I'm going to put them in a, I'm going to lump them all together here with Bryson, Xander, Ludwig, Morikawa, Hovland, Rom, and,

Tommy Fleetwood, 26 to one. Tyrell Hatton, 30 to one. Those eight guys. Okay, Steve, those eight guys are under 30 to one. Those eight guys are between 13 to one and 30 to one. How would you break down that tier? Who's kind of your favorite? Once you get past Scotty and Rory as the overwhelming favorites, who's your favorite in the kind of 13 to 30 range? Well, if this current situation is,

persists through the closing rounds in Scotland. We might be seeing Ludwig Oberg go off as third favourite.

Agree with you. And we might, uh, Hovland is on the cut line right now. Uh, but if we see, I mean, there are a couple of shoes to drop, right? Like Hovland, if Hovland misses the cut, he's already at 24 to one. You could see that number get to 28 and more call is having like a really sneakily great, uh, Scottish open so far through the first two rounds as well. So, uh, Colin at 20 to one and Ludwig at, uh,

15 to one may get a little bit shorter, whereas Xander and Hovland could be going a little bit in the other direction. I'm not into Xander. The reason that being is when I've done some analysis on first time major winners, he isn't great.

You tend to see like Wyndham Clark, it took him eight months to win his next title after the first major. Fitzpatrick, 10 months. Sheffler, 10 months after he won the Masters the first time. John Rahm, 11 months after he won the US Open.

Brian Harmon hasn't won again, 12 months on. So for me, Xander's won just on trends that I would probably walk away from at that price point. I'm fascinated by DeChamber. We did say on the podcast yesterday, I think the last person to go

consecutive major wins was Brooks Koepka in 2017. Preston Pysh : Yeah, it doesn't happen too often. Luke Gromen : It's not a standard procedure. And I do have question marks with Bryson around, has he got the ability still to be able to play conservative golf off the tee across 72 full holes?

Does he go for this hybrid approach of aggressiveness on the opening three? This is it. We don't know. The two players that just ring true to me, one would be Oberg. I mean, that's obvious. He's leading the Scottish Open at the moment. You're not going to get a bargain on price, though. The one I do like and the one that I've said to you in previous majors and the shape of his game, to me, is modern-day Henrik Stenson. It's Colin McArdle.

Not overly long off the tee, but long enough. Very, very straight, ball-striking machine when he's in form of his irons. So I do like the look of Colin Morikawa at that kind of 20-to-1 price point. And he's playing sneakily well at the Scottish Open. Yeah, the other piece with Morikawa is...

He is chipping and putting so well right now, right? Like more colors, game strokes and all four major categories and four straight starts. And he's threatening to do it once again at the Scottish Open. If you want to talk about a player that.

is displaying the most well-rounded skill set in golf right now. I mean, Xander and Scheffler usually elevate above that conversation in terms of the well-rounded nature of how, um, Colin Morikawa is getting to his high end finishes. He is not,

doing it in a way that we've seen with Morikawa in the past where, you know, maybe he's spiking with his irons and giving a couple back on and around the greens. Um, he's doing it in a very balanced way. And that is kind of the statistical profile that you often want to see heading into majors because you just have to play such weakness for golf a lot of the time, particularly on links golf courses. So I I'm with you, man. I, I,

I'm very intrigued by Morikawa. The Hovland piece is very interesting to me because I was pretty high on him heading into the week in terms of, you know, he's played in three open championships and he's never finished outside of the top 15. And I think there's a lot of reasons why Hovland in theory should be good on links golf courses. He flights the ball down.

A lot of the times, for example, at St. Andrews, St. Andrews was a golf course where you didn't really have to chip at all. Um, true. And it's not like that. However, true. And as much smaller greens, he's going to have to rely on his short game a little bit as well. And I think that was kind of the, the,

The negative, the thing that may keep me off Hovland this week is it's just not the lag putting test that we've seen at some other lengths golf courses. I think you're really going to have to hit some delicate little pitch shots around these screens to some front pins that are guarded by bunkers. Maybe the limiting factor for Hovland on me. And then Steve, I got to say like, how,

It's almost like homework watching live. I'm not the biggest fan of watching live golf, but I am pretty still curious to see if we see anything, anything from John Rom and Brooks Kupka this week, who, you know, Brooks is ballooning to 35 to one John Rom in the 25 to 30 zone and,

You got to watch him. You got to watch him. And just like you have to with Hatton as well, who seems a little bit overvalued based on a fifth place finish at Troon in 2016. And, you know, they always overvalue the Brits in the Open Championship. Fleetwood's 20 to one in some places. But I'm watching those guys at Valderrama, Steve. I think you got it. Yeah, I agree.

I mean, if you actually look at Hatton's form at the moment, it's fantastic. Yeah. Clearly a winner recently in Tarsosa, playing some great golf, Tyrell Hatton. He has, in the past, he's the kind of player that when he's hot, he stays hot for a number of consecutive outings. Decent open championship record as well, Tyrell Hatton. So maybe one to put on the list.

perspective list for me to all Adam. If I gave you Steve, if I gave you a hypothetical three ball this week of ROM, Fleetwood, Capco, who's your favorite of that three?

Fleetwood yeah I think so too but what not to win though yeah he'd win the threesome but clearly yeah we know Tommy's issues yeah and that again where's Tommy Fleetwood likely to win a major championship the most likely not the Masters no probably not the PGA Championship probably PJ's Championship setups are too long too over us off the tee the same could be said for a US Open where

Again, this year, pure bright driving distance, pretty much won it through Bryson and Rory. Yeah. The most likely place that Tommy Fleetwood wins a major is in the UK. Entirely agree. But 25 to one, it's not turning me on. No. Now digging a little bit farther. Can't lay sporty. Gosh, Tony Finau is playing some phenomenal golf, Steve.

He is. What do you think to Tony's ability not to hit driver off the tee? Yeah, that's kind of a...

I look at Finau the same way that I look at Rory and Bryson this week in a lot of ways in terms of I'm fascinated to watch the strategy that they take off the tee because Finau's been playing some phenomenal golf lately. He's got three top 10 finishes in a row, including a third place finish at Pinehurst. And the way that Finau is doing it is...

He's not even driving the ball that great by any means. He has developed into like maybe the second or third best iron player in this field. Once you get past Sheffield, he is hitting his irons unbelievably well. Um, and, and such a great wedge player too. Like I know that Sheffield and Finau get thought of as these great long iron players. Sheffield and Finau may be the two best wedge players in the field right now.

And he's finally starting to gain one, two, three strokes putting. And we've talked about how these greens, in my opinion, are fairly easy to hold putts on. Once you get on, the greens are pretty flat. Oh, and by the way, Finau's gained over four strokes around the green in his last two starts as well. So he's chipping the ball great. There's a 50 to one, and I'm circling it. I'm thinking it.

I'm flirting with it. Uh, I haven't made a move yet. He's, uh, he's 40 in a lot of spots as well, along with Patrick can't like, but, um,

It's an interesting one. I mean, what has he done wrong in terms of like recent form? It's just, do you envision Tony Finau holding the trophy on a Sunday afternoon? He's been great on links courses, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you remember the Lowry victory? Tony Finau was right. He was one of the guys from the northern, you know, from the state that was still towards the top of the leaderboard that week. Yeah.

And he just shows you he can't, he can play links golf. Undoubtedly. Yeah. He played well at Trin in 2016 in his open debut. It was a Trin was the first open championship that he ever played in and he finished top 20 there too. So that's interesting.

I always have trouble with Tony on potentially courses where, for me, Tony is the kind of guy that loves courses where it's bombs away. It's literally driver and he doesn't have to think about it. Somewhere like here where there is so, so much trouble off the tee,

It concerns me with Tony because he is not the straightest and he isn't the most patient. And that 2016 appearance was 3:05 off the tee, so he was top six for driving distance, which would suggest that he was using driver a little bit more than a lot of other players that week.

If he can take that away and play iron off the tee and be a bit straighter, his approach play, like you said at the moment, is absolutely elite level. So yeah, an interesting one. As you know, I do not mind Tony Finau in majors. He's the kind of player that does actually get

Talk to me a little bit as we get farther down and wrap up here. There's a couple guys that I want to mention at some longer odds. I think the Open Championship is thought of as the most...

a wide open major and variable major. And I agree with that to a certain extent. Like it's definitely overall a little bit of this is dependent on venue, but historically it's the least distance bias major. Historically, it's the type of major that 50% of the field can be wiped out by one side of the draw. And I do find myself with a pretty open mind this week. Like a lot of the time heading into majors, I am,

Particularly with the amount of research that I've done already, I'm pretty locked in to the guys that I'm going to bat. And often those guys are at the very top of the odds board. I kind of am not there this week. I have a ton of guys I'm kind of looking at, and a lot of them are at some of the longer odds. I don't want to be a prisoner of the moment of...

thinking, okay, let's find the Brian Harmon just because Brian Harmon last year won at 150 to one or whatever. It's going to be another 150 to one winner. If you look at historically at the open, it's still like, you know, eight of the last 10 open winners were in the top 20 and the OWGR. It's, it's really Brian Harmon and Zach Johnson is in 2015 is the real long shots. But in conversation with that, it does feel,

feel like there's guys 50 plus that can win this thing. It's nice to be in a position where you, I mean, I'm actually doing our long shot content this next week.

So I'm looking for triple. Where's Paul? What's going on with Paul? Is Paul on vacation? No, no. Paul's doing the main tips. I'm doing the 100 and I'm doing the longer shot. So it's nice to be in a kind of space where, yes, it's unlikely, but you might actually be picking yourself an open championship winner at 110 to one or 125 to one. Particularly to each way. Like Zach Johnson did.

I've got to say, though, when I'm looking at the odds boards in that kind of region, there isn't a lot of the moment that's shouting at me to back at that 100 to 1 and above. If I'm going south of that, you know, if you were looking for somebody that was literally really, really obvious right now and is playing great golf,

What about Sung Jae? Yeah. I mean, I'm seeing him at the moment at 80 to one still in a, in a few spots here in the UK. With a, uh, with an excellent, uh, Scottish open in the midst of a great Scottish open as well. It's not as if Sung Jae hasn't competed in majors before. Look at, you know, look what he's done at the masters over the year. No red hot four hitting the ball beautifully at the moment.

There could be worse bets than Sanjay Iman, an 80-to-1 price point. I'd be very surprised if that 80-to-1 is actually available when all of the markets open up Monday of next week. I agree with you. I think based on the way that he's playing...

My apologies. I was actually just checking his score and he is sitting at T3. Yeah. T3 minus 10 heading into the weekend at the Scottish Open two strokes back from Ludwig. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the skill set of accuracy off the like Sanjay and Corey Connors have some similarities to me in terms of like

If I'm just looking at the skill set that I'm looking for at Royal Troon in terms of wedge play, accuracy off the tee, Corey Connors and Sung J.M. should be towards the top of my list. And the fact that this is being played in Scotland off Fescue turf is

is the biggest thing hurting their case. It's harder for me to see him win an Open Championship because he feels like such... Those guys feel... Even being from Korea and Canada, they feel like such...

Wyndham championship TPC Sawgrass guys. Like I don't, I don't see them holding up a open championship trophy the way that you just picture it with Shane Lowry or Tommy Fleetwood, but from a, a, a purely skillset based aspect, I think Sungjae and Corey Connors both check a lot of boxes. I'm going to throw out two kind of wild ones for you. There's some,

pretty strong, like Akshay parallels in terms of what we saw with Morikawa. Now I understand that Morikawa was more accomplished than, than Akshay in terms of Morikawa had won a major before heading into the open, but you did have that trend breaker, just a guy who is an incredibly accurate driver of the ball and a great middle to long iron player who is putting great and chipping great at

at the moment. Akshay is doing all of those things. Akshay is an incredibly accurate driver of the ball. He is a great iron player and Akshay is chipping and putting beautifully right now. So if you're looking for the strongest Morikawa candidate of

of like, hey, maybe we don't get the conditions that we're used to seeing in open championships. Maybe these track man optimized golfers are

don't really need that links experience that we have thought that they needed in the past. Akshay is top of the list in terms of most similarities to, Oh, this guy just comes in and does what Morikawa does. And it, it doesn't matter if he's never seen one of these golf courses before his skillset works here. Agreed with that. This all comes back to what we said towards the top of the pod in terms of the weather. And that's why Morikawa,

I would urge listeners, if they're listening to this podcast over the weekend before tournament week or even very early on tournament week, don't

get sucked into picking certain players and you've made your decisions and you're not going to waver from that. If the weather was to turn around and all of a sudden we're actually seeing a Scottish weather forecast that's showing that 25 to 30 mile an hour winds are in play, I would probably sit and say, Akshay Bhatia, not for me. But, although he is a good wind player, by the way, the fact of the matter is you just look at his form.

16th at the US Open at Pinehurst. He was ninth heading into the weekend. So he's played well at the most recent major. So he's got that mental breakthrough, ticked the box. Fifth at the Travellers, when as we know, he was right in the heat of the battle in the final group with Sheffler and Tom Kemp.

And then, of course, second at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. Now, yes, he burned a lot of people. I gather that. And that two putt on 18 didn't go down well in the betting community. Didn't go down particularly well in the DraftKings community either. But...

If you're just looking at someone that's playing fantastic golf from tee to green, accurate off the tee and playing the golf of their lives. And, you know, you're not overly concerned about the links, the lack of links, golf course experience or open championship experience. And as we have seen with Colin Morigawa recently, that didn't matter. Then I think about, about here at 80 to 100 to 100 spots. I mean, that could be a fantastic bet. I'm going to give you one more and then we'll close.

You know, I this was one of listen, I there's nothing for me to to victory lap about Royal Liverpool last year, considering I bet Sheffler that week at nine to one.

But the big long shot that I talked about on the podcast and was a big piece of some of the DraftKings success I was able to find that week was a player that is sitting on the odds board right now at 120-1. And because he's not playing at the Renaissance Club, I expect that number to get even higher. Can I have a guess? Please. I'd say Russell Henley.

in strong consideration for me as well. Jason Day. Jason Day, second last year. Second last year at Royal Liverpool. I like him on these types of golf courses. He's got a sneaky good links resume. Clearly, he obviously finished second at Liverpool last year. The iron play is

It's bad. It's bad. Let's just not, no need to sugarcoat it by any means, but it was quite bad heading into Liverpool last year. Like he was actually hitting his irons worse heading into Liverpool last year than he's hitting his irons right now. He's coming off a top 25 at the John Deere. He's turned it to just such a beautiful chipper of the ball, such a great putter of the ball. And he's still a very rock solid driver.

I think if we are thinking about, oh, God, we've had all these weird winners at Troon in the past. Like, God, remember, why is Jason Day still lingering at the top of the leaderboard? You know, a guy that was just always around at Liverpool and you woke up on Sunday and Jason Day's T2.

Just watch out for him this week. Just, just want to want to monitor that. I wanted to, wanted to throw out there for you as a good top 20, bad, a good long shot play and draft Kings. Watch out for Jason day this week.

The sort that can navigate himself around the Lynx golf course. Yeah. I mean, just look at his record in California at Pebble Beach. And it's completely different. But Torrey Pines, the guy does come alive when he's actually by the coast, for sure. I'm not going there, but like...

well whistling straights in this golf course right like it's if you think about like oh trune kind of plays a little more americanized and still has a lot of those pop bunkers with a higher miss fairway penalty and kind of some tougher first step greens with guarded in the front a lot of the time by pop by bunkers like it's a little bit there by coastal very coastal and windy um

So yeah, day you mentioned Henley as well. I love Henley's accuracy off the tee here is open resume scares me a little bit, but, um, anyone else you want to throw out there, Steve, before we, uh, before we get out of here, I think that's about it. Yeah. I think, um, it's, it's literally monitor monitor the Scottish open, um,

I've got a sneaky feeling, and I might be wrong. I just think that the way that he's driven the ball this year, and I think he's taken a lot out of his relationship with Rory, his close relationship. I just think Shane Lowry might have a good week at 33-1 as well. Yeah, yeah. He's driving the golf ball so beautifully at the moment. The kind of player that will hit a lot of fairways, won't get into a lot of trouble off the tee. And as we know with Shane,

you know decent approach play he was top top nine at his last outing at the Travellers well rested interestingly enough hasn't played the Scottish Open this week but has been playing a lot of golf on the course at Royal Troon so clearly coming in with a little different strategy in terms of his schedule but I think I think a Shane Lowry sort wouldn't be a bad bad shout for next week either

Okay. Give me your winner and winning score. Rory McIlroy will say 18 under. Yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't that be fun? What about you? I've got some decisions to make at the top of the board.

I'm probably swimming most closely around Morikawa and Fleetwood at the top and have some pretty heavy interest in Finau and Jason Day. I'm going to say, as it stands now, very subject to change because I haven't really made a big decision at the top yet. I'm going to say, I'll say Tommy gets it done this week at 17 under par.

Uh, don't hold me to that. That could change. It's kind of like a by process of elimination. I haven't made a huge judgment call at the top. Like I mentioned, the guys I'm really swimming around are, are female Fleetwood Morikawa, uh,

Going to keep my eye on Rom. Like, I just 30-1 on Rom. I'm still, he's a very good Lynx player. But as we sit here early on Friday morning, I'll go Fleetwood 17-under. Can you believe, Andy, can you believe that the two of us in a podcast have said two massive words?

Rory McIlroy is going to end his major drought of 10 years, or Tommy Fleetwood is going to win his first ever career major.

Yeah, I hope we've developed enough credibility up until this point that folks know both to take some of our early tournament musings with both a grain of salt and yet still at the same time typically tend to get a lot of value out of these episodes. As always, Steve, I want to give you a big thanks for just hopping on for these every single year for the major previews. These are consistently like

my most downloaded episodes of the year. Consistently, the episodes that I typically get the most positive feedback in terms of how they really help folks develop their betting card in the days leading up to that major and really develop a deeper understanding of the golf course. Generally, I think at worst case scenario, even if you ignore our pick,

at the very least you can get a far better understanding of what to really look for this week in terms of the golf course at the very least so big thank you to you again my friend this is a blast some of the four episodes I look forward to recording more than any other I do each year so what you got cooking this week the rest of the week as we weed into Troon over these next couple of days with Golf Betting System

Yeah, golf betting system is just, we'll have the podcast, we'll have previews, we've got strokes gained analysis, we've got major championship scoring analysis.

All of the content at Golf Bank System free of charge. Paul Williams' main tips will be out on Monday morning in the UK, which will be very early over in the United States for a lean. I'll be out in the afternoon with the long shots. There'll be some first-round leader content as well. One last question before I go. Am I going to be on the major championship roster? Yes.

in 2025. Andy. Yeah. I'm going to get you on payroll. Actually. Yeah. I think we'll negotiate off Mike. Yeah. We'll have to negotiate off Mike because, um, again, this is like my favorite, my favorite thing to do. And you're incredibly generous with your time. I hope that it, um, I hope it feeds some folks to, to golf betting system as well. I know, but, but still, I mean, it's, you're, you're one of my favorite folks to break down these golf courses with. So, um,

The job is yours for, for, for, for, until further notice. I look forward to talking to you in nine months time. I know. Hopefully we'll have a few conversations before then. Maybe, uh, when we head into, uh,

Sunday morning at the Open Championship when Rory and Fleetwood are in the final group and we're just racking our brains at all the horrendous things that could potentially go wrong. But this was a pleasure as always, Steve. Cheers, my friend. We'll do it again soon. Enjoy the golf next week. See you again soon. Look after yourself.

All right. That is it for the podcast. Special. Thanks to Steve. Special. Thanks to Rumpier sports. Special. Thanks to the rabbit hole. And we will be back on this podcast on Sunday morning with my betting picks for the open championship at Royal Troon. If this podcast helped you at all, please feel free to leave a review on Apple podcasts or share the show around. Uh, that helps far more than, you know, on weeks like these, even a, a simple retweet, um,

or message to a friend that is a golf fan. These are the weeks where we hope to grow the show and take advantage of it. Until then, best of luck with your bets this weekend at the Scottish Open, and we will see you back here tomorrow. Cheers. ♪ If I ventured in the slipstream ♪ ♪ Between the viaducts of your dream ♪ ♪ Where mobile steel rims crack ♪

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