The Open Championship One and Done Picks
The last major championship of 2026 is here, and it will be a very interesting test for the best players in the world.
Royal Birkdale will play host to The Open Championship for the 11th time -- all since 1954. There have been several notable winners at Birkdale over the years -- Peter Thompson, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Padraig Harrington and of course Jordan Spieth with an incredible finish in 2017.
The top players in the world are coming in off a mixed bag of results at the Scottish Open. Big names like Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay and Brooks Koepka missed the cut, while others like Rory McIlroy, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood, Wyndham Clark and Chris Gotterup played very well. Birkdale will be a much different test than The Renaissance Club. The course is completely baked out and has a beautiful brown and golden look to the fairways that will see balls chase out over 100 yards at times depending on the bounce. The practice rounds and the work players do before things get going Thursday will be very important.
The One and Done campaign is winding down, and this is one of the final big money events of the season. That said, the $17 million purse is the lowest among the four major championships as well as the Signature Events. This wasn't really an event you needed to save someone for considering where it falls from a money perspective. Nonetheless, the $3.1 million due to the winner would certainly make a big difference in the standings -- especially at this point in the journey.
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Course Tidbits
- Course: Royal Birkdale (7,223 yards, par 70)
- Location: Southport, England
- Purse: $17 million -- $3.1 million to winner
- Defending Champion: Scottie Scheffler (-17)
- 2025 Scoring Average: 71.512 (+0.512)
- 2025 36-Hole Cut: +1
- 2017 Champion at Royal Birkdale: Jordan Spieth (-12)
- 2017 Scoring Average: 71.85 (+1.85)
- 2017 36-Hole Cut: +5
- Average Winning Score Last 5 Years: -14.8
Royal Birkdale is known as one of the more difficult courses in the Open Championship rota. Despite checking in at just over 7,200 yards on the scorecard, this is not a place players will be able to overpower. Driving accuracy is far more critical here than outright distance. Given how firm the fairways are, expect to see very few drivers from many top players. A well-struck long iron off the tee could easily roll further than expected and end up in a deep fairway bunker, thick fescue rough or on the side of a sand dune. There will be a ton of strategy off the tee and maybe not a right answer, which should make for a fascinating watch.
The biggest keys at the Open Championship are typically iron play and short game. Unlike courses in the United States, the fairways will actually be cut shorter and run faster than the greens. That makes striking the ball a lot less forgiving. That's a clear opportunity for the best iron players to separate. The targets are average by PGA Tour standards, but small for an Open Championship. The greens are extremely protected by bunkers and feature plenty of falloffs to shortgrass collection areas. Fairways and greens will be the name of the game, but a very tidy short game will likely prove crucial. Short grass around the greens typically further separates the best and worst short-game players.
The greens themselves are actually quite flat and straightforward. If you are able to judge the distance and bounce correctly, you will likely have a pretty decent look at birdie. Players who get in a groove with the putter will be able to fill it up in bunches, as Branden Grace did in the third round back in 2017 when he shot the first 62 (-8) in major championship history. If you can't control the ball, however, those putts are going to be for par instead of birdie.
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Open Championship: One and Done Picks
It feels like Clark is flying under the radar even though he is No. 1 on Tour in SG: Total over the last three months. Over that stretch he racked up six top-15 finishes, including a pair of victories -- the most recent being a month ago at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, another course that played very firm and fast and was blanketed with short grass around the greens. Clark's short game and putting have been on a different level of late, and the iron play this year has taken off as well. One other thing to mention is that Clark has been one of the best wedge players on Tour this season, which isn't always common for a player that hits it as far as he does, but it will come in handy this week with so much rollout on tee shots. Clark finished T4 at The Open last year. --Ryan Andrade
Bobby Mac rewarded me with a T3 on native soil last week in Splash's 5.6k-entrant OAD World Championship Pool, but I'm honestly worried he's going to maintain the momentum and burn me this week by either matching or surpassing that result, albeit at a much larger payout when comparing the purses of The Open Championship versus the Genesis Scottish Open. MacIntyre paced the entire field at The Renaissance Club in each of SG: Approach, GIR percentage and overall proximity, and he's now gained a collective 15.8 strokes with his irons across four starts dating back to a T15 at the RBC Canadian Open. He has placed top-8 in three of six career Open Championship appearances, and there could be a slight ownership discount compared to some of the bigger name-brand options at the season's final major. --Bryce Danielson
I don't have a lot of guys left to use at this point. Most of my top picks have already been used, so I'm left with just a few options that look good. Clark is not someone that comes to mind when you think of golf in Europe, but he has had some moments on links-style courses. One of which came this past year when he tied for 4th at the Open Championship. Keep in mind, that result came while his form was nowhere near the level it is now. He played well this past week at the Scottish Open, so I'm thinking he's still got the form that won the U.S. Open a month ago. He's not my top option, but he's the best that I have available and he's by no means a throw away pick. --Greg Vara
I have a number of big names left -- Scheffler, Clark, Morikawa, Hovland, Rose, maybe now even Tom Kim Now, I have to figure how to use them. This week, Rose. About to turn 46 on July 30, he is still among the sport's elite. He finished T3 at the Masters, T10 at the PGA Championship and T11 at the U.S. Open. He has 11 top-25s in The Open Championship, including last year's tie for 16th. --Len Hochberg
I'm choosing to overlook Rahm's T36 at the U.S. Open and missed cut in Scotland in favor of the opportunity to use a LIV golfer -- particularly one with his his upside -- for the last time this season. Rahm finished only T44 when this tournament was held at Royal Birkdale in 2017, but he has generally fared well in The Open, making six straight cuts while notching results of T3, T2 and T7 over that span. He has been dreadful on approach in PGA events this season, but he leads LIV in greens in regulation, so I'm hoping that's simply a sample-size issue. There are some red flags with Rahm, but not enough to scare me off. --Kevin O'Brien
Open Championship: One and Done Fades
His form earlier this season was incredible, which included a six top-10s in a seven-event stretch and wins at THE PLAYERS and the Cadillac Championship. Since then there has been a lot of searching. Young has gone T46-T43-T47 in his last three starts, each of those he was terrible on the greens. Maybe the bigger concern than his form is the fact that his best club will be taken out of the bag for the most part this week with how firm the course is playing. If you've saved Young until this point, well you probably wished you used him earlier, but now you might as well keep him as an option for the FedExCup Playoffs where he can unleash with the driver and it can actually benefit him. --Ryan Andrade
It's the last chance to click Hatton this year, so he should earn some attention after a Win-T7-T17 stretch from LIV Golf Andalucia through the Genesis Scottish Open, especially considering the highly questionable states of Rahm's and Bryson DeChambeau's games. However, Hatton relied entirely on the flat stick last week in North Berwick where he lost over three strokes with his ball striking, and he was remarkably bad from 150-200 yards. Additionally, the Englishman ranks just 44th of 56 in driving accuracy on LIV this season. --Bryce Danielson
Aberg was a popular pick in majors earlier in the season, largely because he was playing so well. Now that his form has fallen off a bit, he doesn't seem like a good play any longer. Aberg missed the cut in Scotland and failed to crack the top 50 in his previous start at the Travelers Championship. In fact, he hasn't posted a top-15 since mid-May. He now comes to the major where he's had the least amount of success in his short career. Aberg has just two Open Championship starts, one of which resulted in a T23 and one a missed cut. If his form was better going with him here might make me nervous, but as it is, I won't worry much about Aberg making a run. --Greg Vara
It's not that I don't like Gotterup. He's No. 16 in RotoWire's 2026 Open Championship Power Rankings. But he is seventh on the betting board, tied at +2900 on DraftKings with Young, who I'm also not big on this week. That's better than Aberg, Clark, Hatton, Hovland, MacIntyre and Morikawa. Just not seeing that this week. --Len Hochberg
Young has had some quality Open finishes, but they have steadily gotten worse since his runner-up in his 2022 debut, and his game and results of late doesn't inspire the confidence I would want to deploy him in this spot. Give him time to try and get going and peg him for a playoff event if you still have him available. --Kevin O'Brien
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