The 154th Open Championship
Purse: $17M
Winner's Share: $3.1M
FedEx Cup Points: 750 to the Winner
Location: Southport, England
Course: Royal Birkdale Golf Club
Yardage: 7,223
Par: 70
Previous Winners
2025 - Scottie Scheffler (Royal Portrush)
2024 - Xander Schauffele (Royal Troon)
2023 - Brian Harman (Royal Liverpool)
2022 - Cameron Smith (St. Andrews)
2021 - Collin Morikawa (Royal St. George's)
2020 - No Tournament
2019 - Shane Lowry (Royal Portrush)
2018 - Francesco Molinari (Carnoustie)
2017 - Jordan Spieth (Royal Birkdale)
2016 - Henrik Stenson (Royal Troon)
Recap: Kim, Scheffler dominate headlines in Scotland
With golf's oldest major on the horizon, the best players on the PGA and DP World Tours (along with a select few from LIV) converged at The Renaissance Club for the Genesis Scottish Open, the first taste of links-style course design of the season. Before weekend play could even start, the headlines were dominated by Scottie Scheffler failing to make the two-under cut line. That broke his made cut streak at 78, ranking him fifth all time behind an elite list that consists of Tiger Woods (142), Byron Nelson (113), Jack Nicklaus (105) and Hale Irwin (86). Matt Fitzpatrick now holds the current consecutive cut streak at 28, with Hideki Matsuyama close behind at 27. Scheffler wasn't the only big name that failed to qualify for the weekend, with Ludvig Aberg, Xander Schauffele, Brooks Koepka, Shane Lowry, PGA Championship winner Aaron Rai and popular darkhorse Alex Fitzpatrick.
Onto the rest of the tournament; the top of the leaderboard circulated several key names like past winners Robert MacIntyre, Rory McIlroy and defending champion Chris Gotterup. But there was one golfer who stood above the rest for the majority of the tournament; 24-year-old Tom Kim, who opened the event with a five-under 65 before securing the two-stroke win over Min Woo Lee with a bogey-free, six-under 64 on Sunday. Kim's victory was the fourth of his PGA Tour career, joining McIlroy, Matsuyama and Sergio Garcia as the only non-Americans to win four PGA tournaments before the age of 25. That kind of elite company makes Kim an intriguing choice for drafters heading into this week's Open Championship, where he's missed the cut in each of the last two years but finished T2 in 2023 at Royal Liverpool.
In other news:
- The Scottish Open also provided three golfers not otherwise exempt with a spot at The Open. Those spots were earned by Johnny Keefer (T3 with MacIntyre, Matt Fitzpatrick and Keita Nakajima), Michael Thorbjornsen (T7 with McIlroy) and LIV Golf's Victor Perez (T9 with Si Woo Kim). Kevin Roy just missed the last spot at T11, so the American will instead tee off at the Corales Puntacana Championship.
- Perez was the best performer of the LIV Golf contingent, beating out Tyrrell Hatton (T16), Tom McKibbin (T30), Jon Rahm (T36) and Laurie Canter (T50), while David Puig and Adrian Meronk both missed the cut.
- Other notable finishes at the Scottish Open include Victor Hovland (rose 37 spots to T13 following a six-under 64 final round), Patrick Reed (T13), Tommy Fleetwood (T13), Wyndham Clark (T13), Jordan Smith (T21 despite holding the 36-hole lead), two-time DP World Tour winner Casey Jarvis (T21), J.J. Spaun (T44), Justin Thomas (T50), Sudarshan Yellamaraju (T52) and Eric Cole (70th out of 71 players who made the cut).
- Elsewhere, the ISCO Championship came down to a playoff between Steven Fisk and Taylor Pendrith, with Fisk emerging victorious on the third playoff hole after carding a par to Pendrith's bogey. Lucas Glover was unable to hold onto his 54-lead after posting a one-over 71 score in the final round to settle for a share of fifth.
Preview: The 154th Open Championship
We're onto the last major of the year, the oldest one in golf with perhaps the most coveted prize, the Claret Jug. It's a field as stacked as ever with the top golfers in the world (including a returning Cameron Young, who should be well rested after taking two weeks off following his T47 at the Travelers Championship). Like the Scottish Open, the top players on the DP World Tour like Reed, Jarvis and Eugenio Chacarra will also tee off this week. They'll be joined by 15 players from LIV Golf, headlined by Rahm, Hatton, Bryson DeChambeau, Joaquin Niemann and 2022 Open champion Cameron Smith. A fun little wrinkle this year was the Last-Chance Qualifier, an 18-hole stroke play event Monday that was won by Joe Dean, who enters this week coming off of two top-10 finishes in his last three DP World Tour outings (T9 at the BMW International Open and third at the KLM Open).
Like the two majors prior, The Open Championship rotates courses every year. The venue for 2026 is Royal Birkdale, which last hosted The Open in 2017. What makes Birkdale difficult to score low on is the narrow fairways, coupled with the wind that can turn a great-looking shot into a penalizing one (though the forecast right now indicates moderate wind with little rain). Recent renovations increased the length of the course by 100 yards, with the most significant difference being that the fifth hole is now a drivable, 321-yard par-4, where the green is surrounded by seven bunkers. Those seven bunkers are part of the 110 strategically scattered along the course, all of which will be challenging despite not having the same depth as the ones profiled in previous Open venues. The greens are smaller than the average course, and with a number of false fronts and falloffs into rough and bunkers, approach play and scrambling out of trouble figure to be the keys to success this week, as well as accuracy off the tee.
Underdog Contest Overview
Underdog hosts drafts every week at three buy-in amounts; The Par 3 at $3, the featured draft at $10, and "The Sandbagger" at $100. Each entrant will be paired up with five other players and participate in a six-man snake draft of teams made up of six players (36 total selections), with each selection on a 30-second timer. For example, the person with the first overall pick and lucky enough to get Scheffler (unless you like to live dangerously) will have to wait until 2.6 and 3.1 to make their next selections. Points are allocated to golfers based on their performance on every hole, with bonus points available for golfers who make consecutive birdies or finish a round bogey free.
Precursor: Scheffler (1.2 Average Draft Position) vs. McIlroy (2.0 ADP)
In past columns, I've typically avoided listing the top two or three golfers by ADP, especially in tournaments that involve Scheffler and/or McIlroy. However, Scheffler's ADP is the highest it's been this season (though most drafters are still drafting him first overall), and it's the first time that anyone has a 2.0 ADP in a tournament Scheffler is in. Should you fade the World No. 1 if you have the top pick in your draft?
The case for Scheffler:
- The missed cut at the Scottish Open gave Scheffler the opportunity to scout Royal Birkdale early
- He enters this week as the defending Open champion and finished in the top-25 in each of his four prior Open outings
- Scheffler leads the PGA Tour in SG: Total and SG: Tee-to-Green . He's top-5 in SG: OTT and Around and top-15 in SG: Approach and Putting.
- Second-best Total Driver in the PGA (23rd in accuracy, 34th in distance)
- Despite "just" one win this season, Scheffler also has four runner-ups, the most recent being in a playoff loss to Hovland at the Travelers Championship.
- He's Scottie freakin' Scheffler
The case for McIlroy:
- Used a six-under 64 final round to jump 19 spots to a T7 finish at the Scottish Open.
- McIlroy has four top-10s this year, which includes an impressive Masters victory to capture the green jacket in back-to-back years.
- Best SG: Off-the-Tee on the PGA Tour this season, ranks second in SG: Total and third in SG: Tee-to-Green.
- Six top-5 finishes in 13 prior outings at The Open, including a victory in 2014 at Royal Liverpool and T4 in 2017, the last time Royal Birkdale hosted golf's oldest major. Three top-10s over his last four appearances.
Scheffler's finishes aren't the same as they were last year, but the stats are on par or better. All this to say, taking the World No. 1, at no. 1, is the play here. But hey, you do you, it's your draft.
First Two Rounds
Matt Fitzpatrick (3.2 ADP)
The first write-up of players is going to look eerily similar to what I had for last week's Scottish Open. We're starting with Fitzpatrick, who briefly held the outright lead last week before settling for a four-way share for third, his third top-5 in his last four tournaments (the exception being the U.S. Open, 22nd). He leads the PGA in SG: Approach and Around while ranking second in SG: Tee-to-Green, third in GIR and ninth in both driving accuracy and total driving. He finished T44 at Royal Birkdale in 2017, but that version of Fitzpatrick is far different from the 2026 version that's won three times this year.
Tommy Fleetwood (4.5 ADP)
Last week, Fleetwood ranked in the top-10 in SG: Approach and Around, scrambling, driving accuracy and bogeys, leading to a T13 finish. He's been incredibly consistent with 10 top-15 finishes in 15 tournaments this season (including each of his last five tournaments), and he ranks third and fifth in SG: Around and Tee-to-Green, respectively, in 2026. Fleetwood missed the cut in each of his first three Open outings but has made the cut in seven of his last eight, including T27 in 2027, solo second in 2019, T4 in 2022 and T16 last year.
Wyndham Clark (7.4 ADP)
Clark's here in spite of his numbers on the tee box (88th in both SG: Off-the-Tee and driving accuracy). The two-time U.S. Open champion does pretty much everything else right, ranking 13th in SG: Around, 17th in SG: Approach and 21st in SG: Putting. Surprisingly, he ranked 51st in SG: Around last week, which led to him dropping out of the top-10 to a T13 finish at the Scottish Open. Still, Clark is in great form and will be gunning for his third-career major this week.
Collin Morikawa (9.7 ADP)
Finally, we're pivoting from last week's column! It's been a couple of weeks since Morikawa's been in action. However, let's not forget his bogey-free, nine-under 61 final round at the Travelers Championship to catapult him up to solo third and just one stroke away from joining Scheffler and Hovland in a playoff. A week before that, Morikawa finished T17 in the U.S. Open. His short game isn't elite (outside of his sand save percentage, which ranks 33rd), but Morikawa is second this season in SG: Approach and sixth in SG: Tee-to-Green, as well fifth in driving accuracy and seventh in GIR. He missed the cut in three of his last four outings at The Open but won back in 2021 for his second major victory.
Also consider: Xander Schauffele (6.7 ADP -- has finished inside the top-20 in 17 of his last 18 majors, including victories at the 2024 PGA Championship and The 152nd Open in the same year; finished T20 at Royal Birkdale in 2017 and T7 last year at Royal Portrush), Chris Gotterup (9.9 ADP -- followed up his victory at the John Deere Classic with a solid T11 in his title defense at the Scottish Open)
Middle-Round Value
Justin Rose (16.4 ADP)
Perhaps this is the year Rose collects the second major of his storied PGA career. He's been in the running in each of the first three majors of the season: T3 at The Masters, T10 at the PGA Championship and T11 at the U.S. Open. He also has a victory at the Farmers Insurance Open and has four top-25 finishes over his last five tournaments. Rose ranks 16th in SG: Approach, 19th in total driving and 36th in SG: Tee-to-Green this season.
Russell Henley (18.1 ADP)
Henley followed up his playoff win at the Charles Schwab Challenge with finishes of T22-T65-T12. A bit inconsistent, but he has a game that should mesh well at Royal Birkdale. He leads the PGA Tour in driving accuracy this season and ranks third in scrambling and fourth in bogey avoidance. Henley has also had recent success at The Open, finishing T10 last year and solo fifth in 2024.
Tom Kim (19.0 ADP)
Let's ride the hot hand with Kim, with his win at the Scottish Open coming nearly a month after an impressive solo third at the U.S. Open. It's not unheard of for the success at The Renaissance transferring to The Open; Gotterup finished third in last year's Open following his victory at the Scottish Open. Kim ranks fifth in SG: Approach this season and led the field at last week in that category while also ranking T2 in GIR, ninth in SG: Off-the-Tee and top-20 in both SG: Putting and driving accuracy.
Min Woo Lee (21.6 ADP)
Lee teed off with MacIntyre and the elder Fitzpatrick in the final round last week, and while Lee's three-under 67 was the best of the group, it wasn't enough for him to stave off Kim's surge. Still, it was encouraging to see Lee bounce back from his poor play prior to Scotland, and his playing profile should fit nicely at Royal Birkdale. He ranks fifth in total driving, 10th in SG: Tee-to-Green and 29th in SG: Around.
Also consider: Si Woo Kim (14.0 ADP -- finished T9 at last week's Scottish Open, when he led the field in driving accuracy while ranking 12th in SG: Around and 19th in SG: Approach), Patrick Reed (24.0 ADP -- One of the best short-game players in the world, finished T13 at last week's Scottish Open, when he ranked ninth in SG: Around and 13th in SG: Putting).
Late-Round Targets
Patrick Cantlay (27.0 ADP)
Cantlay's missed cut last week isn't ideal, but he's 11th in SG: Tee-to-Green and in the top-30 in SG: Around and Off-the-Tee, as well as 32nd in Approach, 13th in scrambling and 24th in GIR. He has eight top-25 finishes in 15 tournaments, with his last being a T14 at the Travelers. Just don't hold up the draft by waiting for the timer to hit 29.5 seconds before selecting Cantlay; pace of play is important on draft boards, too.
Alex Fitzpatrick (30.9 ADP)
The younger Fitzpatrick brother was one of the popular darkhorses for the Scottish Open, but he proceeded to miss the cut by three strokes. Still, an ADP drop of 16.1 seems like a severe overcorrection for a player who has been playing spirited golf since winning the Zurich Classic alongside brother, Matt, to earn a PGA exemption through 2027. Alex's lone appearance at The Open came in 2023, when he finished T16 at Royal Liverpool while playing on the DP World Tour.
J.J. Spaun (31.8 ADP)
Sure, Spaun has missed the cut in each of the three majors this year and finished T44 in Scotland last week. Outside of that, he has seven top-25 finishes since early April, including a victory at the Valero Texas Open, T5 at the Truist Championship and T7 at the Travelers. He ranks fourth in SG: Approach, fifth in proximity, ninth in SG: Tee-to-Green and 27th in driving accuracy. I like Spaun as a dart throw in the sixth round.
Akshay Bhatia (34.7 ADP)
Bhatia took a two-week break after his T17 at the U.S. Open and a T5 at the Travelers, the latter of which was his best finish since his playoff victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. He's second this season in SG: Putting, which isn't a stat highly ranked for this week's Open, but one that should keep him afloat at Royal Birkdale. Bhatia also ranks in the top-50 in SG: Tee-to-Green, Around and Approach.
Johnny Keefer (35.8 ADP)
Keefer's had an inconsistent season, but he put it all together last week for a T3 performance that earned him an exemption into The Open. He's steadily gotten better at majors this year; after a missed cut at The Masters, Keefer finished 79th at the PGA Championship before a T39 performance at the U.S. Open. He finished last week fifth in GIR, seventh in SG: Approach, T12 in driving accuracy, 14th in SG: Off-the-Tee and top-25 in SG: Around and Putting.
Also consider: Joaquin Niemann (28.9 ADP -- back-to-back top-10s on the DP World Tour in preparation for The Open), Victor Perez (35.9 ADP -- earned a spot at The Open after a T9 last week in Scotland, where he finished fifth in SG: Putting, 13th in scrambling and GIR, 15th in SG: Off-the-Tee and T24 in driving accuracy).
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