The Open Championship Golf Betting Trends: Four Picks to Win at Royal Liverpool in 2023
Follow along as PGA DFS & betting expert Derek Farnsworth walks you through 2023 Open Championship golf betting trends to narrow down a foursome of possible picks for this week’s major at Royal Liverpool Golf Club.
2023 Open Championship Betting Trends Preview
Happy Open Championship week everyone!
As I always like to say, trends are made to be broken. A trend is only a trend until it’s not and correlation does not always imply causation. For instance, the last six winners of the Waste Management Open might have been wearing green underwear on Sunday (I made this up), but that doesn’t mean that wearing green underwear gives golfers a better chance to win that event. You’ll hear trends like this all the time in other sports. My biggest piece of advice when sifting through trends is to think logically about which ones might actually be predictive and weed out the ones that don’t seem to make a lot of sense.
Now, with that said, trends are incredibly fun to look at when it comes to the major championships in golf. The Masters is held at Augusta National each year, the U.S. Open tends to give us winners of a specific stat profile, and the Open Championship gives us a true test of links golf each year. There are certainly some trends that make sense when trying to identify the winner of these events. While this article is meant to be more entertaining than predictive, perhaps we can have some fun and find the winner in the process.
If you are interested in a full course preview of Royal Liverpool Golf Club, check out the PGA First Look. The article features a course rundown, previous Open Championship history, weather forecasts, DFS salaries, and much more.
If you don’t live in a state with legal sports betting, you can still get in on The Open Championship action via DFS Pick’em by using our PrizePicks promo code GRINDERS. You can also get in on the Best Ball action by using our Underdog promo code.
Now, let’s get to the trends!
The Open Championship Golf Betting Trends
- Each of the last nine winners have been ranked inside the top 33 in the OWGR
- Each of the last 10 winners gained at least 1.3 strokes gained per round the three months prior to the Open
- Eight of the last 10 winners had a previous top 10 at the Open
- Eight of the last nine winners had a win earlier that calendar year
- Eight of the last 10 winners had a top 10 in one of their last three starts
- The last 13 winners finished outside of the top 25 or didn’t play in the previous Open
With the exception of the last one, these trends all pass the eye test.
Trend #1 – Inside the top 33 in the OWGR
The Open Championship often feels like the most variable of the major championships. The Open rota features a number of courses, but they don’t visit the same venue often enough for players to really get a good feel for the course. Additionally, the Open Championship is the major that is most impacted by the elements. Wind and rain can often increase variance, which is why it feels like a dark horse could win the event. However, each of the last nine winners have been ranked inside the top 33 in the Official Golf World Rankings. At least over the last nine editions of the event, we haven’t seen a true Cinderella story.
This trend immediately cuts our list of potential winners down to 32, as Will Zalatoris is still recovering from back surgery but is still ranked in the top 33 in the world. We already have to make cuts to some big-name golfers, as Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Hideki Matsuyama, and Adam Scott are all ranked outside of the top 33 in the OWGR.
Trend #2 – Gaining 1.30+ strokes per round over the last three months
It’s hard to show up at any professional event hoping to find your game. It’s even harder to show up at a major championship hoping to find your game. And it’s nearly impossible to show up at an Open Championship course with trouble lurking everywhere hoping to find your game. Recent form is always important, especially in the biggest events. The numbers support this, as the last 10 winners of the Open have all gained at least 1.30 strokes per round in the three months leading up to the event.
Of the 32 golfers remaining, 11 of them have not gained at least 1.30 strokes per round over the last three months. Those golfers are Max Homa, Tony Finau, Sam Burns, Cameron Young, Justin Thomas, Tom Kim, Kurt Kitayama, Brian Harman, Jason Day, Sepp Straka, and Corey Conners. While they are all very good golfers, they don’t have the recent form that we are looking for this week.
Trend #3 – Previous top 10 at the Open Championship
While we have seen some outliers over the years, most winners of the Open Championship have had some success at the event before winning it. In fact, eight of the last 10 winners had a previous top 10 at the Open Championship. The two that bucked the trend were Collin Morikawa, who won in his Open debut, and Cameron Smith, who had never finished better than T20 at the Open before winning last year.
The six golfers remaining that don’t have a top 10 at the Open Championship in their respective careers are Sungjae Im, Keegan Bradley, Matt Fitzpatrick, Russell Henley, Denny McCarthy, and Wyndham Clark. After three trends, we have narrowed our list down to 15 golfers.
Trend #4 – A win in the same calendar year
As we have already talked about, recent form is very important. In addition to playing well, showing the ability to win an event leading up to the Open Championship has proven to be very valuable. Eight of the last nine winners of the Open had a win earlier that calendar year. The only exception was Zach Johnson, and while he didn’t have a win, he did have a third-place finish leading up to the Open.
Of the 15 golfers remaining, only eight of them have a win on their resume in 2023. Unfortunately, we have to say goodbye to Shane Lowry, Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa, Tommy Fleetwood, Tyrrell Hatton, Patrick Cantlay, and Xander Schauffele.
Trend #5 – Top 10 in one of the last three starts
This is yet another recent form trend, but this one highlights the importance of popping on a recent leaderboard. Eight of the last 10 winners had a top-10 finish in one of their previous three starts leading up to the Open Championship.
The only golfer remaining without a recent top 10 is Viktor Hovland. He’s one of my personal favorites this week and will likely make my betting card anyway, but we have to cut him for the purposes of this article.
Trend #6 – Outside the top 25 in the previous Open (??)
In a trend that seemingly makes no sense whatsoever, each of the last 13 winners of the Open Championship finished outside of the top 25 or didn’t play in the previous year’s Open. Bizarre, right? This is one of those trends where correlation doesn’t feel like causation and one that I would typically throw out. Think about it this way… does playing poorly at last year’s event lead to playing better at this year’s event? Probably not, but this was the only other trend I could find, and we need to narrow down our list of golfers.
Rory McIlroy finished third at the Open last year… au revoir.
Scottie Scheffler finished T21 at the Open last year… adios.
Cameron Smith won the Open last year… arrivederci.
2023 Open Championship Betting Trend Finalists
Based on some actionable trends and one rather random trend, here are the four players that met all of the criteria:
- Jon Rahm +1300 (DraftKings)
- Brooks Koepka +2000 (BetMGM)
- Rickie Fowler +2500 (FanDuel)
- Justin Rose +5500 (PointsBet)
I’m not sure how many of these golfers will end up making my final betting card, which can be found at ScoresAndOdds. However, these are the four golfers that passed all of the six of the Open Championship trends included in this article. And honestly, these four do make a pretty solid betting card. Two have already won majors and two have contended time and time again in golf’s biggest events.
Good luck everyone!