The Open / Paul Krishnamurty / 08 July 2008 /

Plenty of the golf world's biggest stars have assembled in Scotland this week but a good performance at Loch Lomond means nothing at Birkdale, says Paul Krishnamurty

If next week's Open Championship is the best major of the year, then this week's Scottish Open must also be the best major warm-up. Three of the world's top six players head a typically world-class field at Loch Lomond, looking not only to win a prestigious, lucrative event but also to earn a massive confidence boost ahead of Birkdale.

With many leading Open candidates amongst the field, clearly what happens here will have big implications for an already uncertain Birkdale market. My guess is the Scottish Open winners' price for Birkdale will halve. From that perspective, it makes sense to back your Loch Lomond fancies now for the Open, if only with a view to trading out at a shorter price.

All the tournament history though suggests this week's winner will have their work cut out following up in the Open.

In the 12 years that Loch Lomond has been staging the pre-Open tournament, none of the previous winners have gone on to complete the double.

More to the point, they've underperformed in all but two cases. Ernie Els and Thomas Levet finished second and fifth respectively after winning here, but none of the others even made the Open top-10 including several world-class names. Both of last year's play-off contestants, Gregory Havret and Phil Mickelson, went on to miss the cut at Carnoustie. In fact, the statistics suggest the entire Loch Lomond field are at a disadvantage. Over the same 12 year period, only three Open winners - Tom Lehman, Ernie Els and Paul Lawrie - had played in this event beforehand.

Obviously, this isn't a theory to be tested to destruction. There's no good reason why a top golfer can't win two prestigious tournaments in consecutive weeks - Tiger does it all the time. However I do think there's a logical explanation for the trend. Loch Lomond presents a wholly different sort of test to any Open venue. This is target golf, far closer to the American norm than any links course.

It makes sense that players who have opted for a week off, preferring to practice in conditions similar to those they'll encounter next week, are at an advantage. That no doubt is the thinking behind this week's most notable absentees. Retief Goosen, Robert Karlsson and Paul Casey have all, for instance, been Loch Lomond regulars in the past but have opted out this year.

As for those who are at playing this week, it's important for punters not to over-react to a brilliant performance under these very different conditions. I'm thinking particularly here of the likes of Phil Mickelson and Adam Scott, currently [9.6] and [15.5] respectively this week, but much bigger for the Open at [21.0] and [34.0]. Besides Tiger, there's probably no two better players of target golf courses in the world than this pair, and I can easily envisage either of them winning impressively in Scotland.

Should that happen, a bandwagon process would start, forcing their Open odds to collapse. But this would have little or no bearing on their actual likelihood of winning back to back. Neither player has ever shown their best form on a links course, rarely ever resembling their world-class selves in the Open.

Generally speaking then, I will take very little note of this week's result when planning my Open portfolio, though there is the odd exception. This event offers a last chance for players to qualify for Birkdale, the most prominent of whom is Darren Clarke. If Darren could somehow do enough to qualify then he could be a very interesting contender next week.

Loch Lomond also offers a crucial opportunity to gauge the form of Ernie Els ahead of his favourite tournament. As mentioned above, he's the only player to consistently buck any negative correlations between the two events, holding an unrivalled consistent record in both of them. For most of this year though he's looked badly out of sorts, a man to oppose.

However, us Ernie fans were delighted to see him play so much better in the US Open, where he'd have held every chance of winning were it not for a disastrous time on the greens. On such scant evidence, I couldn't possibly back him at just [12.5] this week, but were he to compete strongly here once again, that would be enough to ease my doubts and book his place in my Open staking plan for what must be the 15th year in a row.

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