Open Championship Find Me a 100 Winner Special: Four chanced at Troon between 229/1 and 939/1

• A quartet of triple-figure priced picks in the 152^nd Open Championship

• Read my Barracuda Championship preview here

• Read my Open Championship preview here

• Pick your places on Open each-way bets with the Betfair Sportsbook

Golf Only Bettor - The Open Championship Preview

Only one of the last seven winners on the DP World Tour has gone off at a triple figure price (Marcel Siem at the KLM Open) and the last six PGA Tour winners have all been fairly well fancied so it's been a tough six or seven weeks for the column but that could all change this week at the year's final major - the Open Championship.

Last year's winner, Brian Harman, went off at 170.0169/1 and Shane Lowry was a 100.099/1 chance when he won at Portrush five years ago.

They're the only two triple-figure priced winner since Zach Johnson won at 150.0149/1 at St Andrews nine years ago but Paul Lawrie closed out the last century by winning at Carnoustie at a huge price and eight of the last 20 winners have been matched at a triple-figure price.

In 2009, '10 and '11, all three winners - Stewart Cink, Louis Oosthuizen and Darren Clarke - went off at more than 300.0299/1 and Ben Curtis in 2003 and Todd Hamilton a year later, at this week's venue - Royal Troon - were almost unconsidered longshots.

There are plenty of trends and stats we can examine ahead of the 152^nd Open Championship to help us unearth the winner and here's a few I've concentrated on.

As many as 23 of the last 36 majors have gone the way of a first-time major winner (64%) and Harman was the fifth winner of this event in seven years to win his first major at the Open.

We've seen 49 of the last 50 majors go the way of someone inside the world's top-50 in the Official World Rankings and the last 12 Open winners have all been inside the top-40.

I've picked out four, but only the biggest priced of the four is inside the top-40 in the world and in search of his first major!

Nick Taylor @ 940.0939/1

All sorts of quirky trends and corelations crop up when researching.

For instance, three of the last four Open winners at this week's venue, Royal Troon, have won the Cognizant Classic, an event better known by its old name, the Honda Classic, and long-time golf shrewdie, Ian Richards, has spotted a very strong but almost inexplicable link between Troon at TPC Scottsdale - home of the Waste Management Open.

Really not sure what to do with this though have backed Nick Taylor 1000 - there is an interesting link from Scottsdale to Royal Troon - maybe scrambling and obviously the pressure cooker of an Open?
Stenson never played Scottsdale but Mickelson (also 3rd 2004) is a 3 x winner

-- Sports Betting Index (@SBIdotcom) July 15, 2024

Ian's mopped up all the maximum price available about this year's Waste Management Open winner, Nick Taylor, but I was more than happy to follow him at 940.0939/1 given how many trends he meets.

Like the last 12 Open champions, he's ranked inside the top-40 of the Official World Rankings, he's the exact same age as last year's winner, Brain Harman, and he's in search of his first major.

He's not in the greatest of form at present but he's won on the PGA Tour four times already and he has plenty of bottle.

Having won the Sanderson Farms Championship ten years ago, he had to wait six years for next win, but he's won three times in the last four years and all three have been impressive victories.

He won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am by four shots in 2020, so we know he can handle a links type layout, he became the first Canadian to win his national title in donkey's years last year when he beat Tommy Fleetwood in a playoff, and he won at TPC Scottsdale in extra time in February so he's quite frankly a bizarre price at in excess of 900.0899/1

Place order to lay 8 Us @ 10.09/1 & 12 Us @ 2.01/1

Ewen Ferguson @ 670.0669/1

Scotland's Ewen Ferguson is outside the World Top-100 and that's a negative but if Robert MacIntyre can follow up his recent Canadian Open win with victory at last week's Scottish Open, maybe Ferguson can double-up in the world's biggest Championship, two weeks after he won his third DP World Tour event at the BMW International Open in Germany?

That latest win was the 28-year-old's third on the DP World Tour and it was his third in three years so he's prolific enough and this is a course he knows very well.

Ferguson's first victory was in the Qatar Masters and that's an event that correlates extremely well with this one.

It's been won by many a links specialist, including Open Champions, Ernie Els, Paul Lawrie and the winner here at Troon eight years ago, Henrik Stenson.

Two-time Qatar Masters winner, Adam Scott, the 2014 winner, Sergio Garcia, and the 2011 Doha winner, Thomas Bjorn, have never won an Open, but all three have traded at long odds-on to win one and the back-to-back Qatar Masters winner, Branden Grace, set the record for the lowest round in major championship history when he fired an eight-under-par 62 around Royal Birkdale in 2017, just months after he'd doubled up in Doha.

Ferguson missed the cut at the Renaissance Club last week but watching MacIntyre become the first Scotsman to win their national open since Colin Montgomerie in 1999 will only have inspired him and he could easily contend at a huge price.

Place order to lay 8 Us @ 10.09/1 & 12 Us @ 2.01/1

Keegan Bradley @ 380.0379/1

The world number 19, Keegan Bradley, has already won a major (the 2011 US PGA Championship) so bizarrely that's a slight negative looking at the trends and he we haven't seen him since he finished 39^th when defending the Travelers Championship last month (another negative), but he looks ridiculously overpriced given he'll be running free at Troon this week.

After the disappointment of being overlooked for the Ryder Cup last year, despite winning twice in the space of eight months (won the ZOZO Championship in October 2022), Keegan has just been named as the next USA Captain and he's over the moon with the surprise call up.

With numbers reading 34-15-19-MC-18-79-MC-MC-MC-MC, his Open pedigree isn't spectacular but at 38 he's in the right age bracket to succeed, six of the last seven Open winners at Royal Troon have been from the States, and Bradley sat third at halfway here in 2016, after opening with rounds of 67 and 68.

Place order to lay 8 Us @ 10.09/1 & 12 Us @ 2.01/1

Ryan Fox @ 230.0229/1

Last up, and the shortest priced of the four, is Ryan Fox, who traded at odds-on in the aforementioned Canadian Open when a selection for the column last month.

He hasn't been brilliant since then, but he's struggled to adjust to live on the PGA Tour this year and a return to Scotland, where's he won before, is a big plus.

He slipped to 57^th in the Scottish Open last week after opening with a pair of 67s to sit inside the top-25 but he has a fabulous links record, and he can build on that.

In addition to winning the DP World Tour's flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship, last autumn, the 37-year-old Kiwi finished second at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship when defending and as a winner at the exposed and links-like Al Hamra Golf Club in Ras Al Khaimah, as well as being a desperately unlucky runner-up in the Irish Open at Ballyliffin, he really is a fine links exponent.

Place order to lay 8 Us @ 10.09/1 & 12 Us @ 2.01/1

Now read my Open Championship preview here

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