The Punter's De-brief: Scheffler cruises to inevitable Open victory

• Scheffler still likely to be value going forward

• Who could be a good bet next year at Birkdale?

• Read my 3M Open preview here

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Despite a reasonable performance at the Scottish Open the week before, where he finished tied for eighth, Scottie Scheffler was generally a 6/17.00 chance on the Exchange before the off to win the 153^rd Open Championship at Royal Portrush and that was a price I was very soon glad to have taken.

Birdies at 16 and 17 tidied up his first round card on Thursday morning and at the close of play he sat tied for sixth. Just one shot shy of the logjam at the top, he was trading at around 3.711/4.

Scheffler's late tee time on Friday conveniently coincided with a change in the weather and in the benign conditions, he powered to the front with the best round of the day - a seven-under-par 64.

Leading Matt Fitzpatrick by a stroke, Haotong Li and Brian Harman by two, and the rest of the field by five, the world number one was a 1.84/5 chance at the halfway stage, and it looked like a done deal when he led by four with 18 to play.

The last 10 four stroke leaders on the PGA Tour had all gone on to win and Scottie had converted his previous nine clear 54 hole leads so 1.222/9 didn't look too short.

Scheffler's nearest challenger and playing partner in round four, pre-event 1000.0999/1 chance, Haotong Li, stiffed his approach on the opening hole to inside four feet and for a few seconds, everyone wondered whether we might see a bit of a battle in round four, but Scheffler responded in style.

A statement start from Scottie. pic.twitter.com/eQ34Bc7lss

-- The Open (@TheOpen) July 20, 2025

After the tap in birdie at one, two more followed at four and five and he stood on the sixth tee with a colossal seven-stroke lead but that appeared to lead to a slight loss of focus.

He needed to hole from 16 feet at six and 15 on seven just to save par and having failed to extricate himself form a fairway bunker at the first attempt, he registered his only double-bogey of the week at the eighth.

The wobble didn't last long.

A birdie at the ninth put him back on track and victory was never in doubt after he birdied the par five 12^th.

The only race left was for second place and that was won by Harris English, who finished four behind Scottie and one ahead of his playing partner, Chris Gotterup.

Rory McIlroy had described Scheffler as "inevitable" on Saturday evening and the world number two wasn't wrong, Scheffler's victory felt inevitable from a long way out.

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Scottish warm up the key to success again

Following Scotties victory, the last four winners of the Open Championship have now finished 10^th, 12^th 15^th and eighth in the Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club the week before they won and the 2021 Open winner, Collin Morikawa, wouldn't have won at Royal St Georges if he hadn't played in the Scottish either.

When Morikawa won the Open four years ago he ranked first for Scrambling and ninth for Putting Average, a week after finishing 71^st in the Scottish Open, ranking 59^th for Scrambling and 63^rd for PA and it's been a similar story with Scheffler this year.

Scheffler didn't play anywhere after his victory at the Travelers Championship in June last year and a month off proved to be too much when he lined up at Troon.

Finishing tied for seventh behind Xander Schauffele, Scheffler ranked only 17^th for Scrambling, 36^th for Putting Average and 68^th for Strokes Gained: Putting so it wasn't a surprise to see him the line-up in Scotland this year, where he only ranked 36^th for Putting Average and 68^th for Strokes Gained: Putting.

He looked confused a number of times on the greens in Scotland, as he'd done at Troon 12 months ago, but a week of competitive links golf proved a great warm up.

He scrambled brilliantly and ranked second for SG: Putting at Portrush.

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LIV Tour players hampered by poor prep event

In contrast, the LIV Tour visited the tree-lined Spanish gem - Valderrama - the week before and that's a huge handicap.

Liv star, Tyrrell Hatton, who's a three-time winner of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship and an incredibly good links exponent, was in contention for the first three rounds before finishing tied for 16th but where would Bryson DeChambeau have finished if he'd have had a warmup around a links layout?

His 78 on day one in the trickiest conditions we saw all week long left him languishing in a tie for 144^th but he ended the week in a tie for 10th after rounds of 65, 68 and 64.

Jon Rahn and John Catlin were the only two LIV players inside the top 18 at Troon in 2024 and Hatton and DeChambeau were the only two in the top 22 this year.

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Keep an eye out for pockets of fine weather

Padraig Harrington kicked off the 153^rd Open in style with a birdie at the first having teed off at 6:35 on Thursday, almost 10 hours before the final three-ball pegged it up.

With the entire field going off the first, it's a long day and a long spread between the AM and PM starters so it's no use just looking at the forecast in the usual way.

The stats tell us that the PM-AM side of the draw averaged 1.2 shots less than the AM-PM wave but Scheffler teed off at 15:30 on Friday and enjoyed the most benign conditions seen over the first two days so when betting in-running, analysing the weather forecasts is essential.

There is a sizable caveat, however. The weather panned out as forecasted this week but that doesn't always happen at a tournament played out by the coast in the middle of a British summer, so constant forecast monitoring and a degree of caution is advised.

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Scheffler often still a value play

Scottie Scheffler won nine of the 21 events he played in 2024, and he's now won four of the 16 tournaments he's played in 2025.

A strike rate for 2025 of only 25% is far from as impressive as last year's 43% but he took his time to get going this year after cutting his hand on Christmas Day.

Scheffler didn't make an appearance until February, and he drew a blank in eight events in-a-row before hacking up in his hometown by eight strokes at the Byron Nelson and since teeing it up there, he's won four of the eight events he's played in, including two majors!

It's very easy to consider him too short before the off but he's now performing like Tiger Woods in his pomp, and he proved to be a very profitable player to follow.

Woods would often go off at less than 3/14.00 and yet that was still a fair price at certain venues.

I distinctly remember having a sizable bet on the great man at St Andrews 20 years ago at 9/25.50, where he won by five, and I suspect I'll look back on this year's edition of the Open and wonder how I was able to back Scheffler at 6/17.00.

There's always a queue of layers wanting to take on a short-priced favourite in a huge field so Scheffler is unlikely to ever be too short, and he should continue to be a value play whenever he lines up given his impressive strike rate.

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Eyecatchers for next year

Following his victory at the Renaissance and his third place at Portrush, Gotterup has taken to links golf like a duck to water and is an obvious future candidate for Open glory, but two others also caught the eye.

After a poor defence of his Scottish Open title, Robert Macintyre wasn't at the top of his game at the start of the week, and he ranked 55^th for Strokes Gained: Off the Tee on Thursday when ending the day tied for 32^nd.

He fought hard all week after that to finish tied for seventh and if he pitches up at Birkdale after a better prep, he'll be a very likely candidate but the one that impressed me the most was the 2023 US Open winner, Wyndham Clark, who ended the week in tied fourth despite sitting tied for 129^th after round one!

Clark's record in the Open was poor before this year but he's a winner of the AT&T at the Pebble Beach Links and he has Scottish Open form figures reading 16-25-10-11.

Clark is a player that the market often underestimates, and he could be a value play in future Opens.

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