2022 Open Championship Preview and Tips – JP
2022 Open Championship Tips and Preview
The 2022 Open Championship returns to ‘The Home of Golf’, the Old Course at St. Andrews. It is a 7297 yard par 72 links course, has wide fairways, huge greens and evil bunkers. It is short by modern standards, and it really needs wind if these players are not to take it apart. The course is unusual in that it only has two par 3s and two par 5s, so clearly good par 4 stats are required. The greens are slow by modern standards and it is this factor which can catch out players from the PGA tour. St. Andrews is regarded as the easiest of the courses on The Open rota, especially if the wind doesn’t blow.
Weather Watch
The all-important weather forecast looks reasonable. It is set to be dry for all four days, reasonably warm and breezy. Importantly, the conditions are stable and consistent. We should avoid the situation where the early starters get an advantage on day one, and the later starters on day two, or visa-versa. The fact that there will be a reasonable breeze means we should have a classic test of links golf. The weather on the Scottish east coast has been dry all summer and hot in recent days. So, we will have firm and fast conditions.
Playing the ball on the deck will be a bigger part of the game than on the regular tour courses. It is a different sort of game, but this does not mean that the foreign players are at a disadvantage. An American player has won The Open forty five times and four of the last ten. The last ten has seen four American winners, two Northern Irish and one each from Sweden, Italy, Republic of Ireland and South Africa. There hasn’t been a successful defence since Padraig Harrington won at Birkdale in 2008.
Low Scoring Likely
The last ten Open Championships to be played at St. Andrews has seen seven claret jugs heading to the USA, one to South Africa, one to England and one to Spain. Tiger woods and Jack Nicklaus (GOAT) both won two of the last ten to be played here. Of the four played here this century, the average winning score has been -16.
The starting odds of the last ten winners of The Open have ranged from Darren Clarke at 301.00 in 2011, to 17.00 for Jordan Spieth in 2017. Three have been 101.00 or more and three 21.00 or under.
St. Andrews has been the host course four times this century. The winners’ key stats show that all four were ranked top 10 for driving accuracy, three have been top 4 for driving distance (Zach Johnson was only ranked 60th) and all have been top 10 for putting.
Cream Rises To Top
This course does tend to reward the best players. Of the last ten course winners only two were one time major winners, Tony Lema in 1964 and Louis Oosthuizen in 2010. The others were multiple major winners and with the likes of Nicklaus and Woods winning two, and one each for Faldo and Ballesteros, St. Andrews has seen modern legends winning.
Debutants rarely win The Open. Last year’s winner, Colin Morikawa, bucked that trend and as should be expected, players with good Open form and good recent form are more likely to win. Older players tend to do well in Opens so don’t be put off if your fancy is 40+. Even 59 year old Tom Watson came so close to winning in 2009.
Ante Post Selections
Rory McIlroy is the market favourite at 11.00. He ticks a lot of boxes. He has good event form, hits it a long way and he is in good overall form. I will give him a miss this time as I have my doubts as to his mindset in majors. It is eight years since his last major title and that is putting pressure on him. That, and his putting, which can be a bit suspect under pressure.
Others to make the long list were Jordan Spieth, Patrick Cantlay, Scotty Scheffler, Tony Finau and Tommy Fleetwood, but you can’t back them all.
Xander No.1 Pick
My number 1 selection has to be Xander Schauffele. He is in top form, winning the Scottish Open last weekend, the JP McManus Pro-Am before that and The Travellers Championship before that. So often the bridesmaid, the fact that he is now the most in-form player in the field makes him a much more backable proposition. He had not won since 2019 but so far in 2022 he has now won three PGA titles.
His win in the Scottish Open last week was done in a top-class field and he did it the hard way. He was on the ‘wrong’ side of a weather affected draw, but still pulled off the win. It will have conditioned him to the slower greens and while The Renaissance Club is not a classic links course, it is linksy and the wind was up.
His game fits the profile of past winners and while he lacks course experience, he has played in four Opens with a best finish of 2nd in 2018. He says that he will spend more time on the course than on the range in his final preparations this week, as he tries to get to know the course better.
2022 Open Championship Tips: 1.5 points e/w Xander Schauffele to win @ 17.00 with Betfred (1/5 the odds 1-10)
The second selection is the 2019 Open Champion, Shane Lowry. He loves links golf, and while his Open record is far from perfect, he has missed four cuts to go with his win a T9th and T12th last year, he is in good form with two top 10s from his last three tournaments. He is a regular contender in the majors these days with top 5s in all four. Lowry will relish the forecast conditions and windier the better. He has plenty of course experience as he is a regular at the Dunhill Links Championship, with three top 6 finishes in the last eight years.
2022 Open Championship Tips: 1 point e/w Shane Lowry to win @ 23.00 with Hills (1/5 the odds 1-9)
Third choice goes to course specialist Louis Oosthuizen. He benefited from being on the right side of a weather affected draw when he won here in 2010 but he showed his liking for the course in 2015 when he lost in a play-off to Zach Johnson.
The South African plays in the Dunhill Links Championship every year, so he has a lot of course experience. He was third in last year’s Open and he is a good links player. Oosthuizen is one of the players to have jumped ship to the LIV Tour but he is in good form having finished 8th in the BMW International Open before a 5th on the LIV Tour in his last two starts.
2022 Open Championship Tips: 0.5 point e/w Louis Oosthuizen to win @ 51.00 with BET365
The final selection falls into the veteran category. Padraig Harrington recently won the US Open Seniors Championship to go with his two Open Championships and the USPGA Championship. He has all the shots for links golf and he has added a quite a bit of distance to his game, despite having turned 50, he is hitting it 300 yards off the tee.
He is making shed loads on the PGA Seniors Tour and still works hard on his game. The Dubliner has won two Dunhill Links Championships, so he knows the course well. He was T20th here back in 2015 and something similar would not be a surprise. Age is much less of a barrier in this particular challenge and maybe he can do a Darren Clarke and turn back the clock.
