Open Championship
Genesis Scottish Open preview: Thomas the play in stellar field
There’s certainly a Major championship feel to this week’s Scottish Open with a stellar field from both sides of the pond set to tee it up at The Renaissance Club in North Berwick.
This tournament creates history as the first co-sanctioned tournament between the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour, and with 14 of the world’s top 15 in attendance as well as all four current Major champions, it looks set to be a cracker.
Here’s our look ahead to the tournament which gets underway on Thursday morning.
Thomas can build on solid Renaissance record
Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler head the market at 12/1, but at a couple of points bigger, the claims of Justin Thomas look much stronger. Granted all three have played The Renaissance Club before with Rahm finishing seventh and Scheffler 12th last year, so both clearly took to the course, but this will be JT’s third appearance here and after a tie for ninth in 2019 and a tie for eighth in 2021, further improvement could be on the cards. Both of those results show a clear pattern – Thomas played three great rounds but was let down by a lacklustre 70 on Saturday which left him too far behind. As winning scores of -22, -11 and -18 demonstrate, this is a course where birdies, and plenty of them, are needed, so for Thomas to shoot just one-under par means he was giving up several shots to the remainder of the field.
And if you dig a little deeper into his performance last year, it’s fair to say he did very well to finish where he did considering how bad he was with his irons. Thomas ranked 100th in SG: Approach 12 months ago – totally uncharacteristic given he ranks sixth in that category this year, was third last year and was first in 2020. He ranked first in both SG: Off-The-Tee and SG: Around-The-Green, so he was probably only an average week with his irons away from really contending.
The PGA champion looks the best bet at the top of the market at 14/1.
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Burns and Schauffele of interest
It could be a good week for Americans as both Xander Schauffele and Sam Burns, available at 20/1 and 30/1 respectively, look worthy of consideration.
Schauffele comes into this on the back of a gritty win at the Travellers Championship and based on his sterling start to the JP McManus Pro-Am, it could be a win that does the 28-year-old the world of good. Often criticised for not winning as much as his latent talent suggests he should, his win a couple of weeks ago could be the proverbial ‘lightbulb moment’ and he could be very dangerous here, especially after a solid debut in 2021.
Burns also enjoyed a solid debut here last year finishing in a tie for 18th and there aren’t many more in-form players than the American. He’s won four times since 2020 and seems to be constantly improving, so he’s another who can’t be dismissed.
