Open Championship picks 2023: Expert picks, best bets for Royal Liverpool
The Open Championship picks and best bets for the 2023 tournament at Royal Liverpool as we have outrights, Top 10s and more PGA Tour expert picks.
Set the coffee pot, it’s Open Championship week as we head to Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, where Rory McIlroy captured what has shockingly become his next-to-last major when the British Open was last played at this venue back in 2014.
Now, Rory enters The Open Championship having just won the Scottish Open in dramatic fashion, but with plenty of contenders trying to keep him from going back-to-back with wins, both on the season and at Royal Liverpool. Rickie Fowler, who finished runner-up here in 2014, along with defending champion Cam Smith, Viktor Hovland, Brooks Koepka, and of course, Scottie Scheffler and Jon Rahm will have their say.
The Open Championship is one of the most fun events of the year and, frankly, we might be about to over-extend ourselves with our Open Championship picks and PGA Tour expert picks. But there’s so much to like and unpack, we’re going for it with the last major championship of the year.
So let’s get into it with our PGA Tour expert picks and best bets before we break down the rest of our Open Championship picks.
Note: All odds are courtesy of FanDuel Sportsbook unless otherwise noted. Odds will be updated when made available. With such a big card for The Open Championship, the expert picks listed first are 1 unit, the rest are 0.5 units unless otherwise noted. For more betting picks and advice, check out BetSided.
Golf betting record in 2023 through Scottish: 42-115-2, +3.506 units (2-37 on outrights, 0.5 unit bets, 0.1 unit longshot bets | -1.3 units at Scottish)
One-and-Done record in 2023: $8,615,500.65 (Tommy Fleetwood at Scottish, $261,990)
The Open Championship picks: PGA Tour expert picks for Top 5 Top 10, Top 20, One and Done
Top 5 pick at The Open Championship: Scottie Scheffler (+180)
At this point, we have to just accept that Scottie Scheffler is incapable of finishing outside of the Top 5. He leads this field by a mile in weighted Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green over the last 16 rounds and farther back than that as well. The putter is the big issue, but he hasn’t finished outside the Top 5 since the RBC Heritage… which was a T11. His performance on the greens will once again keep him from winning, but the Top 5 feels too locked in for it to not happen.
Top 10 pick at The Open Championship: Tommy Fleetwood (+240)
Not only have we seen Tommy Fleetwood perform well overall with a T2 finish in Canada, and T6 last week in Scotland on the PGA Tour, but he was also T5 at the US Open and T18 at the PGA Championship. He’s playing exquisitely from tee to green right now and clearly plays this style of golf well. Moreover, his British Open recent history is enticing with a T4 last year and T2 in 2019. With all of that coming together, a Top 10 at these odds seems impossible to overlook.
Top 20 pick at The Open Championship: Robert Macintyre (+190)
After a season where we’ve seen Robert Macintyre really struggle to try and secure a Ryder Cup spot for the European team, the Scotsman has started to come on strong with a second-place finish and T4 in his last two starts. Though he was T34 at St. Andrews at last year’s Open Championship, he had registered Top 10s in each of the last two championships. He’s peaking for this week and a Top 20 finish feels safe enough, though there is more upside.
One and Done pick for The Open Championship: Robert Macintyre
As has been covered in several previous weeks, the bullets in the chamber aren’t there right now because we blew some big names unwisely at other events. With that said, I’m confident in Macintyre this week. His rise in recent performance combined with his history at this even make me think that this could end up being a big payday for him.