The Golf Open Championship

The Open Championship is held annually during the third weekend in July at courses located in the United Kingdom and is the oldest golf tournament in the world. The first Open Championship was played in 1860 and it has been held near-continuously since, with periodic disruptions due to World Wars and the COVID-19 pandemic. The tournament is an official European Tour event and is jointly sanctioned by the PGA Tour and is operated by the Royal & Ancient (R&A), which along with the USGA is responsible for maintaining the global rules of golf.

As a major championship, betting odds for The Open Championship are available far in advance of the tournament, sometimes as soon as the completion of the prior year’s event. The early future Golf Odds are generally restricted to a bet on the player who will win the tournament, with a number of others becoming available as the actual date of the tournament approaches.

The 150th Open Championship will take place in 2022 at St. Andrews on the Old Course, generally considered the birthplace of the game, for a record 30th time, with the 2023 event held for the 13th time at Royal Liverpool.  The Open Championship is played at a different venue each year, with ten courses usually comprising the rota (short for rotation) with other courses occasionally included at the discretion of the R&A and the global nature of the event makes it more of a world Championship Open.

The majority of the layouts in the rota are links courses, defined as being located near a coast with the topography dominated by sand dunes or other natural terrain which was used without much change to the original environment. A links course requires a type of shot making not generally associated with the modern game where players hit high shots that rely on spin to stop the ball on the putting surface.

Fairways are defined by humps that occurred naturally over which the course was designed, creating unpredictable bounces that put players in positions that they may not be prepared for. There isn’t usually much rough just off the fairways, but beyond that players can expect high native grasses that are left to grow without any intervention by the groundskeepers.

Playing links courses requires experience and creativity, along with the ability to hit shots with a lower trajectory that take advantage of the natural undulations of the course, as well as being patient enough to deal with the unexpected outcomes as a result of what are many times out of the control of the player. Another factor in The Open Championship is the weather, which in many cases can put part of the field at a disadvantage relative to other players, especially since thunderstorms are rare which means that play is rarely suspended except for severe winds that make it difficult for balls to come to rest on the greens.

Because of the often windy conditions, the green speeds at The Open Championship are generally much slower than what Tour players see on a weekly basis, especially in the United States. Instead of speeds of 12 or 13 on the stimpmeter at PGA and European Tour events, the greens on a links course or other rota layouts could be as slow as nine or ten, requiring a big adjustment for many players, especially those with limited experience in The Open Championship.

Futures odds on professional golf events are expressed much like the moneyline in team sports, with the odds indicating what a winning $100 wager would return. For example, several months before the 2022 Open Championship, the world’s top player Jon Rahm was the favorite with odds of +850.

That meant that a winning $100 wager on Rahm would earn the bettor $850 and they would also have the $100 that they bet returned for a total payout of $950. There are 156 players in the Open Championship field, so the fact that Rahm was essentially at odds of 8.5-1 shows just how well respected he was at the time the odds were set.

On futures wagers using Golf Odds, placing a large sum of money on one player can result in a great payout, but because of the nature of the sport where a great season for a player is one where they win once or twice, a good strategy is to pick three or more promising players to win in each event. While Rahm had odds of +850, the winner at St. Andrews in 2010, Louis Oosthuizen was at +1900 after a great 2020-2021 season when he recorded four top three finishes in major tournaments, including the Open Championship.

As the tournament approaches, more wagering options become available, especially with the global reach of The Open Championship, that give bettors more variety in how they want to approach the event. In addition to bets on who will win, there are odds on players finishing in the top five, top ten, top 25 and making the cut.

Depending on the sportsbook, more exotic wagers are also possible, like which American will finish in the best position, the nationality of the winner, over/under for the margin of victory and many others. Another popular group of wagers are individual round, head to head matchups with odds much like those for team sporting events.

These matchups can involve any two players in the field and they don’t have to be competing in the same group during the round. The wager is simply on which player will have the lowest score for the round, usually expressed in moneyline odds without any stroke spread involved.