With the professional golfing calendar still in suspension due to the Coronavirus, and no prospect of tournament play on the PGA Tour until June at the earliest, and even later on the European Tour, it might seem a little previous to start debating the likely winners of the season’s three remaining scheduled majors, but with bookmakers having already chalked up prices for the rescheduled US PGA Championship, US Open and Masters Tournament, it seems only right that we should investigate who might join the roll call of Major champions.
US PGA Championship
August 6-9, Harding Park GC, California
With the Open Championship at Royal St George’s postponed until next year, all three majors in 2020 will be held ‘Stateside’, with the US PGA Championship, which was originally due to be held at Harding Park in San Francisco from May 14-17, now scheduled to kick off the Major season in August at the same venue.
With California currently in golfing lockdown, it’s hard to know what the landscape will look like in just over three months’ time, but there is a real possibility that the tournament will have to be played behind closed doors, which will be a strange experience for players and even more so for armchair fans. With no fans to cheer them on, and no ‘ooohs’ and ‘arrghs’, let alone shouts of ‘mashed potato’, following every shot, it will be an odd scenario to battle it out for a Major title in an atmosphere more akin to a Sunday morning two-ball at your local club. That said, the winner will still be able to call themselves a Major champion, so expect the competition to be as fierce as ever.
Although it is the first-time host of a major championship, Harding Park is no stranger to top-flight competition, having staged the WGC Matchplay in 2005 and 2015, and the Presidents Cup in 2009. That means that it is far from being an unknown quantity to many of the world’s top players. Indeed, with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy winning those two WGC events, there is plenty of course form to go on if you look far enough back.
As things stand, McIlroy looks the man to beat, and heads most betting lists at a generally available 8/1. Those odds are very skinny, and a more tempting option from the top of the market might be Jon Rahm. The swashbuckling Spaniard is a solid 16/1 chance to break his Major duck if he continues on his current trajectory.
It’s hard at this stage to form a concrete view of what’s going to be required at Harding Park, but with previous winners in mind, as well as the fact that McIlroy beat Gary Woodland in the final of the Match Play and Woods beat John Daly in a play-off, big hitting appears to be a good starting point.
After that, focusing on those who play well in California is a sensible route, an idea Woodland helps to underline thanks to his US Open at Pebble Beach last June. Rahm, of course, secured his professional breakthrough at Torrey Pines, near San Diego, and he also won in the California desert at the CareerBuilder Challenge.
Other than Dustin Johnson, over whom there were question marks heading into 2020, and Woods, there’s probably no finer record in this part of the world than that of Rahm. He was third behind Woodland at Pebble Beach, and he seems sure to go close to winning his first major sooner rather than later.
Further down the betting list, I like the look of Korea’s Sungjae Im, who wouldn’t be rated a 40/1 chance were he American. I’m not sure why, but overseas players tend to be underrated in favour of the home contingent. Im was the star of last year’s Presidents Cup for the International team, taking 3.5 points from five matches as one of only two players to win their Sunday singles, in which he saw off Woodland. That came on the back of a brilliant rookie of the year campaign. Now consistently performing at an extremely high level, and unlucky not to have won the Greenbrier, Im is only heading in one direction. Majors in 2020 might come too soon, but such is the momentum behind his rise that I expect he’ll tee off for this one having firmly established himself as a genuine title contender.
US Open
September 17-20, Winged Foot GC, New York
The last tournament to give up its scheduled date, the US Open will be held at Winged Foot Golf Club in New York, just 20 miles from the very epicentre of America’s worst hit Covid-19 area. And while September might seem a long way off now, it seems extraordinary to think that it should be held in a venue close to such as large population centre that has been so severely hit by the virus. If it does go ahead, spectator numbers, if there are any at all, may have to heavily reduced to ensure crowd safety.
The last major championship played at Winged Foot was the 2006 US Open, and while there was a mix of players battling it out for the title, it strikes me that some of the best short game exponents around at the time were prominent – Geoff Ogilvy (1st), Phil Mickelson (2nd), Padraig Harrington (5th), Steve Stricker (6th) and Luke Donald (12th) to name just five.
With flat, but narrow fairways, thick rough – up to six inches deep – and those heavily contoured raised greens, Winged Foot’s 7,200-yard, par-70 West Course is an absolute brute. The opening hole, a par four, and the ninth, which at the time was the longest par four ever used in a major championship, both averaged 4.471 in 2006. The par-five 12th measured a whopping 640 yards and the only other par five, the fifth, was the only hole to average below par for the week. Tiger missed the cut in 2006, his first ever weekend off at a major championship at that point in his career, and Ogilvy won with a five-over-par total.
Ogilvy ranked second for ‘Total Driving’ and third for ‘All Round’ that week and that makes sense given driving the ball both straight and long was important and that Winged Foot tests every facet of your game. The first five home had A/R rankings of third, first, ninth, tenth and second and Kennie Ferrie, who had been the surprise third round leader before going on to finish tied for sixth, ranked fifth.
On to the pressing matter of who might actually win in 2020, looking at the current betting lists, I can’t believe how long a price Patrick Reed is. The 2018 Masters champion is currently being offered at a generous 40-1 to lift the title and could well be worth a serious each-way investment if you can get on at those odds.
The price fails to reflect a number of things: his form in New York and New Jersey; his motivation; the way he played over the final six months of 2019; his likely suitability to the course, and, above all else, his ability – which includes the fact we know he can win majors. Reed ended 2019 playing like his world ranking, which made him the 12th best player in the sport. The 29-year-old is currently seventh after winning the WGC-Mexico Championship back in February and looks nailed on to add to his Major tally sooner rather than later.
Rory McIlroy is the current favourite, at around 10-1, with Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka just behind him at 12s, with Tiger Woods, Justin Thomas and Jon Rahm lurking around a point or two back. Of those, you have to look at Koepka as the most likely candidate. He wobbled a bit at when he won the US PGA at Bethpage Black last year, having led by seven with a round to go, but he got the job done there back in May. He was fourth behind Jimmy Walker at Baltusrol in 2016, and his US Open pedigree is simply incredible. US Open form figures reading MC-4-18-13-1-1-2, he’s most certainly the one they all have to beat. Koepka finished last season ranked 12th for Total Driving on the PGA Tour and second in the All-Around rankings and he has the form to win to.
McIlroy actually ranked above Koepka in both categories last season, but he’s one to take on around a tough track like Winged Foot, where errant driving will be heavily punished. The Northern Irishman’s US Open win, back in 2011, came on a rain-soaked Congressional and his 16-under-par aggregate score is the lowest in US Open history. The Holywood man is yet to win anywhere with a single-figure under-par score, so is much better suited to easier tasks and his US Open form is generally poor, with three missed cuts from his last four attempts.
The Masters
November 12-15, Augusta National, Georgia
It’s going to feel strange to have the 84th Masters be the swansong to the 2020 Major season – in fact almost the entire season – rather than the opening number, but it will certainly help to light up our TV screens should the tournament go ahead as winter begins to set in once more.
The Masters always captures the imagination of the golfing world and the betting public alike, and given the hiatus we’ve had in golf, it will be an even more ‘must-watch’ event as we social distance our way towards the end of 2020.
Plenty of questions need to be answered. Can McIlroy complete the major grand slam? Can Tiger become the first player to successfully defend the Masters since 2002? Can Koepka win his fifth Major title in four years? Can Jordan Spieth rediscover his form at his beloved Augusta? Can Justin Thomas capture a second Major title or can the likes of Patrick Cantlay, Tommy Fleetwood, Rickie Fowler, Jon Rahm or Xander Schauffele win their first?
Being the only major held at the same venue each year, all the reasons that the Masters is arguably the best golf betting heat of the year also make it the least appealing from an ante-post point of view. It’s less likely we’ll find a player who has been completely overlooked, because Augusta form is there to see, and so are decades’ worth of trends which give us a good indication as to what to look for in a potential winner. These are great when it comes to finding the winner in the spring, but they make the prospect of finding a winner in November, at what will be the end of the season, somewhat harder.
Since the course at Augusta was re-modelled in 2008, the par-72 layout now measures 7,435 yards off the back tees, but as all the fairways are traditionally mown against the hole direction to minimise driving distance, it effectively plays closer to 7,800 yards, so pure yardage is way more important than creating the right angle into the flag.
Other challenges include huge and heavily-contoured Bentgrass greens which can bamboozle the inexperienced and poor putters alike. Rating at anything up to 14 on the Stimpmeter, these sub-air fuelled surfaces are like little else the world’s best golfers face across the rest of the season. Birdie chances are restricted to the smallest of target areas, many of which are only accessible by using the natural contours of the green. Difficulty is also ratcheted up by Augusta’s infamous run-off areas that surround all green complexes. The lack of rough creates indecision when missing greens with scrambling percentages suffering as a result. Too many options can confuse players, so course experience and a patient outlook pays.
Time was that any player with course experience driving down Magnolia Lane had a real chance of capturing the Masters title. Indeed, between 2007-2010, Zach Johnson, Trevor Immelman, Angel Cabrera and Phil Mickelson captured green jackets with a combined two top-10 finishes between them in the immediate run-up to the tournament. Since 2011 though, in-form players have dominated, with Adam Scott in 2013 being the only player to feature with as little as a single top-10 as part of a deliberate pre-Augusta schedule that contained just three stroke play tournaments. He was third at the WGC at Doral, so was clearly peaking for his target event. Recent winning prices of 16/1 (Woods), 55/1 (Reed), 45/1 (Garcia), 66/1 (Willett), 12/1 (Spieth), 28/1 (Watson), 28/1 (Scott) and 55/1 (Watson) tells its own story. In general, it’s players slightly further down the market who triumph here.
McIlroy will likely go into the Masters as the favourite, but as every year slides by – this will be his seventh attempt to complete the major slam – his chances of getting hold of a green jacket seem to get further away. Patrick Reed’s odds of adding to his victory in 2018 are hard to ignore, and he can be backed at 28/1, while Tiger (16/1) will have plenty of support in his search for back-to-back Masters’ titles. The fact that his rivals will have played so little golf will probably play into his favour, as does the fact that he can almost play the course with his eyes closed.
Whatever the outcome of this year’s Major championships, the 2020 golf season will certainly be remembered long into the future. Whether the winners will have asterisks placed by their names remains to be seen, but there’s no doubting that a return to some form of normality is all that all golfers truly wish for in these uncertain times.