2026 Open Championship odds, picks, date: Surprising predictions from golf model that's nailed 17 majors
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- SportsLine's proprietary model, built by DFS pro Mike McClure, simulated the 2026 Open Championship 10,000 times and has correctly predicted 17 majors entering the weekend, including the 2026 Masters, the 2025 PGA Championship, and last year's Open.
- Scottie Scheffler (+750) and Rory McIlroy (+850) sit atop the FanDuel odds board for the Open, which tees off Thursday, July 16 at Royal Birkdale — site of Jordan Spieth's 2017 win and where Scheffler defends his 2025 title.
- Tommy Fleetwood (+1800), the third favorite and lowest-priced English golfer, is the model's marquee fade — projected to barely finish inside the top 5 despite two prior Open top-5s, after a missed cut in 2024 and a T27 the last time the Open was at Royal Birkdale.
- Ludvig Åberg (+3000) lands as a top-3 model pick despite never having won a major, buoyed by a T4 at this year's PGA Championship and a tour-leading combination of driving distance and accuracy entering his third British Open appearance.
- The model is also flagging a longshot going off around 35-1 as a surprise pick, with SportsLine directing readers to its full projected leaderboard for additional value plays at Royal Birkdale.
Why it matters: The model's explicit fade call on Fleetwood at +1800 — grounded in his 2024 MC and T27 at Royal Birkdale — and its endorsement of Åberg at +3000 give bettors a contrarian blueprint against a public board dominated by Scheffler (+750) and McIlroy (+850), where most handle concentrates on the favorites.
