Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – The Open Championship

2018 Open Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report

We’re over halfway through 2018 already and we’re entering the business end of the golf season as far as the FedExCup race is concerned.

And, of course, we still have two majors to savor: including this week’s British Open from Carnoustie in Scotland.

If you’re not familiar with Carnoustie, or Car-nasty as it is commonly referred to, then go and search YouTube for Jean van de Velde. The top-ranked hit will leave you wincing in agony on behalf of the Frenchman.

Padraig Harrington also got into tons of trouble when securing his British Open title at the layout, and that’s because the closing holes really are the stuff of nightmare.

Imagine you were closing in on a slice of golfing history on Championship Sunday when you are greeted with a 250-yard par 3, a seventeenth hole in which there are bunkers in the fairway, and an eighteenth hole that has an out-of-bounds zone just yards from the green.

There are risk-and-reward golf courses, and then there are ‘tin hats on and hope for the best’ layouts.

Alex Noren of Sweden on the 5th hole while on a practice round during…

Alex Noren of Sweden on the 5th hole while on a practice round during previews to the 147th Open Championship at Carnoustie Golf Club on July 16, 2018 in Carnoustie, Scotland. Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images

Paul Lawrie won here in +6 in 1999, and Harrington won at -7 albeit in a year in which only 19 players finished under par.

The hyperbole is real: Carnoustie is the Purgatory of golf courses.

Roughly 156-men will try to tame this Scottish beast, but only one will be successful. But who will it be?

Well, that’s the million dollar question, but one thig we can say with some assurance is that they are likely to have played last week’s Scottish Open. Six of the last eight British Open winners had played in Scotland the week prior to their triumph, while seven of the top-ten on last year’s leaderboard had teed up in the land of bagpipes and tartan just a matter of days earlier.

While not foolproof, that certainly does provide compelling evidence that we should be backing sleepers who took to the Links at Gullane last week.

So here we go: here are our five sleeper plays for the British Open:

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The Open Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report

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The Open Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report

Matt Fitzpatrick – Vegas Odds 60/1 – The young Englishman is starting to build the profile of a major champion in waiting.

At the tender age of 23, Fitzpatrick has a top-10 finish to his name at Augusta and a T12 in the US Open, and of his four career victories two have been in fairly high profile European Tour events: the British Masters and the DP World Tour Championship.

His aptitude as a Links player is something of a mixed bag, however he played well at the Scottish Open last week to finish T14 and that could herald the start of a love-affair with these exposed layouts.

You sense that a day will come when you can’t get anything close to 60/1 on a Fitzpatrick victory, so we might as well make hay while the sun shines.

Ian Poulter – Vegas Odds 66/1 – Bring on the wind: that will be the sentiment of Ian Poulter this week.

Poults loves a breeze – evidenced by his victories at Celtic Manor and in the Houston Open earlier this year, and he doesn’t mind a grind either, as a career record featuring three British Open top-10s and four US Open top-25s attests.

He is a man for the big occasion, and there is something of the go about the Englishman: hence his success in the matchplay format and at previous Ryder Cups.

Will he get a chance to extend that Ryder Cup record later in the year? A strong showing this week would certainly help his cause.

Zach Johnson – Vegas Odds 90/1 – We’re willing to make one exception to our Scottish Open prep golden rule, and that’s for a player who has nothing to prove out on the Links.

His formline of 14-12-1-47-6-9 in the British Open is as good as anybody’s, and the fact that victory came at a St Andrews layout not all that dissimilar to Carnoustie certainly helps.

Johnson is one of those ‘horses for courses’ type guys who tends to go well at the same tracks year in, year out. Indeed, if he had won the play-off at the John Deere Classic in 2013 he would now be a repeat winner of four separate tournaments.

ZJ used his love of TPC Deere Run to play himself into good form – a closing round of 64 helping him to a top-20 finish, and if conditions become worse than forecast then Johnson is one of the players who can take full advantage.

Danny Willett – Vegas Odds 125/1 – It is an extreme leap of faith to back a guy to win a major who up until a few weeks ago was woefully out of form, but his improvement recently has been so stark that Willett could slip under the radar this week.

The former Masters champion also has a top-10 to his name at the British Open, and he showed that penchant for Links golf again in the past few weeks with a pair of decent showings at the Irish Open (T6) and the Scottish (T19), and added to a T8 at the Italian Open confirms that Willett is heading in the right direction.

The Sheffield man has spoken of ‘struggling to get out of bed’, such was his reliance on painkillers for a back injury, but he says those woes are gone now and he is ready to relaunch himself as a major player in world golf again.

Ryan Fox – Vegas Odds 125/1 – The Kiwi seems to love Links golf, and who knows where that may take him.

A winner of the Northern Ireland Open on the Challenge Tour two years ago, Fox has since recorded top-fives at the Open De France, Scottish Open and the Irish Open twice; the latter of which saw him defeated in a play-off by Russell Knox.

One of the advantages that Fox will have this week is that he is huge off the tee, and that’s handy because he always seems to play much better when hitting irons rather than driver; as he can do, in places, at Carnoustie.

A supreme talent, once Fox keeps his ball in play there could be no stopping him.

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Want more of this week’s fantasy predictions? Check out our full fantasy preview for Open Championship here.

Sleeper Report Predictions This Season (2017-2018)

[skill_bar heading=”Total Top 3s” percent=”1.77%” bar_text=”3 out of 170 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Top 10s” percent=”9.41%” bar_text=”16 out of 170 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Top 25s” percent=”26.47%” bar_text=”45 out of 170 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Winners Picked” percent=”2.94%” bar_text=”1 out of 34 events” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Runners-Up Picked” percent=”2.94%” bar_text=”1 out of 34 events” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Made Cuts (Includes Sleepers)” percent=”63.53″ bar_text=”108 out of 170 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″]

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Cover photo via Instagram