2025 Open – Noonan’s Outright Picks and Preview

The year’s final major championship, the 153rd Open Championship, is back along the northern coast of Northern Ireland, with Royal Portrush Golf Club’s Dunluce Links course hosting golf’s oldest major championship for the third time.

The “Champion Golfer of the Year” title, along with the Claret Jug, will go to one of the field’s 156 golfers, including the majority of the Official Golf World Ranking’s top 70 and a select group of elite amateurs.

It’s rare for the R&A to return to a venue this quickly, but Royal Portrush was so well received by the players in 2019 that a quick return was deemed necessary. On the scorecard, Portrush is a 7,381-yard par-71 layout that looks and plays quite differently than traditional Open Championship venues.

The routing is exceptional, designed so you’ll never play consecutive holes in the same direction, keeping the field on its toes when it comes to the wind and weather rolling in off the Atlantic. And the weather WILL be rolling in. As is often the case with The Open Championship, rain, wind, and cool temperatures are in the forecast. Forecasts change quickly, so determining who’ll benefit from a particular wave advantage can be a bit of a blindfolded dart competition.

One of the most notable features of Royal Portrush, especially compared to other Open Championship venues, is its relatively few greenside bunkers. Even after the extensive course updates for the 2019 Open Championship, the Dunluce Links has only 57 bunkers, which is the lowest number of any course in The Open rota. Most are placed along the fairway to alter tee shots rather than surrounding the green complexes.

Royal Portrush stands out from many traditional Irish and Scottish links courses due to its dramatic dunes and sophisticated green complexes. Unlike most links courses, which feature large, flat greens that allow players to use the ground game to run the ball onto the greens with relatively simple recovery options, Portrush presents a different challenge. This is mostly why I’m looking at a different set of corralary courses this week instead of focusing on past results at Open Championships or on links-like setups.

Oh, and about those greens. The greens here are smaller than those found at typical links courses, averaging only 5,400 square feet, and they are much more undulating. The tightly mown runoff areas and tricky lies surrounding these elevated greens demand precision on approach shots and a soft touch around the greens, as scrambling becomes paramount because missing the green is inevitable here.

For more course details, check out Ron’s course preview. It’s the best in the business, bar none. Also, don’t forget to check out our new research tools, the course stats page, along with the Tournament Cheat Sheet.

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YouTube: Betsperts Golf

Key Rabbit Hole Stats This Week:

• SG: Total (Very Strong Fields, Last 24, 36, and 50 Rounds)
• SG: T2G (OTT Club: Mixed/Less than Driver; Rough and Missed Fairway Penalty: High)
• SG: Total (Comp courses, last 3 years)
• SG: APP (Difficult to gain on APP, Last 36 Rounds)
• SG: ARG (Difficult to gain ARG, Last 50 Rounds)
• SG: P (Slow Greens)
• SG: Total (Moderate to Windy; Grass conditions: Wet)

There are millions of ways to bet on this beautiful game, and my goal with this piece is to touch on the golfers I’m targeting in the outright market this week. Remember to check out the Rabbit Hole, our customizable stat database that can help you pare down your player pool each week.

Please take advantage of the Discord feature and community. It’s the best way to get up-to-the-minute lines and advice, and if you need help getting started, please reach out. That’s where my full card will be posted, along with any live in-tournament bets.

*Betting lines are accurate at the time of publication in Discord.

Noonan’s Open Outright Targets

Jon Rahm (12/1)

A lot of signs point to Jon Rahm this week. He’s played well at the major championships this year, and his career Open Championship record is pristine, with three T7 or better finishes in his past four starts.

Rahm fired a 65 on Sunday at Valderrama, the low round of the day, to fall one shot short of winning his first LIV Golf event of the season. Sure, it was another strong finish without a win for Rahm, but he’s still playing exceptionally well, and his game is well-suited for what Royal Portrush demands. He’s one of the best ‘total drivers’ in the world, combining distance and accuracy off the tee. He’ll be able to club down when needed and can do so without sacrificing much of his distance advantage.

Rahm’s hands around the green are exceptional, and he can separate more from the field when it’s difficult to gain strokes around the green. Look at Rahm’s history at the Masters. While the green complexes at Royal Portrush are quite different, both places feature numerous elevated greens surrounded by short grass slopes and hollows. Rahm’s gained strokes around the green every time he’s teed it up at Augusta, and I expect it’ll be an important part of his success this week at Royal Portrush.

Sepp Straka (65/1)

I’m pushing my luck here with Sepp Straka, who I’ve bet to win twice this season, and he’s 2-2 for me, cashing 60/1+ winners for me at PGA West and Philly Cricket. We’re swimming in the same price tier for this week’s Open Championship, and that feels like a mistake.

I’m putting a premium on accuracy off the tee this week, focusing on distance from the edge of the fairway and tee-to-green performance when there’s a sizable rough and missed fairway penalty. Straka ranks among the top 10 in both of those metrics for me this week, and he’s become one of the most consistent flushers in the world. In fact, no one’s gained strokes on approach in a higher rate of rounds than Sepp Straka has (76.19%) over the past nine months.

Straka’s disappointed in the 2025 majors to date, but he’s played better against stronger competition this season, so I think that’s small sample variance more than anything. He played well at Royal Liverpool two years ago and was one of many T2 finishes behind Brian Harman that year.

Russell Henley (60/1)

Longtime readers know that I’m a sucker for Russell Henley, and he’s an easy click for me at this price when this course is so perfectly suited for what he does best. I bet him at this price before modeling out the event, but he finished second in my numbers, behind only Scottie Scheffler.

The extra runout on these firm fairways helps his lack of distance, but we’ve seen him compete on longer tracks with no issues, including his spring win at Bay Hill. Henley has three top ten finishes in his past five major championship starts, including a solo fifth-place finish at last year’s Open Championship, one where he survived the poor Friday weather wave that wiped out most of the field.

He’s one of the best short game players in the world, consistently gaining strokes on and around the green. Over the past nine months, only Max Greyserman (16.22%) and Justin Thomas (16.13%) have gained 3 or more strokes via short game play at a higher rate than Henley (15.38%). There are no holes in his game.

Justin Thomas (60/1)

In a way, Justin Thomas flies in the face of how I’m handicapping this event because he’s spraying it off the tee right now, but I think he’ll be forced to club down off the tee more often this week, and that’ll help him quite a bit. Consider where he’s played his best golf.

Thomas won at Harbour Town back in April, a track which forces you to club down a bit to keep the ball in play. He posted a T9 a few weeks back at TPC River Highlands, another course that forces you to keep the ball in play off the tee, and he was T5 there in 2024. He’s played well at the ZOZO, which is tight off the tee.

Thomas’s around the green game is elite, and I was encouraged to see how well he played on Sunday in Scotland. He gained over four shots T2G, which was the second-best mark on the day. His Open Championship history is pretty spotty, but he was T11 here at Portrush back in 2019, and this price is around twice as big as we typically see him go off at. We know Justin Thomas can perform well even in poor weather, as his history in wet and windy conditions is excellent. 

Hideki Matsuyama (100/1)

Matsuyama is one of the more challenging handicaps each week, at least relative to the other elite golfers on the planet, a category in which I still believe he belongs.

While his recent form may not be something that catches your eye at first, we’ve seen Matsuyama thrive on courses that demand similar skills to Royal Portrush. Wins at TPC Southwind, Waialae, and Accordia Golf Narashino all jump to mind. Courses where there’s a premium put into accuracy off the tee, that feature smaller greens, and increase the value of Matsuyama’s short game. Now, accuracy off the tee has been the main issue for Hideki for much of 2025, but I believe we’ll see a lot of the field club down to ensure they stay in the fairways this week, which is good news for Matsuyama.

I used Betsperts Golf’s Rabbit Hole to look at who’s performed best tee-to-green (last 50 rounds/2 years) when club selection was mixed off the tee and there’s a high rough and missed fairway penalty, and Matsuyama came out among the top six in this week’s field. This price is simply too long, and I’d play it down to 60/1.