2013 Open Championship Top-25 Fantasy Golf Rankings Unlike any other tournament in golf the Open Championship can truly turn a field on its head when the weather erupts or stays oddly calm. According to early weather forecasts (as of a few hours prior to this post) the call is for…nothing. For the past few days nothing but sunshine has rained down on the Muirfield course turning fairways into what some are describing as “hard as marble”. With conditions like this, any course can be turned into a much shorter track when balls are running out 100 extra yards on tee shots. Maybe some of you can recall when Tiger won the Open hitting his driver only once all week. Well, he’s hinting at a possibly “driverless” week once again and I’m sure many others will follow. All that said, we can bury any thoughts of people hitting nice plush green fairways and spinning irons into tucked pins. This one is going to be a game of bounces, rolls, and a lot of luck in maintaining distance control into the greens (as players quickly adapt to 50 yard roll-outs with approach shots). I think the players with the most experience (and success) in these conditions immediately rise to the top of my top-25 rankings. If you had your sights set on a guy making his maiden appearance nd stealing the show this week I’m going to bet against it. What you will find with my top-25 this week is that it’s loaded with the best name sin golf and a few others that have proven a good track record in past appearances and some strong play as of late. If taken very few gambles but with a number of players only playing in Europe a few names may be somewhat familiar (but you couldn’t pick them out of a lineup). And my only wild card pick this week falls in at number three on my rankings. To begin, I really like Adam Scott to win this week and I think we may have a great final day duel with him and Tiger battling it out. There is some history (via Steve Williams) between the two but now that the proverbial monkey is off his back, “Scotty” is really in his prime to start piling on a few more majors. His second place finish (via his back-nine collapse on Sunday) was erased by Augusta and I believe he takes the next step and quickly captures his second career major. That said, Tiger indeed avoids hitting driver all week and plays tremendous iron shots all week but is once again short of capturing that all elusive next major on his mantle. My third pick this week is big gamble in a field of this quality but I really think that at the age of 31 and sitting 4th in European Tour money that Richard Sterne is ready to possibly battle it out for a major. He’s had 3 appearances at the Open since 2008 and has a 34th and 39th to his credit but I am going on his overall play this year. He managed a 25th at Augusta and his play since February has been very consistent with several top 10’s, top 25’s and not a single missed cut in Europe and only one missed cut in the U.S. (RBC Heritage). Other than that he’s been solid and I like solid when it comes to majors. Yes, I could have put Rose, Donald, and a number of players in this spot but why not Sterne to surprise many? I’ll round out my top-5 with Luke Donald who should eventually win a major but I don’t know when and I don’t think it’s going to be this year, and finally I add Bill Haas to the mix at 5th. I like a lot of things about Bill Haas in these playing conditions and I like two other facts: 1) He has 4 tops 10’s including a win in his last 5 PGA Tour events; and 2) He’s improved his finish at the Open every year over the last 3 to the point where he finished just inside the top 20 last year. I think he makes the move into the top-10 this year all the way up to number 5. That rounds out my top-5 and the rest of my top-25 are below (which has no Rory McIlroy): 1 Adam SCOTT 2 Tiger WOODS 3 Richard STERNE 4 Luke DONALD 5 Bill HAAS 6 Phil MICKELSON 7 Ernie Els 8 Matteo MANASSERO 9 Justin ROSE 10 Henrik STENSON 11 Graeme MCDOWELL 12 Zach JOHNSON 13 Nicolas COLSAERTS 14 Matt KUCHAR 15 Sergio GARCIA 16 Lee WESTWOOD 17 Thomas BJORN 18 Louis OOSTHUIZEN 19 Webb SIMPSON 20 Charl SCHWARTZEL 21 Rickie FOWLER 22 Dustin JOHNSON 23 Martin LAIRD 24 Ian POULTER 25 Alexander NOREN
Posted on: Wed, 17 Jul 2013 21:07:16 +0000