The British Open, also known as simply The Open Championship, will start on Thursday morning sharp when the first trio of golfers’ head out onto the fairways at The Old Course at St. Andrews, the famous home of golf.
Just a month or so on from Matt Fitzpatrick’s maiden Major win at the 2022 US Open, 156 of the top golfers in the world are heading to the home of the Royal and Ancient for a very special 150th birthday celebration of the oldest golf tournament in the world.
With the current spat between LIV Golf Tour professionals and those that have stayed loyal to the US PGA and DP World Tours, there has never been a spicier and more heated build up to an Open Championship in living memory.
And with Tiger Woods set to make his comeback on a course where he has twice won the tournament before (a feat only matched by Jack Nicklaus), the 150th Open Championship is shaping up to be an absolute cracker!
In this article, we are going to take a look at some of the top bets available on the tournament that you can get with bet365 Sport.
This will include standard bets, such as backing the winner of the tournament, or an each way bet on a player to finish in the top eight, but also some of the more unusual golf bets that you can find on the site.
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There’s a lot to get through here, so let’s get cracking with our first selection of bets.
The Open Championship – First Round Bets
1st Round – 18 Hole Match Ups Tips
- Cameron Smith (5/6) v Tommy Fleetwood (Evens)
- Rory McIlroy (5/7) v Shane Lowry (6/5)
- Will Zalatoris (10/11) v Collin Morikawa (10/11)
- Hideki Matsuyama (10/11) v Viktor Hovland (10/11)
- Scottie Scheffler (10/13) v Dustin Johnson (11/10)
- Jordan Spieth (10/11) v Jon Rahm (10/11)
- Louis Oosthuizen (10/11) v Max Homa (10/11)
I am a big fan of the golf head-to-head bets between players and bet365 is offering a great selection of bets putting golfers against each other based on their first round performances.
One thing to remember with these bets is that the time shown on the bet365 site is the time that the market will go live as one of the players in the head-to-head will begin their round, so you’ll need to have your bet or bets on before the earliest tee off time.
Of course, all the match ups are tricky to predict and match players of similar ability levels in most cases, but I really like the look of the selections above (which I have outlined in bold).
My selections here include four previous Open Champions (McIlroy, Morikawa, Spieth and Oosthuizen), a player that has won The Open at St Andrews previously (Oosthuizen), the current Masters Champion (Scheffler), a links course specialist (Tommy Fleetwood) and a young Norwegian who is due a big performance in a Major (Hovland).
Now you can back these selections individually if you would like to, but I think a better option may be to put them together in an accumulator bet.
Get the seven selections above at the stated odds above with bet365 Sport and this seven-fold accumulator would offer you odds of 79.57/1 which means a £10 bet could see you get back £805.70 if the bet is a winner.
Remember though, you’ll need to get this bet on ahead of the first round tee times shown and also the stated odds may change ahead of the first round.
1st Round – 3 Balls Bets
Bet365 Sport is also offering a fantastic selection of 3-balls bets on each of the trio of golfers playing alongside each other in the first round. With this bet, you are simply betting on which of the three golfers in that group will have the lowest score in that opening round of golf.
With 156 golfers starting, that means there are 52 pairings you can select from for the event, so I am not going to tip them all obviously, however my top selections for each trio of golfers from this market, together with their tee off time, is stated below.
- 07.52am – Bryson DeChambeau (evens)
- 08.03am – Cameron Smith – (13/10)
- 08.14am – Tommy Fleetwood – (5/4)
- 09.58am – Rory McIlroy – (13/10)
- 10.09am – Viktor Hovland – (12/5)
- 10.20am – Will Zalatoris – (6/4)
- 13.04pm – Sungjae Im – (11/8)
- 13.26pm – Scottie Scheffler – (13/10)
- 14.37pm – Louis Oosthuizen – (Evens)
- 14.59pm – Matt Fitzpatrick – (23/20)
- 15.10pm – Jordan Spieth – (13/10)
The Open Championship – 1st Round Six Shooter Bets
Six Shooter bets are groups of six golfers that are put together by the betting site and their scores compared with the lowest score of that group being the winner. Odds for each golfer are worked out based on their opponents in the group. Groupings tend to be of players of similar ability.
Bet365 is offering four Six Shooter Groupings for Round 1 and keep your eyes out for additional Six Shooter bets throughout the tournament for the remaining three days of action.
All my selections in each group are highlighted in bold.
Group A
- Rory McIlroy – 3/1
- Xander Schauffele – 4/1
- Shane Lowry – 17/4
- Justin Thomas – 17/4
- Will Zalatoris – 5/1
- Collin Morikawa – 5/1
Group B
- Jordan Spieth – 15/4
- Jon Rahm – 15/4
- Scottie Scheffler – 4/1
- Matt Fitzpatrick – 4/1
- Patrick Cantlay – 9/2
- Tyrrell Hatton – 11/2
Group C
- Cameron Smith – 10/3
- Tommy Fleetwood – 4/1
- Viktor Hovland – 9/2
- Hideki Matsuyama – 9/2
- Tony Finau – 9/2
- Brooks Koepka – 19/4
Group D
- Ryan Fox – 15/4
- Justin Rose – 4/1
- Seamus Power – 17/4
- Corey Conners – 17/4
- Patrick Reed – 9/2
- Bryson DeChambeau – 9/2
The Open Championship – Group Betting Tips
Another very popular market is the Group Betting option, which is based on a golfer’s performances over the full 72-holes of the tournament.
With this bet, a group of five golfers are selected and odds given for each of the five to be the lowest scoring golfer within that group.
Bet365 is offering five different groups for this bet and I think that there are some great value options available in all these groups.
Group A
- Rory McIlroy – 9/4
- Xander Schauffele – 15/4
- Jordan Spieth – 15/4
- Jon Rahm – 17/4
- Scottie Scheffler – 17/4
Group B
- Justin Thomas – 16/5
- Matt Fitzpatrick – 7/2
- Shane Lowry – 7/2
- Cameron Smith – 7/2
- Patrick Cantlay – 17/4
Group C
- Collin Morikawa – 16/5
- Will Zalatoris – 16/5
- Tommy Fleetwood – 7/2
- Dustin Johnson – 15/4
- Tyrrell Hatton – 17/4
Group D
- Tony Finau – 16/5
- Louis Oosthuizen – 7/2
- Sam Burns – 7/2
- Max Homa – 15/4
- Joaquin Niemann – 15/4
Group E
- Hideki Matsuyama – 14/5
- Viktor Hovland – 3/1
- Brooks Koepka – 10/3
- Sungjae Im – 17/4
- Justin Rose – 9/2
Again, my tips for each group are highlighted in bold and although you can put these selections together into an accumulator, my advice would be to place them as single bets, or perhaps a double if you are feeling adventurous.
The Open Championship – Win Outright And Each Way Tips
- To Win – Rory McIlroy (10/1)
For me, although he is the shortest priced option, Rory McIlroy is the value bet here at 10/1. He is overdue a Major win and has finished inside the top ten at all three previous Majors this season. He has shot very low scores at St. Andrews in the past and is in good form heading into this tournament. All the signs look good for another strong showing from the Irishman,
- Each Way – Jordan Spieth (18/1), Will Zalatoris (30/1), Justin Rose (80/1), Bryson DeChambeau (100/1)
There’s lots of great selections available in the Each Way market and the four I have picked I think have an outstanding chance of a top eight finish.
Spieth loves the Majors and is a former winner of The Open, Zalatoris has finished top ten in all three Majors this season, Justin Rose is someone who tends to find another gear at the British Open while DeChambeau’s form isn’t great but his distance from the tee means that many of those par fours should be in range of his tee-shot if he elects to go for it.
So they are my top tips for The Open Championship this week, remember to get your bets on before those first tee times on Thursday!
