Unpredictable weather, firm fairways, knee-high fescue, pot bunkers, and slow greens are just some of the unique features of links golf on the coasts of the British Isles.

At a high level, we have found that these conditions tend to compress the skill distribution of the field. This bunching of skill hurts the top players and helps the longshots: Paul Lawrie, Todd Hamilton, John Daly, Darren Clarke, and Ben Curtis all won Open Championships while having less-than-PGA Tour-average skill. Drilling down a bit, the primary difference between Open and non-Open major champions is that they have tended to be shorter and straighter off the tee.

With these thoughts in mind, here are the best and worst performers in the 2024 Open field–according to their performance relative to baseline–at all links courses in the UK and Ireland since 2010 (min. 20 rounds played):

A few interesting takeaways:

Americans make up just 5 of the 20 top links performers while filling 12 of the bottom 20 spots. In contrast, 8 of the top 20 are from the UK and only 1 (Sam Horsfield) is in the bottom 20. This is in line with our finding that Americans underperform at tournaments in Scotland and England while players from the UK tend to excel.

In his 5 starts at tournaments played on links courses, Scottie Scheffler's best finish is a T3 (2023 Scottish Open) and he has only averaged +1.75 strokes-gained per round.

Tony Finau is the only American player in the top 20 performers who has not won an Open Championship. He has the 5th-highest True SG average of all players at +1.8 (Xander is also above him but not shown in the table).

Links Luck

The table below shows the 25 biggest wave splits at major championships since 2004:

The right column of numbers is the total stroke advantage over the first two rounds for the early-late wave (blue) or late-early wave (orange), while the dots show the (skill-adjusted) scoring average per round in each wave. The asterisks indicate which wave the winner was in; of the 25 events shown here, the winner came from the more favorable wave 16 times. Justin Thomas at the '22 PGA gets the award for overcoming the biggest wave split en route to a major championship win.

The Open Championship has had the largest wave splits (R1+R2) since 2004 with an average of 1.4 strokes, followed by the PGA (1.1), the U.S. Open (0.8), and the Masters (0.6). The average wave split magnitude across all events on the PGA Tour is 0.8 strokes. Another interesting finding, which we’ve mentioned in the past, is that the Late-Early wave has a 0.05 stroke advantage when averaged across all events. #huge

Rankings Update

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Scottie Scheffler	1	—	1	—
Xander Schauffele	2	—	3	—
Rory McIlroy	3	—	2	—
Collin Morikawa	4	—	6	—
Ludvig Aberg	5	—	4	—
Bryson DeChambeau	6	—	9	—
Jon Rahm	7	—	10	—
Tyrrell Hatton	8	3	23	1
Patrick Cantlay	9	1	8	—
Tony Finau	10	3	18	2
Notables
Corey Conners	13	3	38	2
Wyndham Clark	24	5	5	—
Justin Thomas	28	8	29	3
Adam Scott	29	12	35	29
Cameron Smith	36	10	77	4
Sergio Garcia	38	15	323	2
Patrick Reed	39	9	104	3
Max Homa	46	11	15	—
Brooks Koepka	49	5	52	4
Robert Macintyre	59	32	16	28
Rickie Fowler	126	25	57	3
Neal Shipley	347	99	365	133

Tyrrell Hatton moved back into our top 10 after a solo 3rd at LIV Andalucia. Unlike some of the elite players who made the move to LIV, Hatton has seen no drop off in performance since switching tours.

When you think of quiet consistency on the PGA Tour, Corey Conners is one of the first players that comes to mind. But even by his standards, Conners’ 2024 season has been quiet: he’s averaged +1.4 True SG per round while never finishing better than 6th or worse than 57th. His approach game has also reached new heights, gaining a full stroke per round so far this year.

If Cam Smith hadn’t made the polarizing move to LIV, it would be interesting to see how people view his career. Purely from an SG standpoint, Smith’s career isn’t that impressive: he had a 2-year run as a top-10 player in 2021 and 2022, but otherwise has been a fringe top-50 player. So far in 2024, his DG rank has been as low as 54th and as high as 23rd. Of course, strokes-gained isn’t everything: Smith wins more than you’d expect based on his SG, and he seems to elevate his game at the majors.

Sergio Garcia and Patrick Reed are the two highest-ranked players (at 38th and 39th) not in the Open Championship. The only other top-50 player not in the field this week is Carlos Ortiz (43rd).

After a resurgent 2023, Rickie Fowler is currently having the worst PGA Tour season of his career. His best finish in 2024 is a T18th at the RBC Heritage, and he’s fallen all the way to 126th in our rankings. The good news is that Fowler’s career has been a series of peaks and valleys, so if history is any indication things should get better from here.