The 2025 Open Championship will be held at 1:35am on Thursday at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland.
Xander Schauffele is the defending champion, and Shane Lowry won in 2019 when the Open was last played on the course.
Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy will be number one and second in the world, with two first three major winners.
Does the big names fight it at the top? What long shots can you compete? And how will Royal Portrush play in the next four days? I’ll try to answer some of the biggest questions heading towards my 153rd Open.
Is Scotty Schaeffler an overwhelming favorite this week?
Mark Schlabach: The Open is the only major championship Schaeffler hasn’t finished in the top three, but Links Golf doesn’t exactly baffle him. He has four top 25 at many starts of the event, including his seventh tie at Scotland’s Royal Toon Golf Club last year.
Link Golf appears to fit perfectly into the three-time major champion game. His world-class iron play should not put him in too many difficult places. In rare cases, he misses green, and his exceptional short game should be able to save him. His putting, once considered a weakness, has improved dramatically. He is ranked 22nd in the Tour on Stroke this season (.362).
McIlroy, Jon Rahm and others can lift the jug of claret on Sunday, but how can they play against Schaeffler at this point? He has not finished outside the top 25 in each of his 15 starts on the PGA Tour this season, and he has been in the top 10 in each of the last 10.
Paolo Object: Yes, but caution is required. As Mark pointed out, Schaeffler doesn’t exactly work in this major, but there is a tension between the trends in fairness on the golf course and the nature of Link’s golf.
However, Schaeffler seems to be trying to embrace that a little more. It is also helpful to him to consider Portrush in the more equitable aspects of link trucks, especially pot bunkers.
“I think some of the link courses I played were like hits or misses when I entered the bunker,” Schaeffler said. “There’s even more slopes in the bunker, the ball is like a funnel in the middle. I think that might be a little more fair than two guys hitting similar shots.
But as usual with Schaeffler, it may come down to his putting. He improved in the area, but he was a week away at the Scotland Open, where he lost almost half of the Greens field. It does not exactly inspire confidence in his ability to deal with link surfaces for another week.
“I think adjusting it to speed is always the most important thing here,” Schaeffler said. “Otherwise, putting is putting. Golf is golf no matter where you play.”
What do you expect from Rory McIlroy this week?
Schlabach: If seeing McIlroy competed at the Royal Portrush open doesn’t get any better than last time, I’m ignoring. At the 68-year opening championship in Northern Ireland in 2019, McIlroy seemed overwhelmed by the expectations of being a crowd favorite in his hometown.
On the first tee, McIlroy pulled the drive left to left, leading to the Quadruple-Bogey 8. He made a Double-Bogey 5 on the 16th and a triple bogey 7 on the 18th, making it 8 over 79 in the first round.
To McIlroy’s achievement, he rebounded to make seven birdies and one bogey in the second round and nearly rallied to make a cut at 6 under 65.
“You’re open, it’s a major championship and everything that comes with it, I just felt emotion, a walk to the first tee, and that applause, I was still a little surprised, a little surprised, ‘Hey, these people really want to win,’ McIlroy said this week.
“It brings pressure like its own, it brings more internally from itself, and I don’t want to actually disappoint people, I think it’s something I didn’t mentally prepare for that day or the week.
McIlroy, who won the claret jug in 2019, and Ireland’s Shane Raleigh, are thinking they’ll once again follow the biggest gallery.
McIlroy’s game appears to be in a better place after a lull in his postmaster victory. He finished sixth in the Travelers Championship and second in the Genesis Scotland Open.
He certainly has some favourite memories of the Royal Portrush. He set the course record at 61, 16.
uggetti: For all the stories about how McIlroy is released after his master wins, and what happened instead, it’s ironic and perfect in Northern Ireland this week where he probably looks the most comfortable and where his elements were here.
McIlroy spoke on Monday about accepting homecoming, which he is trying to get from local fans, rather than quarantining himself like in 2019. He can say he’s already doing it, as it takes time to sign the fans and give nods and acknowledgements throughout the practice round.
Of course, if his game is not up to standard, that’s not important. The good news for McIlroy is that it appears to be. In Scotland, McIlroy’s game looked even sharper since Masters, and he seemed pleased with where things were heading for the last major of the year.
“I’m excited about where my game is and I felt like I had a really good sign last week,” said McIlroy, who came in second. “I feel like I was in a good place and had it. Last week wasn’t pure preparation week, but it feels like I put me in a good place heading out here.”
At this point, if McIlroy is not in the mix, I would be even more surprised if he was coming on the weekend than if he were.
Xander Schauffele’s thoughts on defense?
Schlabach: It was the last major championship of the year, the final shot of glory, and this year’s reigning champion golfer can use something positive to save what has been in the season so far.
It’s not that Schaufele has played inadequately this season. He hasn’t missed the cut at the start of the tour 12 and has seven top 25. His campaign feels simply incomplete after missing eight weeks with a painful rib injury. His best finish was his eighth tie at the Masters, and last week at the Scotland Open.
It’s not hard to understand why Schauffele didn’t win in 2025 after winning his first two majors at the PGA Championship and the opening last season. He ranks 112th in the tour on strokes obtained from the tee (-.018) and 138th in the putting (-.144).
uggetti: I think the more you hear about Schauffele, the more you’ll win multiple open championships, whether this week or later.
He appears to have an ideal approach and attitude towards Link Golf. He knows it’s difficult. He knows it’s unpredictable, but he enjoys the opportunity to crush what the course and conditions throw at him.
“It’s just a mentality. When you say you link golf, it comes with the weather. When you play in bad weather, you have to be good,” Schaufele said. “We need to visualize far more than just slap numbers on the machine.”
Schaufele didn’t have anything to think was the follow-up he was hoping for last year’s dream season, but he’s clearly headed in the right direction after T-12 at the US Open and T-8 in Scotland last week. If the conditions this weekend are out of hand, not many people will trust you to excel. Schaufele is one of them.
What you should know about the Royal Portrush and how to expect this week’s play
Schlabach: Royal Portrush is subject to all the elements of the northern tip of Northern Ireland, so it depends on the weather and wind.
That being said, Raleigh and the rest of the field enjoyed incredible scoring conditions in the first three rounds of 2019. The rain left and the winds settled as Laurie set a 54-hole scoring record on Saturday with a bogeyless 63 card.
Then on Sunday, heavy rain and steady winds were blown away, as Raleigh and others had held.
“We’ll see what the weather will look like this week,” Schaeffler said. “Weather has a rather dramatic effect on how you play the golf course. You can play and prepare by playing practice rounds, but ultimately if you step on the tee on Thursday, the weather will be the strongest part of your test.”
Schaufele noted that the wind could even affect golfer putts.
“Putting is always difficult with the wind,” Schaufele said. “There are some holes where the mound covers the green and some more exposed in the places where the wind affects the green ball. I think the one who won this week is a very balanced player.”
uggetti: It is available (see Lowry’s 63 in 2019), and can sometimes feel impossible depending on the strength and direction of the wind. In particular, a large amount of strategic decisions will be required.
Proper case: In his Monday practice round, I saw McIlroy hit the driver to a 400-yard par-4 and then hit a 3-iron on a 474-yard par-4.
As Schaeffler and others have pointed out, Portrush is a link course, but it is unique in that it has more elevation changes than most link courses. This allows for an interesting combination of ground and air games.
A player who can understand when it’s correct to use either one will be the one fighting for a jug of claret on Sunday.
One long shot that could compete this week?
Schlabach: It has been a while since British golfers were mixed in one of the Big Fours, when 2022 US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick described his game as “trash” before he placed eighth in the PGA Championship at the Quiz Hollow Club in May.
The 30-year-old doesn’t have a great track record in the open, but after finishing 8th in the Rocket Classic and 4th in the Scotland Open, he’s coming in good shape. If the weather gets worse over the weekend, Fitzpatrick can handle the situation like he scored his first major at the Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts.
uggetti: How about Justin Rose? Not only did he take McIlroy to the playoffs with the Masters, but at Royal Troon last year, Rose had real shots to win on the back nine, and was short for Shaufele with just two shots.
Rose also had an impressive finish at the Scotland open, shooting seven in the final round to jump to sixth place. If Rose could run one more major this week and end the 33-year drought of the Open British, it would be an epic tale.
