2026 Open Championship Preview

The potential for a legacy-changing win, uncertainty about how the golf course will play, constantly refreshing your weather app of choice – there is nothing quite like Open Championship Eve.

Winds are down, temperatures are up, the fairways are brown, and balls are bouncing. Here is everything you need to know for the 2026 Open Championship.

Top Contenders

The first thing that comes up in discussions of Royal Birkdale is its Rolodex of winners: Peter Thomson (twice), Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Ian Baker-Finch, Mark O’Meara, Padraig Harrington, Jordan Spieth. It is a murderer’s row of thoroughbred champions.

Who has the pedigree and form to join that illustrious list this week?

For whatever it is worth, eight of the last nine Champion Golfers of the Year had already won earlier in the calendar year. Brian Harman is the lone exception, though he entered the 2023 Open with three successive top-15 finishes. Trends are more often bloody rubbish — am I doing this right, Scousers? — than they are insightful, but there is some legitimacy to entering the Open with a win already under your belt.

Winning, especially against a strong field, indicates a golfer has measured up to a championship-level standard. Someone without a victory this season could certainly lift the Claret Jug on Sunday, but asking a player who has not yet demonstrated top-end form to suddenly summon their best golf is a tall order.

With firm, baked-out fairways and a generally effective penalty for wide misses into the native areas separating the fairways and the dunes, this Open is projected to lessen the advantage of distance and bring a wide range of skill sets into play. I’m hardly breaking any news here, but expect the cream to rise to the top and for Royal Birkdale to once again crown a worthy, in-form champion, without discriminating against short hitters.

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Scottie Scheffler arrives off his first missed cut in 78 starts. With just one major remaining, Scheffler is in danger of going a season of his prime without adding to his championship tally. Though the world No. 1 has just one victory in 2026 — the American Express in January — a down year by his standards still includes nine top-five finishes, three more than anyone else on Tour. Make no mistake: he is unquestionably the championship favorite.

Rory McIlroy has made just 12 worldwide starts this year as he prioritizes structuring his schedule around majors, his fewest entering an Open Championship since 2017, when he battled a rib injury. He won the Masters in April despite struggling off the tee, and with a win this week, he would add a seventh career major title and move into a tie for seventh on the all-time list. Though Royal Birkdale minimizes one of McIlroy’s greatest strengths - his length - he is a significant threat to win if he can clean up some of the spotty iron play we saw at last week’s Scottish Open.

Twenty-one Englishmen will tee it up this week in their home country, but five have the best chance to win. Matt Fitzpatrick, a two-time winner on Tour this year (excluding the Zurich), enters with some of the best form in the field. Tommy Fleetwood enters with five straight top-15 finishes and would be arguably the most popular winner in the field, given that he spent his childhood playing at nearby Formby Hall. Justin Rose finished T-4 as an amateur here in 1998 and must fancy his chances after a near miss at Augusta back in April. Tyrrell Hatton won on LIV in June and has two top-10 major finishes in 2026. And reigning PGA champion Aaron Rai must not be overlooked on a golf course where his lack of length won’t be as costly as at other venues.

The Forecast

An unseasonably warm stretch of weather has given way to a firm, fast Royal Birkdale. Images coming out of Southport reveal a baked-out golf course. Weather can change in an instant on the coast, but the current forecast suggests one hallmark of Open Championships may be missing this week: severe winds.

What’s notable about the wind, beyond its lack of intensity, is its direction. The forecasted wind for the first two days of play, at least in the mornings, is predominantly out of the east, the opposite of the prevailing wind direction. In the afternoon, the winds may freshen and switch to come more out of the north.

As you can see above, the opening tee shot faces a left-to-right wind with out of bounds down the right in the prevailing wind off the coast. The Thursday and Friday morning forecast, however, calls for wind from the right. Meanwhile, the beefy 13th, 15th, 17th, and 18th — all of which typically play downwind — would instead play into the wind in the morning. Keep an eye on how the 241-yard 15th plays this week. If the R&A decides to use the back tee into the wind, you might hear some complaints!

It remains too early to predict which side of the draw could reap a significant advantage, but as it currently stands, expect much more scorable mornings than afternoons.

Press Conference Round-Up

Justin Rose on Royal Birkdale: “The bunkering, it's a very narrow golf course off the tee. I think the rough is burning out, so there is an opportunity for players if they want to feel like they can sort of hit it over corners and potentially run through and just accept 60 to 80 yards out of the rough, that play is there. So you might see a varying – a varied bunch of strategies.”

Jon Rahm on off-the-tee strategy at Open Championships: “From what I've learned in the past, if you start pulling out drivers in an Open Championship, you can do a good job short term. You can maybe get away with it one round. Over four rounds, you're going to start finding spots you don't want to be in, and you're going to pay the price.”

Scottie Scheffler on the mental grind of sustaining excellence: “Being in the spotlight all the time puts a burden on a player in this day and age. Everything is being recorded. When (people) say hello to you, they've got their cell phone out. Sometimes you can be like you're walking on eggshells a little bit, and that can drain people.”

Jordan Spieth on the potential of returning to peak form: “If you give up on reaching your ceiling, then I don't see a point in playing anymore…I'm always comparing myself a bit to myself at my best, but not to try to be the exact player. Just more so that I know that I can do it. I know my ceiling is where that level was, and so I'm going to strive for it with the type of player that I am now.”

Scottie Scheffler on the recent changes to Royal Birkdale: “The one thing I found interesting is it's so obvious as to which holes had been redone. They look like they're not even on the same golf course. You look at 14, 15, 16, those green complexes and the amount of slope that they have off of them are pretty severe and quite challenging. The fifth hole is kind of like that, the seventh hole as well.”

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Justin Rose on a massive England versus Argentina World Cup semifinal match on Wednesday evening: “I'd take a win on penalties if it happened, but obviously we're looking for a short, sharp match and a reasonable bedtime.”

Scottie Scheffler on dying: “I don't really play, like, for a place in history…When it ends, I'm going somewhere else, and I'm not going to be here anymore. Legacy and all that stuff was never really something that motivated me. For me, it was always competition.”

Marquee Thursday Tee Times

4:36 a.m. ET: Justin Rose, Viktor Hovland, Russell Henley
4:58 a.m. ET: Scottie Scheffler, Tyrrell Hatton, Bryson DeChambeau
5:09 a.m. ET: Jon Rahm, Tommy Fleetwood, Jordan Spieth
10:04 a.m. ET: Wyndham Clark, Cameron Young, Ludvig Aberg
10:15 a.m. ET: Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Matt Fitzpatrick

So for those in America, prepare accordingly. Make efficient work of today, get to bed early, and wake up to the sights and sounds of one of the world’s greatest championships. The Open Championship is nigh.