2024 British Open predictions, picks: Ranking the field, favorites to win from 1-24 at Royal Troon

The Open Championship is the most difficult major to prognosticate because there are more variables than any of the other three majors. Of course, we have no choice but to try and prognosticate the 2024 Open Championship, starting with a ranking of the top 24 players in this year's field at Royal Troon.

Any list of this kind must start with Scottie Scheffler, though that's not as much of a slam dunk at The Open as it is at the other three majors. From there, we weave our way through a sometimes-strange selection of players who have little in common other than that they all play professional golf.

Let's take a look at the top 24 players in this Open field, starting at the top with Scheffler and going all the way down to Akshay Bhatia, who if you have not noticed, has been doing some absolute work on the PGA Tour of late. Moving beyond the top 24, you can also take a look at Patrick McDonald's list of five Open Championship sleepers to watch at the final major of the year.

2024 Open Championship field, ranked

Parenthesis indicates the golfer's best career finish at The Open

1. Scottie Scheffler (T8 in 2021): Scheffler has to be No. 1 here, but it's perhaps not as obvious as one might believe. To start, he has not been the best major player in the world this year. That's Bryson DeChambeau, who checks in No. 2 on this list. Also, the Open has been his weakest major. The end result is still three top 25s in three attempts, but still, he has historically not played his best golf in England and Scotland. Regardless, I cannot drop somebody who has won six of 10 tournaments going into this event past the No. 1 spot.

2. Bryson DeChambeau (T8 in 2022): Anything is in play at this Open with Bryson. Like Scottie, he has struggled at Opens with two missed cuts and just one top 10 in six appearances. However, he's also playing the best major golf of his life this year and conquered much of what has ailed him at Augusta National -- another place where he had struggled -- back in April. Alternatively, DeChambeau has worse numbers at the last five Opens than Adrian Meronk, Cameron Tringale, Alex Noren and Robert MacIntyre. He could win by five or miss the cut by 10. I have no idea.

3. Rory McIlroy (Won in 2014): No current top player in the world has more top 10s at the last 10 Opens than McIlroy, who has six of them (Jordan Spieth has five, Brooks Koepka has four). In that span, with aminimum of five starts, he has been the best Open golfer just ahead of Spieth and by a wide margin over everyone else. The question is not whether McIlroy will play well at the Open -- he almost certainly will -- it's what kind of mental state he'll find himself in should he again have a chance to close out his fifth major championship.

4. Xander Schauffele (T2 in 2018): Schauffele has three top eights in as many major starts this year. And while The Open has not necessarily been his best major, he's still been excellent throughout his career with six made cuts in six starts and four top 20s in the process. Schauffele is also having (easily) the best year of his career. He's at 2.8 strokes gained this season, more than a half shot better than any other campaign.

5. Tommy Fleetwood (2nd in 2019): He's been so good at past Open Championships. In his last five starts, Fleetwood has four top 12s, including a pair of top fives. Nobody in the field who has played more than three Opens possesses a better strokes gained number in the last five starts than Fleetwood (2.55 per round) He's also been solid -- not great, but solid -- since March this year with a T3 at the Masters, a T26 at the PGA Championship and a T16 at the U.S. Open. The win equity has not been there, but if he gets hot for one of the first two rounds, he could be in a similar position he was in a year ago at Royal Liverpool.

6. Ludvig Åberg (n/a): One doesn't have to go back 100 or more years to find a first-time Open Championship participant who won the Claret Jug. In fact, it was 2021 when Collin Morikawa won at Royal St. George's. Åberg has put together a surprisingly awesome major championship season contending at both the Masters and Pinehurst. Whether he can play in Open conditions remains to be seen, but recent evidence would point to something between "yes" and "hell yes -- he might even win."

7. Collin Morikawa (Won in 2021): Did you know that Morikawa is having the best statistical year of his career? He also has three top 15s in as many major starts. The case against him is that he's missed both cuts since winning his Open at Royal St. George's in 2021. I'm mostly willing to overlook that, though, given how well he's been playing broadly in 2024.

8. Hideki Matsuyama (T6 in 2013): He's having a quietly excellent year. Over their last 36 rounds, only Scheffler, Schauffele, McIlroy and Morikawa have been better than Matsuyama. He's taking a T8 and 6th place finish over two of his last three starts into this event and has yet to miss a cut in 2024. The only downside here for Matsuyama is that he has not been great at Opens in general with just one top 10 in his nine appearances.

9. Shane Lowry (Won in 2019): Lowry intrigues me as a potential two-time Open champion. He has a pair of top 25s since his win in 2019, and his play in general has been solid since team with Rory to win the 2024 Zurich Classic. Over the last two months, he has a T6 at the PGA, a T19 at the U.S. Open and a T9 at the Travelers. There are golfers who are playing better and golfers who have performed better at recent Opens. There aren't a lot who are melding those two together better than Lowry is right now.

10. Tony Finau (3rd in 2019): Another guy who has a nice history at the Open and is also playing tremendous golf. In his last five starts, he has three top 15s and he ranks in the top 15 in strokes gained at this tournament over the last five years. He nearly won the U.S. Open, nearly won the Travelers Championship and is trending toward some of the best golf he's ever played. Some of these guys with no majors -- Fleetwood, Finau and Fowler -- are going to pick off a random one at some point, and this is a good spot for the former two to do that exact thing.

11. Viktor Hovland (T4 in 2022): Hovland's record at the last three Opens is sublime. He's sixth in strokes gained overall in that window behind McIlroy, Spieth, Jon Rahm, Brian Harman and Cam Young. Yet he's ahead of everyone else in the world. I don't really believe he can win because the golf course at the PGA Championship covered up some of his consistent struggles.

12. Jordan Spieth (Won in 2017): Basically nothing points to Spieth contending to win his second Claret Jug, but he is magical at Open Championships. In this field, only Fleetwood, Cameron Young and Hovland have been better, yet Hovland and Young have only played in five Opens combined in the last five years, while Spieth has played them all. The Open might not be Spieth's best major (that's probably the Masters), but it is the place where he is most consistent. Since the beginning of 2015, he has not finished worse than T30 at this event.

13. Tom Kim (T2 in 2023): Why not us? Kim generally doesn't seem to have the skillset to win a big-time major championship -- at least not right now. But he also keeps proving his doubters wrong. He played well at last year's U.S. Open and finished T2 at the Open Championship last summer. Kim is also playing some of his best golf right now, and after a nice little break before this event, he should be ready to roll at Royal Troon.

14. Tyrrell Hatton (T5 in 2016): Not only is Hatton coming in off a LIV Golf Nashville victory, but his best Open Championship finish ever happened back in 2016 at Royal Troon when he finished T5, albeit a distant 16 shots back of Henrik Stenson and 13 back of Phil Mickelson, who finished second.

15. Brooks Koepka (T4 in 2019): I can already see the bad-side-of-the-draw missed cut coming from Koepka. But what else is there to do other than include a five-time major winner who also won a major one year ago? He has made seven of his last eight cuts at this event (and that includes four top 10s), but his major record in 2024 has been poor with just no top 20s at any of the first three.

16. Jon Rahm (T2 in 2023): Rahm has been awesome at Opens for the last several years but terrible in general this season. After playing poorly at the Masters, missing the cut at the PGA Championship and withdrawing from the U.S. Open, there are few players I would even be comfortable including on this list. Rahm is one of them because he's generationally good, but he's on the verge of the worst major season of his career (even including his amateur days).

17. Patrick Cantlay (T8 in 2022): I do wonder if the U.S. Open will take the lid off the rim -- so to speak -- for him at major championships. It was the first time I've ever thought, "Huh, Patrick Cantlay could actually win this major." He didn't follow through, but the competitiveness and consistency and fight he showed at Pinehurst was impressive. And he posted a T5 at the Travelers Championship the following week to cement his quality play.

18. Matt Fitzpatrick (T20 in 2019): This has not been Fitzpatrick's best year. In fact, it has statistically been one of his worst since he became a good pro around 2017-18. However, he's still been decent at the majors this year, and he always makes the cut at The Open. I don't believe he will win, but he's such a quality bad-weather player that he would be a great bet if it gets nasty at Royal Troon.

19. Cameron Young (2nd in 2022): Young leads ... checks notes ... everyone in strokes gained at The Open over the last five years. That has only been two Opens for him, but the remarkable part is that across those two Opens, he has been basically a PGA Tour average putter. That's a T8 and runner-up finish, and he hasn't even putted well! Is Young going to get win No. 1 at a major championship? I don't believe he will, but he has to be included on here for how well he's played at this specific tournament of late.

20. Min Woo Lee (T21 in 2022): He'll need to have a better approach week than he did at the U.S. Open and PGA Championship, but Min Woo can absolutely win The Open. He's another player that I would be interested in watching handle some bad weather because of his ability to flight the ball. I certainly like him better than some of the other former major winner candidates like Justin Thomas, Wyndham Clark and Patrick Reed.

21. Cameron Smith (Won in 2022): Smith has missed just one cut in his last 12 starts at majors, and after that miscue, he won the next major he entered (2022 Open at St. Andrews). He has been up and down so far this year, but he's trustworthy when it comes to at least getting in the mix at majors. He might not contend to win every one of them, but broadly, it's fairly easy to know what one is getting from him at the four big ones.

22. Brian Harman (Won in 2023): If you forced me to make a call, I would say that Harman is only a one-major guy, but he's also been excellent at the last few Opens. He has three top 20s in a row -- including his win last year at Hoylake -- and ranks behind Young, Fleetwood, Hovland, Spieth and McIlroy in strokes gained at this tournament since the start of 2018.

23. Joaquin Niemann (T53 in 2022): Is there any evidence that Niemann plays this tournament well? No. He has zero top 50s in four starts. But is there any evidence that Niemann plays major championships well? Also no. He has no top 10s in 21 starts. So why is Niemann ranked here? Well, he's easily in the midst of the best year in his career, and I believe in his talent level. It's also so easy to see him playing great golf at an Open where you need to flight it and move it all over the yard. He does both of those things well, and I'm excited to watch him tee it up.

24. Akshay Bhatia (n/a): Bhatia is playing the best golf of his life, and he loves to work the ball, which could prove useful depending on the weather. He arrives off a T16 at the U.S. Open and two other nice showings at the Travelers and Rocket Mortgage Classic. Of the debutantes, I would expect him to play second best behind Åberg.

Who will win The Open Championship, and which longshots will stun the golfing world? Visit SportsLine now to see the projected leaderboard and best bets , all from the model that's nailed 13 golf majors and is up over $9,000 since June 2020.