Open Championship 2026: What to know about Scheffler, DeChambeau and the other top stars

This week’s Open Championship will be the 11th hosted by Royal Birkdale and the first since a wild Jordan Spieth victory in 2017.

Through three days that week, things seemed too calm for a man whose rollercoaster on-course exploits have spawned their own verb (“Spiething”). But after carrying a three-shot lead into the final round, Spieth painted his chaotic masterpiece on Sunday.

It had it all. A lead that evaporated in the first four holes, well within the psychological shadow of what had transpired the previous year at Augusta National. The drive at 13 that went so far right the R&A rules team had not even considered it as a place needing an out-of-bounds ruling before the week. Relief from a bank of equipment trucks. The 50-foot eagle putt and directive to caddie Michael Greller to “go get that” just two holes later. Birdies at 16 and 17 to salt away the win.

What will Birkdale’s stage showcase this week? Here are the top numbers and notes to know ahead of the 154th Open Championship:

1. The 2017 Open saw varying scoring conditions. The field averaged a touch over 74 in the second round that year, but the next day saw the lowest third-round field average in modern Open history (69.03). It also produced the first round of 62 ever recorded in a men’s major championship by Branden Grace of South Africa.

Even with docile scoring conditions that Saturday, Royal Birkdale yielded plenty of statistical superlatives for the championship. The 2.51 birdie average per round and 23.6 percent birdie putt conversion rate were both the lowest of any course on tour all season. Fairways (47.3 percent, toughest all season) and greens in regulation (57.5 percent, second-toughest) were also difficult to come by.

2. Significant changes have been made to Royal Birkdale in the nine years since. The fifth hole has been shortened and had its entire right side reworked, promoting a risk-versus-reward tee shot for players if conditions permit. The seventh hole has an entirely new putting surface with steep run-offs and the deepest greenside bunkers on the course.

The closing hole has also been modified to create a tougher decision off the tee for players. Instead of the old left-to-right look, the hole is now straight up to the clubhouse with fairway bunkers everywhere. Fairways this week are extremely firm and fast, so expect plenty of run after tee shots.

3. Defending champion Scottie Scheffler arrived at Royal Birkdale earlier than expected after his missed cut at the Genesis Scottish Open, his first on the PGA Tour in more than 1,400 days. It also snapped a streak of 35 straight top-25 finishes, a run of nearly two full calendar years.

If history is any indicator, though, Scheffler’s dalliance amidst golf mortals should be brief. Since making his Open debut in 2021, he’s a combined 34-under-par, tied for the best of any player in that span with Xander Schauffele. Across all majors this decade, he is a combined 124-under-par, 48 strokes better than anybody else.

Scheffler ranks in the top 15 on the PGA Tour this season in all four primary strokes gained categories. The only other player ranked in the top FIFTY of all four of those statistics this season is Ludvig Åberg. It’s hard to imagine Scheffler finishing this season without at least one more significant victory, but there are recent corollaries to another top-ranked player in the world.

In 2024, Nelly Korda won seven times on the LPGA Tour, including five starts in a row early in the season. Yet, for most of her 2025 campaign, her underlying numbers (strokes gained tee-to-green, strokes gained total) were actually better than her ’24 season, despite not winning once all year. Winning a golf tournament is a difficult thing to do, with myriad factors and elements pouring ultimately into one formula. Scottie hasn’t found quite the right recipe since winning in Palm Springs in January, but he definitely hasn’t forgotten how to cook.

4. Rory McIlroy will make his 17th career Open start this week and his 10th since winning the Claret Jug in 2014. In that time, only Scheffler and Xander Schauffele – the last two Champion Golfers of the Year – have a better scoring average at the Open among qualified players than McIlroy does.

Nine years ago, Rory finished tied for fourth here. Among players in the field this week, only Spieth (first) and Haotong Li (third) were better that time around Birkdale. McIlroy bounced back from a poor Round 3 last week at the Scottish Open, carding a 64 Sunday afternoon to tie his low round worldwide this year.

The last man to win the Masters and the Open in the same season was Tiger Woods in 2005.

5. It’s almost impossible to overstate the improvement Matt Fitzpatrick has made in his approach play and what it’s meant to his ascent up the world ranking in 2026. Just two seasons ago, Fitzpatrick ranked 127th on the PGA Tour in strokes gained approach per round. This season he leads the circuit.

Two years ago at this championship, Scheffler was averaging a tour-best 1.49 strokes gained on the field per round with his approach play. Fitzpatrick was narrowly losing strokes with his. Over 72 holes, Scheffler was beating Fitzpatrick by 6.2 strokes with his iron play alone. This season, Fitzpatrick is well ahead of Scheffler in strokes gained approach per round (0.85 to 0.55), gaining 1.2 strokes on him in that category. That’s almost a seven-and-a-half stroke swing in one of the game’s most telling data points.

Fitzpatrick is enjoying the most prolific season of his career, with three wins on the PGA Tour and as many top-10 finishes (eight) as he had in 2024 and 2025 combined (eight). Nobody should be surprised if on Sunday evening he’s also a two-time major champion.

6. Cameron Young has turned up the AC a bit on a scorching-hot season in recent weeks. That ascendant putting form Young was enjoying has ghosted him since winning the Cadillac Championship in early May: he’s losing more than a half-stroke per round to the field on average on the greens, holing a significantly lower rate in the 5-to-10-foot range.

With firm and fast conditions, the power that players like Young have in spades shouldn’t provide as significant an advantage this week. That opens things up a bit more for a pair of other Americans in the world top-10, namely Russell Henley (162nd on tour in driving distance) and Collin Morikawa (131st).

Morikawa won his Claret Jug in similar conditions at Royal St. Georges in 2021. Despite battling a back injury for a large chunk of this season, he is still among the tour leaders in strokes gained approach (second), driving accuracy (fifth), greens in regulation (seventh) and scoring average (fourth).

Henley did not finish in the top 10 in any of his first nine Open Championship starts but has in each of his last two: fifth in 2024 and a tie for 10th place last year at Royal Portrush. Experience matters more at the Open than at any of the four men’s major championships. Since 2011, Open winners were making, on average, their 38th career major start that week. In that same time span, the number at Augusta National is 33.1, the PGA is 27.1, and the U.S. Open is 19.6.

7. How important is playing the Scottish Open the week before the Open Championship? All five of the Open winners this decade competed in the event the week before winning the Claret Jug. Each of the last four champions finished in the top 15 at the Scottish Open before their win.

In the unique case of Justin Rose, who took last week off, that doesn’t quite feel as significant. Twenty-eight years after Rose burst onto the major championship scene as a 17-year-old amateur at the 1998 Open, the 45-year-old Englishman returns as one of the game’s most consistent major championship performers. Only three men have finished in the top 20 in each of the last four majors: Rose, Scheffler and Schauffele.

Rose enters the week a combined 11-under at the majors this season. Only Scheffler (-13) and Sam Burns (-12) have a better such score.

8. Could Tommy Fleetwood, who grew up minutes away from Birkdale, break through this week at last? Since missing the cut at the PGA, the affable Englishman has rattled off five straight top-15 finishes. His seven top-five finishes in majors over the last 10 seasons are most of any player without a victory in that span.

Chris Gotterup finished third in his Open debut last year one week after taking home the Scottish Open. He’s two weeks removed from his fifth PGA Tour win since the middle of May 2024 at the John Deere Classic, but how much gas is in the tank? After all, he’s played every week since the U.S. Open.

9. Bryson DeChambeau enters this week with missed cuts in each of the season’s first three major championships. It is incredibly rare for a player as accomplished as DeChambeau to miss four major cuts in a single year. The last time a player with multiple major championship victories played all four majors in a season and missed the cut each time was in 1998, when both Tom Watson (then 48 years old) and Ben Crenshaw (46) did it.

DeChambeau, 32, does have some good recent Open memories to fall back on. The American staggered out of the gates at Royal Portrush last year to an opening 78, but played the final three rounds in a blazing 16-under-par. His 197 strokes over the closing 54 holes a year ago are tied for the second-fewest in the history of the Open. DeChambeau, Tyrrell Hatton and Scheffler will go out at 9:58 AM local time Thursday.

10. The last two men’s major winners, Aaron Rai and Wyndham Clark, were ranked outside the World Official Golf Ranking’s top 30 — 34th and 44th, respectively. History says we are probably due for a player closer to the top of the odds board at Royal Birkdale: the last time there were three winners in a row from outside the world’s top-30 was the 2009 season when all four champions were.

The final men’s major of 2026 begins Thursday at 6:35 AM local time.