Rely on Rahm being ready
Come Monday, I wonder how much we'll be talking about the best way to prepare for an Open. Nine of the last 13 winners played in Scotland the week before and of the four who didn't, three had their games in absolutely peak condition. Francesco Molinari for instance had two wins and two runner-up finishes in five previous starts, and both Spieth and Zach Johnson were contending week in, week out.
Lowry doesn't fit either criteria, having neither played in Scotland nor been absolutely firing on all cylinders, but we're talking about an exception in every sense. This was a player at home on the links, at home in a literal sense, familiar with Portrush since childhood. He had been preparing on links golf courses and so has Scottie Scheffler, who was at Turnberry at the weekend. Either could challenge the idea that the Scottish Open is beneficial.
The bigger question mark is LIV Golf, who've been to Nashville then on to Valderrama. There were actually two Valderrama champions inside the top 10 here back in 2016 but that's probably coincidental, and one of the tightest, most densely tree-lined courses in Europe bears no resemblance to Troon. I feel certain that if the contracted LIV Golf players were free to play wherever they wanted, it would not have been there.
However, JON RAHM's price more than allows for that and I want to give the Spaniard another chance to remind us all that he's one of this generation's standout players.
We could talk all day about buyer's remorse, and whether or not Rahm is absolutely thrilled to be out on the LIV Golf circuit. It seems clear he'd taken a calculated gamble, that he would be the domino that led to the two tours aligning, and with any such agreement seemingly having stalled it won't perhaps have been easy for him.
Rahm has missed playing on the PGA Tour, of that there is absolutely no doubt, but the case here can be made without having to get to the bottom of his state of mind. He's a professional golfer of the highest calibre and at some stage, likely very soon, he'll get back to playing like one.
As for missing the Scottish Open, he did that last year and it didn't stop him finishing runner-up to Harman. Rahm had in fact arrived on the back of a missed cut in a small-field event almost a month earlier, so once again I'm trusting him to be prepared even if it seems on the face of it that he has not been so far this year.
Back then though, Finau's overall form had been very poor by his standards whereas right now he's among the hottest players around, a change in putter helping to trigger a run of 18-17-8-3-5 over his last five starts, two in majors, all bar one in extremely strong fields.
It was in fact his short-game which did most of the heavy lifting in the Travelers last time and for my money he's one of the most underrated players in the sport when it comes not only to his approach play, which is outstanding, but his chipping and pitching.
A proper shot-maker who works the ball both ways and can hit all kinds of trajectories, his versatility explains why he's been inside the top 10 in a third of his 33 major starts, dating back almost a decade now, and so often he's been at his most effective under conditions somewhat akin to these.
He's a really big price to my eye, especially after finally sticking around all week in a major at the US Open last month. So often, majors are won by those who almost won a recent one, sometimes the single most recent one, and that was the case at Pinehurst with Bryson DeChambeau.
For Cantlay, combining that with his gutsy Ryder Cup effort confirms to me that he's very much a potential major champion and I expect seeing his closest friend, Xander Schauffele, capture the US PGA also had something to do with it. Certainly, it wouldn't be the first time that this has happened and when Adam Scott won the Masters, Justin Rose text to say 'this is our time', then duly won the US Open.