The 154th Open Championship tees off Thursday morning at Royal Birkdale, and the field arrives with a full-blown identity crisis. Scottie Scheffler is defending but limped in off a missed cut at the Scottish Open. Rory McIlroy is playing the best sustained golf of anyone in the field. Half a dozen Englishmen fancy their chances on home dunes. And nobody, historically, has any real idea what the Irish Sea will do to a golf ball on any given afternoon.
The course: Royal Birkdale, still the fairest of the rota
Royal Birkdale has hosted The Open ten times since 1954 and it hosts differently to Turnberry or St Andrews. The fairways are framed by tall dunes rather than laid across them, which means the driving corridors are actually quite generous — you can see your target on almost every tee. What you cannot see is the trouble the wind will invent later, or the pot bunkers hidden in the shoulders of those dunes just off the ideal line.
Par is 70. The card is 7,173 yards, which is short by modern major standards, but distance is not really the argument here. Positional golf is. The winner at Birkdale is almost always a player who can shape the ball both ways off the tee and control spin into a green surface that firms up dramatically by Saturday afternoon.
The last man to lift the Claret Jug here was Jordan Spieth in 2017 — a Sunday final round that included a driving-range recovery for the ages and a 4-hole stretch he played in five under. The R&A traditionally rewards Birkdale with tucked hole locations on the weekend; expect a golf course that plays a shot and a half harder Thursday to Sunday.
Scheffler defends, but the form isn't there
Scottie Scheffler is the world number one, the +750 favourite, and the man trying to become the first back-to-back Open champion since Padraig Harrington in 2008–09. He also missed the cut at last week's Genesis Scottish Open — his first missed cut in nearly four years — and has not won since the American Express in January. Thirteen starts, zero trophies.
The counter-argument for Scheffler is that missed cuts do not tell you much about a player whose baseline strokes-gained metric is a full shot better than the field. He also used the trip to Scotland to get his first competitive laps of Birkdale before the majors bag arrived. Backing him is backing the process, not the recent scoring average. It is usually the right bet.
McIlroy, the wind, and the seventh major
Rory McIlroy is +950 second favourite and is arguably playing better than the number-one seed. A seventh major would move him past Sir Nick Faldo on the all-time list and into a rarer club than most people realise — only eleven golfers in history have seven. He won here-adjacent (Hoylake) at The Open in 2014, and his links game has become surgically better in recent years: reduced spin off the tee, more one-quarter shots into greens, a marked improvement in the mental discipline that used to spike him one-day up, one-day down.
The forecast at Southport for the opening two rounds is classically links: 14–20 mph winds with the possibility of a squall arriving off the sea on Thursday afternoon. If that plays out, McIlroy in the early wave becomes the shot to take.
The English contingent has a real chance
Matt Fitzpatrick and Tommy Fleetwood open at joint +1500 for a reason. Fleetwood grew up in Southport, learned the game partly on Birkdale's neighbouring links, and has the kind of low-flighted ball flight that thrives here. Fitzpatrick's short game is the best in the field on any putting surface that is fast, firm, and unfair.
There is a real appetite in England for an English winner of an English Open. The last man to do it was Nick Faldo at Muirfield in 1992. Fleetwood especially will carry the home-crowd load — expect roars on the front nine Thursday whether he is hitting it into the gorse or the middle of the fairway.
How to watch: The Open 2026 TV and streaming schedule
United States: The USA Network and NBC share the traditional broadcast, and every round streams in full on Peacock. Round 1 coverage begins Thursday at 1:30 a.m. ET on Peacock, with US morning coverage rolling from 4 a.m. ET on the Golf Channel Mobile app before the linear window opens.
United Kingdom: Sky Sports Golf and Sky Sports Main Event carry every hole live. Highlights are on BBC Two most evenings. NOW subscribers get the full Sky package.
Everywhere: The Open's own app streams featured groups all day, which is the way to watch if you want to follow a single player — McIlroy, Scheffler, or a Fleetwood group are the ones with dedicated feeds.
Thursday's tee-time storylines
First tee time is 06:35 BST on the 1st tee. Notable early groups worth checking your alarm for:
- McIlroy is in the marquee morning wave — a top-of-leaderboard round is available before the wind turns nasty in the afternoon.
- Scheffler goes off in the afternoon wave and will face the worst of Thursday's forecast wind.
- The Fleetwood grouping on the front nine is where the noise will be — expect a home-crowd roar on any birdie he makes before lunch.
Prediction
The chalk pick is Scheffler and it will always be Scheffler until proven otherwise. But if the wind actually blows the way the forecast says it will, the value pick is McIlroy playing early both days and finding himself with a manageable Saturday lead. Give me McIlroy at 8-under, one shot clear of a group that includes Scheffler, Fleetwood, and — because it is always someone you did not see coming — a first-timer at a major who plays the first 54 holes without a bogey. Follow shot-by-shot moves on our Scorelisto blog through the weekend.
FAQ
Where is the 2026 Open Championship being played? Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Southport, Merseyside, on the north-west coast of England. It is the eleventh time Birkdale has hosted the Championship.
Who is the defending Open champion? Scottie Scheffler, who won the 2025 edition. Before him, the last Birkdale winner was Jordan Spieth in 2017.
What is the prize money for the 2026 Open? The purse for the 2026 Championship is $17 million, with the winner's share around $3.1 million.
When is the cut? After Friday's second round. The top 70 and ties advance to the weekend. Missed cuts fly home Saturday.
What time is Sunday's final round on TV in the US? Sunday's final round runs on NBC in the US, with live coverage from roughly 7 a.m. ET through the trophy presentation late afternoon UK time.