The Open Championship has become way more predictable than people want to admit.

Even down to people getting mad about not calling it the Open Championship,

or simply, the Open.

If you're someone who gets triggered about calling the year's final major, the British Open,

I suggest you get some real problems in your life, all right?

So let's talk trends.

Are trends perfectly going to pick you a winner this week?

God no, but they can provide a pathway to making a short list of picks. Over the past 14 years,

every championship golfer of the year had already won a major or finished runner up in a major

already once in their careers. At least, the last guy to go completely out of nowhere?

Well, that was Louis Ustazen at St. Andrews in 2010.

And that even came after he missed the cut in seven of his first eight major starts

before absolutely nuking the field.

Poor Paul Casey having to play with him from so far behind that week.

So that's the last major outlier out of nowhere coming with major history.

The prep trends are just as ridiculous.

Every one of the past five Open champions played the previous week at the Scottish Open.

Shane Lowry in 2019 was the last winner who skipped the tune up entirely.

Even crazier?

Each of the past four winners finished T-12 or better in Scotland before hoisting the clara jug. There was basically

only two true outlier winners over the past two decades in that sense. Louis Eustazen and

Colin Moracawa during that weird COVID open in 2021. They're the only champions of the past 20 years who hadn't already recorded a previous

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