2026 Open Championship Power Rankings: Top 10 Golfers To Watch

July 13, 2026

Ian McNeill ranks his top-10 players to watch at the 2026 Open Championship from Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Southport, England. His data-backed insights into who is primed for success.

The 2026 golf calendar has one chapter left to write. Of all the storylines that have defined this season, Royal Birkdale represents the last chance for any of it to be immortalized. There is no next major to erase a poor week here, no second act waiting in the wings. For 156 players, this is the final word on 2026.

And there may be no better stage on which to write it. The Open Championship is the oldest major in golf, played on the linksland where the sport itself was born. Birkdale's fairways have crowned the likes of Watson, Trevino, Spieth, and Palmer, and its treacherous confines have made a habit of humbling champions and amateurs alike. Whoever hoists the Claret Jug this week doesn't just capture the glory of a Major Champion -- he joins a lineage that predates the concept of professional golf itself.

With the stakes and the stage set, here are my top 10 players to watch in the 2026 Open Championship!

No. 10 - Robert MacIntyre

DOD from 302 yards ➡️ eagle!@Robert1Lefty putting on a show in front of the home crowd @ScottishOpen.

📺 CBS pic.twitter.com/AML37fVp7p

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) July 12, 2026

It's been seven years since the Scotsman burst onto the scene as a links specialist with a T6 finish at Portrush as the world No. 146, and in that time, he's done nothing but grow that reputation as one of the game's most dangerous commodities in the British Isles.

In 18 starts since that breakthrough in Northern Ireland, MacIntyre has logged two wins, a runner-up, and four additional top-10 finishes across The Open, Scottish Open, and Alfred Dunhill Links Championship — and most recently led the entire field in approach play (+9.42) en route to a T3 at his home event in North Berwick.

That T3 followed a T10 at the Travelers Championship, the first time since April he's managed back-to-back top-10s.
When the Scotsman finds form, he tends to stay hot -- underlined by his only two PGA Tour wins to date, which came within six weeks of each other.

There may be others with tighter ties to Birkdale specifically, but few are more proven on links setups than the 29-year-old Scot. He mentioned in his pre-tournament press conference last week that an Open triumph would be the only thing that could possibly top his win in Scotland two years ago. His trendline suggests he means to tick off that box sooner rather than later.

No. 9 - Tommy Fleetwood

If fans got a say in this week's contest, I'd put Southport's own Tommy Fleetwood as the overwhelming favorite for the Claret Jug. Tommy has come a long way since his days of sneaking onto Royal Birkdale as a kid, and although 2026 hasn't been the expected follow-up to a breakout 2025 campaign, the hometown favorite is far from an out-of-form commodity.

In fact, only reigning U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark has put together a more consistent lead-in run in the golfing world, with each having logged five consecutive finishes of 15th or better heading into the Open.

The difference, of course, is that Clark has also accumulated two wins in his last six starts, while Fleetwood's best result in that stretch came in a T4 at Muirfield Village.

Perhaps the home support will be just what Tommy needs to finally get over the hump at a major. He's been close before -- notably playing himself into a weekend final pairing in both 2019 and 2023.

Between his elite driving accuracy (6th on Tour), his hardiness in blustery conditions (5th in strokes gained across the last five seasons), and trending tee-to-green play (6th in last week's Scottish Open field), I've got him as one of the most reliable floor plays on this week's slate. As for an actual win? I'll leave that sweat for the masses.

No. 8 - Xander Schauffele

While the 2026 season hasn't yet seen Xander Schauffele recapture the game that carried him to the Claret Jug two years ago, one thing has remained steadfast in his results log.

His three major championship appearances this year have netted finishes of T9, T7, and T11, extending a remarkable run of consistency that now sits at 29 top-20s in his 37 career starts.

It's as remarkable a run as exists in the sport -- but in spite of four finishes of 12th or better since the start of 2025, you'd have to go back to his triumph at Royal Troon to close out 2024 to find a Sunday where he genuinely had a chance to win.

Couple that lack of real contention with a recent form sheet that's seen him post a T51 and a missed cut at two venues he's previously won -- TPC River Highlands and The Renaissance Club -- and there's as legitimate a question about the current state of his game as anyone on this list.

His current form makes him hard to trust as a threat to actually win. But in eight career Open Championship starts, Schauffele has never missed a cut -- and only twice finished outside the top 20. Whatever's wrong with his game right now, this record says the floor is still higher than most of the field's.

No. 7 - Chris Gotterup

Another hole, another birdie for the defending champion Chris Gotterup 💪 pic.twitter.com/cq1IJtqnP9

— Golf on CBS ⛳ (@GolfonCBS) July 11, 2026

Last week saw his professional sample size on the British Isles grow from two tournaments to three, but it also reinforced Chris Gotterup's status as one of the game's premier links ringers.

The big-hitting Oklahoma product followed up his 2025 win at Renaissance Club with another stint in Sunday contention: sitting one back of the 54-hole lead before a final-round 71 dropped him into a tie for 11th.

Still, a T11 finish while gaining another 6.97 strokes ball-striking was a stellar follow-up to the scorching 62 he posted in his Sunday comeback for his fifth PGA Tour win at TPC Deere Run two weeks ago.

Whether it's his piercing ball-flight or his imaginative shot-shaping, the 26-year-old has developed a rare affinity for links golf in just 12 competitive rounds on Tour. He may not have the accumulated résumé of other top major performers on this list, but with five Tour wins in just over two years as a full-time member, his trajectory speaks for itself.

Most players need a decade on links turf to look this comfortable. Gotterup's needed three tournaments.

No. 6 - Viktor Hovland

After nearly two years where nothing seemed to stay consistent in Viktor Hovland's game, the last month must feel like a godsend for the uber-talented Norwegian. His biggest win since the 2023 TOUR Championship came at the Travelers, where he stared down World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler in a Sunday duel and Monday playoff. And unlike past hot streaks that Hovland himself has admitted were fleeting, this one has shown sustained legs -- bolstered by a 3rd-place finish in Canada and a T13 in Scotland.

On the surface, a 13th-place result doesn't jump off the page for a player with Viktor's pedigree, but the context matters. Like a certain Northern Irishman we'll get to later, Hovland closed his week in Scotland with a Sunday 64 -- tied for the best round of the entire field. His ball-striking ceiling reemerged right along with it: he gained 3.43 shots tee-to-green on Sunday alone, and ranked third in the field for the week in the same category.

With these splits -- and a rare stretch of genuine confidence from Hovland himself -- his path back to the top of the game may be faster than anyone expects. He's been in the Sunday spotlight before -- playing in the final group at St. Andrews four years ago and finishing T4, plus three more top-three finishes in majors since the 2023 PGA Championship.

Of every player in this field, Hovland remains the one who feels most overdue for his first major title.

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No. 5 - Wyndham Clark

After tying the likes of Dustin Johnson, Greg Norman, and Bernard Langer in Major count with last month's U.S. Open triumph, Wyndham Clark has shown no signs of resting on his laurels as the calendar has turned to July.

Once known predominantly for his immense length, Clark has instead leaned on his touch in this career-defining run. Across his last six starts, the Colorado-native has averaged an incredible 5.9 strokes putting and another 2.6 around the greens -- a set of splits that nearly doubles the output of the Tour's second-best short game in that span (Justin Thomas, +4.8 combined).

He's also battle tested on the British links: overcoming an opening 76 with rounds of 66, 66, 65 to finish T4 at Portrush last year and going 5/5 inside the top 25 in each of his five starts in Scotland.

If 2023 was Clark's introduction to the top of the game's hierarchy, 2026 is his chance to immortalize himself as one of his generation's icons. At this point, there's a real case he's a top-five player on the planet -- and Birkdale is the perfect stage to prove it.

No. 4 - Collin Morikawa

HAVE A DAY, COLLIN MORIKAWA 🔥🇺🇸

This putt ties his PGA Tour career low (61) and gives him the @TravelersChamp clubhouse lead (-20)

📺 NBC pic.twitter.com/yPnwMu82DT

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) June 28, 2026

It's been a turbulent road for Collin Morikawa in the 5 years since his 2021 Open triumph at Royal St. George's, but his lead-in form to this year's rendition may inspire some call backs to the player he was heading into his Open debut.

Despite recurring back issues that sapped much of his ball-striking upside through the spring-early summer, Collin logged a vintage performance in his last start at Travelers. His 10.52 strokes gained between the driver and irons led field by more than three shots, and his 89.3% driving accuracy rate was the single-highest mark in any start of his 7-year PGA Tour career.

That elite positional pedigree will work wonders around the narrow corridors of Royal Birkdale: as off-line tee shots are sure to be punished by the towering dunes and thick native grass framing many of this week's fairways. Surprisingly to some, Morikawa also ranks third over the last three seasons in Strokes Gained: Total in rounds played with sustained winds of 18+ mph -- making me comfortable he can navigate anything this week's forecast brings on England's western coast.

Five years removed from lifting the Claret Jug as a fresh-faced 24-year-old, Collin Morikawa looks primed to remind the golfing world exactly where he belongs.

A Saturday 73 in Scotland cost Rory a shot at a dream tune-up, but outside that one nightmare front nine, the back-to-back Masters champ arrives at the season's final major with a legitimate case as the man to beat.

For three rounds in Scotland, McIlroy's approach game looked like the problem that's dogged him since Shinnecock, where he bled 3.49 strokes on approach over four rounds. He was still under water on the week entering Sunday. Then it clicked. McIlroy hit 14 of 18 greens in the final round, gained 1.2 shots on approach, and turned in a closing 64 that tied the low round of the day.

With his approach play now trending in the right direction, the rest of his game finally has room to take over. His 6.08 strokes gained driving mark was his best in over 12 months, and the 6.34 shots he gained with his short game continue a pattern that's become the backbone of his season: McIlroy has now gained at least three strokes chipping and putting in four of his last six starts, giving him a floor few players in the field can match even when the ball-striking goes quiet.

Throw in the résumé -- six finishes of seventh or better since his 2014 Open win -- McIlroy remains among the game's premier specialists on the British links.

McIlroy has already proven this exact formula works on the sport's biggest stages -- his green jacket in April came with a 55.4% driving accuracy mark, second-worst among the 54 players who made the cut, and he still walked off Augusta with a second straight Masters' title. Given his pedigree in the British Isles, there's no reason he can't bookend a special season the way it started -- with a major trophy in hand.

While Sunday afternoon didn't quite go to plan for the 54-hole co-leader, Matt Fitzpatrick's T3 finish in North Berwick has suddenly given the PGA Tour something it hasn't had in three seasons: a legitimate threat to Scottie Scheffler's regular season crown.

With three wins, eight top 10s, and only one missed cut through the first six months of 2026, the argument can easily be made that Matt deserves strong consideration for the Tour's Player of the Year honors already -- and Birkdale will give him the biggest remaining stage to end discussions outright.

A lot of factors explain Fitzpatrick's climb from outside the Tour's top 30 a year ago to second in the FedEx Cup standings today, but one stands above the rest. He and his coach Mark Blackburn have worked tirelessly to turn around his greatest historical deficiency, but I doubt even they could have predicted the scale of the jump. Season to season, Fitzpatrick has gone from 127th, to 76th, to 1st in the Tour's approach rankings since 2024 -- and he's showing no signs of regression. His 8.15 strokes gained on approach in Scotland was the best single-tournament mark of his career, and extended his streak of 11 straight starts with a positive approach rating.

Don't let this unbelievable turnaround make you think Fitzpatrick is a statistical one-note tune -- he's also top-10 in Driving Accuracy, a trait that should play just as well on Birkdale's punishing fairways as his suddenly-elite irons. And specific to the British links, Fitzpatrick has gained strokes putting in 15 consecutive starts dating back to 2019 across the Open, Scottish Open, and Alfred Dunhill Links Championships.

The player who once couldn't trust his irons under pressure now owns the best approach game on Tour -- and there isn't much left in Fitzpatrick's profile for Birkdale to expose.

He may have garnered as much attention as he has all year by snapping his streak of 78 consecutive made cuts in Scotland last week, but I'd advise against anyone framing those two days as anything more than a one-off. Over his previous 14 starts of 2026, Scheffler hadn't logged a finish worse than 24th, and he still leads the PGA Tour in virtually every key scoring stat:

• SG: Total
• Adjusted Scoring Average
• Birdie or Better Percentage
• Bogey Avoidance
• Stroke Differential vs. Field Average

By his generationally lofty standards, 2026 has been a disappointment through its first six months. But even this muted version of Scheffler -- at least compared to the one who won last year's Claret Jug by four shots -- remains the best statistical player on the planet. And stylistically, this week's positional test looks far closer to Royal Portrush than the bomber-friendly layout at Renaissance last week.

There's also a case nobody's made yet: Scheffler might be the unluckiest player on Tour this season. Four runner-ups and four additional top-fives already make for a brutal résumé of near-misses, but two of those runner-up finishes came in playoffs -- as close as golf gets to losing a coin flip.

I'd still take him heads-up over anyone in this field, and his current price of +750 -- a softer number than what the market's offered all year -- is among the more compelling numbers on this week's odds board.

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