PGA Course Preview for the 2025 Open Championship - Scouting the Routing

Ian McNeill's free comprehensive course preview of Royal Portrush Golf Club for the 2025 Open Championship. Ian examines the course, giving key metrics and trends to help make informed decisions on the PGA betting board.

reThe final Major Championship of the year is upon us -- and according to many in the architecture world, we may have just saved the best for last. Royal Portrush: the only Irish representative in the Open rota, certainly helps the Emerald Isle live up to its namesake. Carved into a windswept stretch of the rugged Northern Irish coastline, Royal Portrush's combination of rolling fairways, towering dunes, and dramatic ocean views create a stage as breathtaking as it is unforgiving.

Much has changed in the six years since Shane Lowry's iconic romp to the Claret Jug in front of roaring home crowds, but the identity of Portrush has not. Unlike the heavily distanced-bias venues we've seen in recent Major Championships, Royal Portrush is one for golf's preeminent strategists and the shot-makers.

This piece will break down the key trends and predictive stats I'm weighing to assess a player's viability at Royal Portrush and help guide you through the crucial decisions necessary on pre-week betting boards. Without further ado, here is my comprehensive scouting report on Royal Portrush Golf Club and the 2025 Open Championship!

The Golf Course

Royal Portrush Golf Club - Par 71; 7,381 yards

Past Champions

• 2024 - Xander Schauffele (-9) over B. Horschel and J. Rose
• 2023 - Brian Harman (-13) over J. Rahm, J. Day, T. Kim and S. Straka
• 2022 - Cameron Smith (-20) over Cameron Young
• 2021 - Collin Morikawa (-15) over Jordan Spieth

Bonus: Past Open's held at Royal Portrush

• 2019 - Shane Lowry  (-15) over Tommy Fleetwood
• 1951 - Max Faulkner (-3) over Antonio Cerda

Royal Portrush by the Numbers

While they reside just 200 miles and a ferry ride apart, you'd be hard-pressed to find many similarities between the Renaissance Club we saw last week, and the site of the 2025 Open Championship. While Renaissance was characterized by wide landing areas and little in the way of obstruction for the game's biggest hitters, 2019's leaderboard here at Portrush tells a very different story.

Instead of Chris Gotterup, Rory McIlroy, and Nicolai Hojgaard carpet-bombing their way into contention, the 2019 Open featured a top 10 where just three players ranked inside the top 50 on Tour in Driving Distance (Brooks Koepka, Tony Finau, and Rickie Fowler).

There is certainly reason to show caution off of the tee here, as towering dunes frame many of its tee shots: the lies creating a virtual crap shoot if you should miss the narrow 27-yard strips of fairway. Out of bounds comes into play on four holes as well: marking a particularly stiff hazard to those coming into the Championship fighting a wide miss.

Given this harsh penalty off-line tee shots, and the fact that just three of 11 par fours in the routing measure over 470 yards, I'll be weighing positional driving far more than sheer distance around Royal Portrush. Of course, the most accurate drivers in the field (Collin Morikawa, Corey Conners, Russell Henley, etc.), will receive a sizable bump in my driving model, but we also shouldn't ignore longer hitters with an acumen for adjusting to more positional venues.

Notably, 2019 Champ Shane Lowry clubbed down on five of his 11 par four tee shots en route to an iconic Saturday 63 at Portrush -- meaning options are much more available to players than we've seen in any of the Major venues so far in 2025. When assessing driving upside this week, it's certainly worth looking for players who have continually excelled on less-than-driver courses with high missed fairway penalties (TPC Sawgrass, TPC River Highlands, TPC Southwind, Le Golf National, etc.).

Another strategy I don't anticipate translating particularly well from North Berwick to Northern Ireland is the many low, running shots we saw players hit into the greens around Renaissance Club. In direct contrast to Renaissance runway-like fairways creating a clear path to its putting surfaces, players will find many of Portrush's greens protected by false fronts.

The elevated nature of many greens here will require much more pinpoint acuity on approach: with the penalty of an off-line iron shot being slopes that carry the ball away from pins and often into difficult greenside mounding. The leaderboard of 2019: consisting of names like Shane Lowry, Tommy Fleetwood, Lee Westwood, Brooks Koepka, and Tony Finau, gives further credence to the importance of elite iron play -- each coming in with sublime ball-striking form.

Looking back through round replays from six years ago, I've identified Royal Portrush as a predominately middle iron course, with roughly 8-10 approach shots projected to come from 160-210 yards. This will be the key proximity range I'll be weighing, although we should not overlook general approach metrics like SG: App, Birdie Chances Created, and GIR %. If I could pick one elite skill for my player pool this week, it would be trending iron play.

The elevated greens at Portrush will also provide a challenge for players that find themselves in a position to scramble. Unlike some other links venues we've seen in the Open Rota (St. Andrew's, Renaissance Club, etc.), the option to putt these greenside surrounds is taken completely off of the table. Instead, players will have to contend with deep greenside bunkering, or moguls of thick rough as they chip up to elevated pins.

As such, I will be weighing short game acumen much more than I did last week -- particularly if winds kick up and send the field's Green in Regulation rate into the tank.

And finally, the greens themselves, which are maybe the only facet of Royal Portrush where one can take a broader approach to past history in the British Isles. Pure Fescue, running about a 10-11 on the Stimpmeter, players coming from the PGA Tour will be facing a drastically different set of conditions than their accustomed to in the U.S.

Because many of the runoffs make these greens play much smaller than their 5,400 square foot dimensions would indicate, I won't be weighing lag putting as much as I would have last week. However, putting from 10-25 foot will be very important in crowning an Open Champion. That range, along historic putting splits in Great Britain and Ireland will make up the crux of my putting model this week.

Key Stats Roundup (in order of importance):

• All-around iron play. I'll be weighing SG: Approach, Opportunities Gained, and GIR %, plus honing in on specific proximity splits from 150-200 yards.
• Total Driving -- with an emphasis on players with accuracy-heavy profiles or those who continually excel off the tee at positional venues
• SG: Around the Greens + History putting on the Slower Fescue greens we see at Open Championships and other Links Tournaments Contested in the British Isles.
• Open Championship History -- specifically looking at Troon, Liverpool, and Royal St. Georges from 2021-2024, as well as the last Open iteration at Portrush in 2019. Largely disqualifying St. Andrews as a meaningful datapoint as there aren't many similarities to be drawn.
• Proficiency in the Wind

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Final 2023 Golf Betting Results:
(Individual breakdowns of all sections in thread) @RotoBaller

2023 (+16.634 Units)
2022 (+67.485 Units)
2021 (+68.846 Units)
2020 (+37.015 Units)
2019 (+27.743 Units)
2018 (+55.88 Units)
2017 (+54.26 Units)

Overall: (+327.863 Units) pic.twitter.com/tuaDfwFXlo

— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) November 21, 2023

The Shortlist

As odds settle in the pre-tournament market, here are two to three names I’ve identified as significant targets upon my initial research.

Collin Morikawa

Collin Morikawa. Professional ball-striker.

It's a birdie on 10 to get him back into red figures. pic.twitter.com/YBKgroMhoI

— U.S. Open (@usopengolf) June 12, 2025

Collin Morikawa has put his backers through the proverbial ringer over the last few years, but the underlying numbers still point to tremendous upside in 2021's Open Champion. Per strokes gained, only Scottie Scheffler has played better than Collin from tee-to-green this season, and nobody at the top of this odds board has proven more reliable with the driver. Over his last 50 rounds, Morikawa ranks 3rd in Fairways Hit, 11th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, and 5th in Good Drive Percentage -- an ideal profile for a layout that rewards control over power.

Add to that one of the strongest Major resumes of the last five seasons: eight top 10s in 19 starts, and it's hard to argue against his upside case at prices of 35-1. His early Round 1 tee time should help him to avoid the worst of the projected winds, and since the start of June, he's recorded two of his best approach performances of of the last two years. (+7.4 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic; +11.5 at the U.S. Open).

I understand the hesitation much of the industry feels around Morikawa at the moment. He hasn't closed the door on a victory in some time and the putter remains frustratingly streaky. But how often do you get a two-time Major Champion, and arguably the second-best ball-striker in the world at 35-1? In this range, names like Fleetwood, Hatton, Aberg, and MacIntyre don't exactly inspire any fear. I'm more than willing to go down with the ship on one of the best Major performers of this era -- especially at a venue tailor-made for his game.

Russell Henley

ARE YOU KIDDING?!?!

CRAZY GOOD from Russell Henley 🤯 he climbs to 14 under par pic.twitter.com/buG4e00hdD

— Golf on CBS ⛳ (@GolfonCBS) June 22, 2025

Now boasting a run of three top tens over his last five Major starts, Russell Henley has emerged as a reliable performer on the big stage. He currently sits fifth in the FedEx Cup Standings, fifth in Total Strokes Gained this season, and owns one of the most impressive wins of 2025: out-dueling the aforementioned Collin Morikawa at Bay Hill.

Despite these merits, however, oddsmakers are still pricing Henley as long as 70-1 for this week's Open Championship -- an eye-popping number given the positional nature of Royal Portrush. From a ball-striking perspective, there are very few players in the world who can match Russell's combination of precision driving and pinpoint iron play. Over his last 50 rounds, only Henley, Morikawa, and Sepp Straka rank inside the top 10 in Fairways Gained, Good Drive Percentage, Greens in Regulation, and Strokes Gained: Approach.

Quite unlike many of his ball-striking contemporaries, however, Henley also boasts a top 10 short game on Tour: ranking sixth around the greens for the season and finishing inside the top 15 in putting at last year's Open at Troon. With top 10s in each of his last three starts (Travelers, Memorial, and the U.S. Open), I firmly believe Henley is primed for another marquee title. At 70-1, on a golf course where his greatest weakness should be diminished (driving distance), he's one of the most appealing values on the board.

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