The Open 2026: Who Wins at Royal Birkdale? The Grip Golf Team's Picks

It is set to be a genuinely wide-open 154th Open at Royal Birkdale this week, so we asked the Grip Golf team, plus a friend from our sister company, who they think lifts the Claret Jug on Sunday. The verdict: Rory McIlroy is our most-backed player with two votes, with Scottie Scheffler, Matt Fitzpatrick, Justin Rose and Francesco Molinari completing the card.

Here is the case for each pick, and why this Open is so hard to call.

Why the 2026 Open Is So Open

Royal Birkdale is hosting for the 11th time, but the course the players face this week is not the one Jordan Spieth conquered in 2017. A renovation has reshaped the back nine, including a brand-new par-3 15th, and the closing stretch has gained most of the added length. It is a par 70 playing 7,223 yards, protected by well over a hundred bunkers, and the forecast is firm, fast and breezy: proper links golf.

Then there is the form book. Scheffler arrives as defending champion but missed the cut at last week's Scottish Open, his first missed cut in nearly four years. McIlroy is the back-to-back Masters champion but has not won the Open since 2014. And the home crowd has history pressing down on it: no Englishman has ever won an Open at Birkdale, and none has won the Championship on English soil since Tony Jacklin in 1969.

The Contenders

Scottie Scheffler

World No. 1 and the reigning Champion Golfer of the Year after his four-shot win at Royal Portrush last summer. The Scottish Open missed cut raised eyebrows, but he remains the best iron player in the game, and Birkdale punishes loose approach play more than most.

Rory McIlroy

Back-to-back Masters champion and the best driver of the ball in the field. His only Claret Jug came in 2014, and a player of his calibre going twelve years without one feels like an anomaly waiting to be corrected.

Matt Fitzpatrick

The form horse. The 2022 US Open champion has three wins this season, top-ten finishes in roughly half his starts since the end of last year, and led the field in approach play while finishing third at last week's Scottish Open. His accuracy is tailor-made for a course where finding bunkers is fatal.

Robert MacIntyre

The Scot is a genuine links specialist: he has made the cut in all six of his Open appearances with three top-eight finishes, and arrives off a third-place finish at the Scottish Open where his iron play led the field. Quietly, one of the most complete cases in the draw.

Tommy Fleetwood

The local story. Fleetwood grew up in Southport, minutes from Birkdale's dunes, and no player in the last decade has more top-five finishes in majors without winning one. The home support will be enormous; whether that helps or weighs on him is one of the week's big questions.

The chasing pack

Jon Rahm and Viktor Hovland have the games for firm, windy links golf, while two recent Champion Golfers lurk just behind them: Xander Schauffele, who won at Troon in 2024, and Collin Morikawa, the 2021 champion. This is not a two-horse race.

The Grip Golf Team's Picks

Paul, co-founder: Justin Rose. Paul is backing the storybook ending, and there is real substance behind it. Nobody in the field knows Birkdale like Rose: he has played all three Opens held here since 1998, the year he announced himself as a 17-year-old amateur by holing out from the rough on the final hole to finish fourth. Add six top-five finishes in majors over the last decade and a habit of peaking in the biggest weeks, and this is far more than nostalgia. If the wind gets up, experience on this specific piece of land counts double.

Hugh Campbell, coach at Deptford Park: Scottie Scheffler. Hugh is not overthinking it. The best player in the world, the defending champion, and the game's premier iron player on a course that punishes loose approach play. One missed cut does not undo three years of dominance.

Dave Chapman, coach at Deptford Park: Rory McIlroy. Dave is going with the field's best driver on a links where positioning off the tee sets up everything. Two Masters wins in two years say McIlroy's game is at a peak; the Open is the one he wants most.

Mark Curtis, coach at Tower Bridge: Matt Fitzpatrick. Mark is following the numbers. Nobody in the field is playing better golf right now, and Fitzpatrick's fairway-finding accuracy is the perfect weapon for Birkdale's bunkers and willow scrub. Form plus fit equals the pick, and he is the obvious candidate to end the long wait for an English winner at Birkdale.

Charlie Day, coach at Tower Bridge: Rory McIlroy. Charlie makes it two for Rory. Twelve years is long enough, the driving stats are the best in the field, and a player who has already won at Augusta this year knows how to close a major on Sunday.

Andrea Zola, coach at our sister company Bexleyheath Golf: Francesco Molinari. Andrea is going with his countryman and the pick nobody else saw coming. Molinari's 2018 win at Carnoustie was built on relentlessly error-free golf in brutal conditions, and few players in the game manage their way around a links more precisely. Past champions have a habit of climbing Open leaderboards, and Andrea is backing the master of avoiding mistakes on a course with more than a hundred bunkers waiting for them.

That gives McIlroy the team verdict by a nose, with the caveat that every one of these picks has a genuine path to the Jug. That is what makes this Open so watchable.

Watch the Open, Then Bring It to the Bay

If four days of links golf leaves you itching to play, you do not need to wait for a dry weekend or a tee time. Grip's Trackman bays at Tower Bridge and Deptford Park measure every shot you hit, from carry distance to the club path and face angle that shape your ball flight, and simulate rounds on world-famous courses whatever London's weather is doing.

And if watching Fitzpatrick's approach play or Molinari's precision inspires you to tighten up your own game, that is exactly what our coaching team does all year round, with the same technology the pros use to prepare.

Book a Trackman bay or a lesson at Grip Tower Bridge or Deptford Park, and enjoy the golf this week. May the best pick win.