Restock your beans, prepare your mugs and be sure to set your alarm — it’s time for coffee golf.
The final men’s golf major of the season, The Open Championship, starts Thursday at Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Southport, England.
Tee times begin as early as 1:35 a.m. ET, but action should be going until nearly 5 p.m. ET, making for some fun, caffeine-fuelled golf-viewing windows.
Here are the storylines you should know:
The dying embers of the Spieth mystique
Jordan Spieth was all set to become golf’s next superstar, the heir apparent to Tiger Woods, after winning the 2015 Masters at just 21 years old. Then, he won the U.S. Open, the very next major, and rounded out that nascent season with two more major top-fours. Two years later, the wunderkind captured his first Open Championship at Royal Birkdale in classic Spiethian fashion, using a hard-earned Sunday bogey on 13 to fuel a 5-under run over his next four holes.
Spieth hasn’t won a major since. Now, for the first time since his last, The Open is back at Birkdale. This time, though, the American’s early-career pedigree has faded into nostalgia. He’s perennially “close,” but he also hasn’t had a top-10 finish this season. Some weeks, he flashes form with his driver. In others, that trusty Scotty Cameron putter enjoys a throwback four rounds. It just hasn’t come together all at once.
“I’m quite frustrated with the results considering I know where my game is at,” Spieth told reporters Monday. “It’s better than it was four or five years ago, when I got back to top 10 in the world. It’s without a doubt better than it was then. It’s just not quite showing up in results.”
And therein lies the Spieth rub. He does just enough to make his fans believe, but the results paint a different picture. Links golf — fast, firm and shorter than regular PGA Tour fare — should play to his strengths, and the vibes will be high at Birkdale. But if he can’t make a good run this week, it may finally be time to admit that Spieth just isn’t that guy anymore.
Tommy Fleetwood returns home
The amiable Englishman comes to Birkdale in a broadly similar spot as Spieth, trying to earn a long-awaited win at a place that holds special meaning. Unlike Spieth, Fleetwood, who hails from Southport, has never won a major — and earned his first PGA Tour victory only last August, in the season finale.
Still, that he hasn’t gotten it done at a major doesn’t mean that he can’t. Fleetwood has eight career wins on the European tour and he’s consistently shown up as one of Europe’s top Ryder Cup players. He’s also among the most consistent players in the game, one of just four who ended last year in the top 10 of the world golf rankings that remains there today (though he is down from third to ninth).
Fleetwood sits sixth on the PGA Tour in total strokes gained for the season, and he’s finished between 11th and 14th in each of his last four starts, including the U.S. Open. His biggest weakness has been putting, but he should be quite familiar with the Birkdale greens having grown up around the corner, and he’ll have the backing of his home crowd. Fleetwood and Spieth are grouped together (alongside Jon Rahm) for Thursday and Friday.
One more thing: Sunday’s final round just so happens to coincide with the World Cup final. It would be quite the spectacle if both Fleetwood and England emerged victorious.
At this time one year ago, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler dove into a viral soliloquy about the meaning of winning major championships — how the glory wears off and the realities of day-to-day life and family come further into focus instead. Then, he went on to win that week at Royal Portrush, claiming his fourth major in three years. The Tiger comparisons hit full gear.
Scheffler returns to The Open in a much different place. He has just one win since, in January against a mediocre field in California. He hasn’t added to his major tally, which seemed unfathomable just a few months ago. He’s also still been the best player in the world, including second-place finishes at both The Masters and U.S. Open. Then again, he also missed his first cut in four years at the Scottish Open on Friday.
The American remains the favourite to lift the Claret Jug come Sunday. If he does, his season could be considered a success — it’s hard to win majors, but it’s important, legacy-wise, to pick them off in your prime. Anything less than that, however, and Scheffler’s 2026 will go down as a missed opportunity.
The last two major seasons have included a pair of two-time winners, with Xander Schauffele and Scheffler both completing the PGA Championship-Open Championship double. If you think the pattern holds, then you should be going all-in on England’s Aaron Rai to pick up the victory this week. Rai was a surprise major winner at Aronimink, and he’s now ranked 17th in the world, but he’s not exactly the all-world talent of Schauffele and Scheffler.
Wyndham Clark, the winner at the U.S. Open last month, carries slightly more pedigree as a two-time major champion who enters this tournament still in form, having shared 13th at the Scottish Open. Clark has gained a reputation as a power player, someone who can bomb his way to a U.S. Open but may have trouble with the creativity required on a links course. That may be true; then again, he finished tied for fourth at last year’s Open.
Rewind even further, and Rory McIlroy wore the green jacket as the Masters champion for the second straight year. After years of searching for the end of his major drought, it’s wild that the Northern Irishman’s first mention is all the way at the bottom here. The second favourite behind Scheffler, McIlroy placed seventh in Scotland, though he also hit a massive pull and yelled at himself that he “sucks” at golf. It would be quite the bookend if McIlroy won his seventh major this week and became the first to pull off the Masters-Open double since Tiger in 2005.
As the breakaway league’s future remains in flux, LIV’s stars have struggled. Bryson DeChambeau has missed the cut at all three majors and hasn’t contended for one since last year’s Masters collapse, wearing some of the shine off his 2024 U.S. Open in the process. DeChambeau, who’s looking for his third career major, has historically struggled at The Open — but perhaps he could use some momentum from last season, where he finished tied for 10th despite an opening 78.
It hasn’t been as dire for Rahm, who tied for second at the PGA Championship and had a pair of top-10s last season. Still, the Spaniard is part of the sport’s elite that can measure success only by major championships, and he hasn’t picked one off since the 2023 Masters. A win this week would leave him a PGA short of the career Grand Slam.