Australian Cameron Smith, the winner of the Players Championship earlier this season, has now added an ‘official’ Major to his CV after his sensational victory at the 150th Open Championship at St. Andrews on Sunday.
The mullet-adorned Australian produced a sensational final round of 64 to pip U.S. Rookie Cameron Young to the top spot, with third round co-leader Irishman Rory McIlroy a shot further back after what was a sensational afternoon of action on the Old Course.
In a week that has potentially seen Tiger Woods play his last Open Championship round at The Old Course, where he has twice won the Open Championship, the tournament proved it still has the potential to provide plenty of drama and surprises as the action unfolded in Fife.
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Round 3 Co-Leaders Set The Pace
It was European Ryder Cup stars McIlroy and Viktor Hovland that set the pace on the third day of action in the Open. As some of their rivals stumbled a little, the two stars produced some superb golf between them to finish the day at -16, four shots clear of their main rivals.
Cam Smith was one of those rivals back on -12 under par and as the later players got their rounds underway, it seemed as if this was going to be a closely contested finale.
The opening nine holes saw Smith make two birdies, but McIlroy had also landed an early birdie to retain a three shot lead over the Australian as Hovland started to drift down the leaderboard.
Cameron Young also found himself moving up the leaderboard and it quickly became apparent that the winner of this tournament would come from this group of four golfers playing together.
The key moments came on the back nine. While Smith launched a barrage of birdies with five in five holes from the 10th to 14th, Young also landed birdies to drag himself into real contention and McIlroy just could not get hot with his putter, landing just one more birdie and crucially, missing what should have been an easy birdie chance on 14.
17th Hole Drama
Standing on the 17th tee, Smith led McIlroy by one and Young by two but after two shots, found himself in front of the Road Hole Bunker with a very tricky shot to come.
This was bogey territory, but Smith took his putter and putted up onto the green, using the contours of the bunker to move the ball towards the hole and then holed a magnificent putt for par to stay out in front.
A birdie at the last saw him move to -20, two in front of McIlroy, who could not birdie the 17th despite a superb approach, meaning he needed a two on the final hole to tie Smith.
By then Young had also landed his eagle putt on the 18th after driving the green to move to -19, one ahead of McIlroy.
McIlroy knew he needed to smash his drive onto the green and close to the pin to give himself a realistic chance, however, he fell 10 yards short of the green and his pitch at the flag missed, ensuring Smith lifted the Claret Jug.
The Irishman then missed his birdie putt to hand second spot to Young, as he fell to third in the tournament.
Great Golf Betting Far From Over This Season
With the four Majors of the season now decided, there are still plenty of great opportunities to enjoy a bet on golf over the coming weeks and months.
On the US PGA Tour, which will switch its calendar to starting in January and finishing in December from this year, there are just three more events to go in the regular season before the top 125 players in the FedEx Cup rankings get to compete in the season ending trio of tournaments.
Coming up this week, Tony Finau is the 14/1 favourite with bet365 Sport to win the 3M Open in Blaine Minnesota,
A week later, the action switches to Detroit Golf Club in the motor city in Michigan as players compete in the Rocket Mortgage Classic and the final regular season event takes place the following weekend at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina; the Wyndham Championship.
For these three weeks, players will be desperately keen to ensure that they are inside the top 125 ranked players for the FedEx Cup, so they get a chance to play for the $18,000,000 prize pool across the three events.
The first event is the FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee which will see the field reduced from 125 down to 75 at the end of the tournament.
Next up is the BMW Championship at Wilmington Country Club in Wilmington, Delaware, where the field will be cut from 75 down to the final 30.
Those players then move on to contest the TOUR Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta Georgia to decide who is the Champion player on tour for 2022, with Patrick Cantlay the defending champion from 2021.
With a long break from September through to the start of the new US PGA Tour season in January, you can bet that a number of US Tour players will then switch their attention to the finale of the DP World Tour season in Europe.
DP World Tour Key Events
With the final event of the DP World Tour season, the World Tour Championship not taking place until mid-November in Dubai, there are still plenty of great tournaments to look forward to on this other top golf tour.
The Cazoo Classic and Cazoo Open are two big events set to be contested in the next couple of weeks, one at Hillside in Southport, the other at Celtic Manor in Wales and at the end of August, there is the spectacular European Masters from Crans-sur-sierre in Switzerland.
September sees two huge events with the BMW PGA Championship from Wentworth and later on in the month there is the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, which will be played at a trio of top Scottish courses, Carnoustie, Kingsbarns and The Old Course at St Andrews.
In between those two events are the French and Italian Opens and the WGC-HSBC Champions tournament takes place in Shenshan, China at the end of October.
In November, the Nedbank Golf Challenge will be the final stop on the DP World Tour ahead of the World Tour Championship which starts on Thursday 17th November.
LIV Tour Events Continue
Alongside the two main tours, the new LIV Golf Tour continues with a number of events in the United States over the next month or two with Bedminster, Boston and then Chicago all stops on the tour before they head east to play in Bangkok and Jeddah.
The final tournament of the year will be played in Miami at the Blue Monster at Trump National Doral, with plenty of prize money on offer in both the individual and team events.
Add to that a number of big women’s golf tournaments on the schedule, such as the Evian Masters and Women’s British Open, and you still have a massive choice of golf betting to enjoy over this ‘quieter’ period of the season!
