Dustin Johnson will defend his US Open title at Erin Hills this week as the year’s second major championship takes place at a relatively unknown venue for the second time in three years.
As with Chambers Bay in 2015, Erin Hills opened less than 10 years before it will host a major and, at an initial 7,741 yards, surpasses Chambers Bay as the longest course in major history.
Course form is almost impossible to assess given that only a handful of this week’s 156-man field played in the 2011 US Amateur here, with Jordan Spieth reaching the quarter-finals and Justin Thomas the second round – both men lost to England’s Walker Cup player Jack Senior incidentally.
However, there are some relevant trends to consider in trying to identify the winner, with all 17 winners this century having recorded at least a top-four finish already that season.
Sixteen of those 17 had also previously had a top-20 finish in the US Open, with shock 2009 winner Lucas Glover the only exception.
In addition, since Darren Clarke and Keegan Bradley won the last two majors of 2011 when ranked 111th and 108th in the world respectively, the lowest-ranked winner of any major has been 2016 US PGA champion Jimmy Walker, who was 48th at the time.
Last year’s other major winners – Danny Willett, Johnson and Henrik Stenson – were ranked 12th, sixth and sixth respectively, while Sergio Garcia was 11th before finally getting over the line at Augusta in April to win the Masters for his first major.
All of which points to one of golf’s big guns holding the trophy on Sunday evening, with defending champion Johnson a 7/1 favourite to become the first back-to-back winner since Curtis Strange in 1989.
However, Johnson’s last start was a missed cut in the Memorial Tournament and he has also had to cope with the (welcome) distraction of the birth of his second child, so better value beckons elsewhere in the US Open betting.
Garcia fulfils all of our earlier criteria as he tries to become only the seventh player to win the Masters and US Open in the same year.
Garcia was fifth behind Johnson at Oakmont and the tough course set-up, described as a “links course on steroids” by fellow Spaniard Jon Rahm, should suit such a quality ball-striker. The 37-year-old is now free of the burden of so many previous near-misses and is the first of our US Open betting tips at odds of 25/1.
A course softened by thunderstorms on Monday and Tuesday should suit the long drivers, which means big-hitting Brooks Koepka appeals at 40/1. The American made a slow start to the season but has improved of late, finishing second in the Valero Texas Open and 16th in the Players Championship.
He has long since been tipped for the top, especially after winning his maiden PGA Tour title in Phoenix in 2015 when he also finished 10th in the Open at St Andrews and fifth in the US PGA at Whistling Straits. Koepka also shot 71 at Erin Hills in the 2011 US Amateur so we’re keen to include him in our US Open predictions.
Our US Open betting tips are completed by South Africa’s Branden Grace at 50/1. He is yet to win a major but has been in contention recently, most notably when he was fourth at Chambers Bay in 2015 after driving out of bounds on the 16th hole of the final round.
Grace was also fifth last year at Oakmont and with two top-four finishes at the US PGA Championship in the last two years, he looks good each-way value.
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