Ryan Fox wasn't on our shortlist. Two of our four still placed at Birkdale.

I had Tommy Fleetwood down as our strongest read for Royal Birkdale, and for four days he mostly justified it: he finished tied fourth. The name nowhere near the front of my thinking was Ryan Fox, who birdied the 72nd hole on Sunday to win his first major by a single shot from Cameron Young. So here is the honest version of how our Open week went. Partly right, partly humbled, and a useful lesson in what a links leaderboard does to a season-long model.

What our numbers said going in

We put four names forward for the Open. The skill baselines below are from our whole-field snapshot taken on 13 July, three days before the first tee shot, so they are what we actually knew at the time rather than anything tidied up afterwards.

Fleetwood carried a strokes-gained total baseline of roughly +1.84, comfortably our highest-conviction pick of the four. Si Woo Kim sat at about +1.53. Matt Fitzpatrick and Viktor Hovland completed the card, both rated as genuine each-way contenders on the same measure. For context, the runner-up Cameron Young was near the top of our field read at about +1.68, so the model was pointed at the right end of the leaderboard.

What actually happened

Fleetwood finished tied fourth and placed. Si Woo Kim finished sixth and placed. Fitzpatrick and Hovland never got into the frame. Two of our four selections reached the places, both at eight places paying a fifth of the odds, and the card returned a shade over +£73 to a flat £10 each-way stake across the four. Not a week to frame on the wall, but a positive one, and carried by the two players the numbers liked most. (Past performance is not a guide to future returns.)

The bit the model got wrong, out loud

Here is where the numbers earn their keep by admitting a miss. Ryan Fox went into the week carrying a skill baseline of about +0.48 strokes gained in our data, a fair way below the Fleetwoods and Youngs of that field. On paper he was a name to note, not a name to lean on. He won anyway, and he did it the hard way, chasing Sam Burns and Young down over the closing holes and settling it on the last.

I am not going to pretend the model saw that coming, because it plainly did not. What I will say is that this is exactly the shape of result an honest process has to live with. An Open at Birkdale, wind swinging through the week, a bouncing links surface that rewards a hot putter and a clear head as much as it rewards a tidy long game. Season-long skill baselines are the right foundation over 25 tournaments. Over one, they get overruled by four days of weather and nerve more often than any of us would like.

What I take from it

Two things, and I would have said the same if Fox had missed the cut. First, the process pointed at the correct part of the board: our two placed picks and the eventual runner-up all sat near the top of our pre-tournament read, which is the job. Second, majors on links are the sharpest reminder going that a good number shortens the odds of being right, it does not settle them. That is the whole reason we publish every selection, the ones that land and the ones that do not.

The full whole-field breakdown for Birkdale, every player and the strokes-gained picture behind these four, sits on the event page if you want to see the working rather than take my word for it. If you would rather follow the next one live, the seven-day free trial needs no card.

Since going live in April 2026, ProPlace has logged every selection before play, every win and every miss. See the full record. Past performance is not a guide to future results.