2025 Open specials: My favorite first round Portrush betting tips and more
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Tom Jacobs has picked his potential Portrush winners – now he’s turning his attention to some Open specials.
Now that you’ve seen my outright picks for the 153rd Open Championship at Royal Portrush this week, I thought I’d share some alternative market specials that have really caught my eye.
The Open Championship is always a tough one for golf bettors, as we rely so heavily on the weather and potential wave splits. With that said, there are a number of bets in the Specials markets that I like, and that is what we are looking at here.
We enjoyed a decent week at the US Open in this feature, with Max Greyserman and Marc Leishman both delivering top 40 finishes and Emiliano Grillo winning his first round 3-ball. Let’s see what we can come up with ahead of the opening day at Royal Portrush.
Below, I will look at the following markets: Top Nationality, Top 40, to Make/Miss the Cut, and, of course, both First Round Leader and 3-Ball Betting for Round 1.

2025 Open specials
Antoine Rozner to be Top Frenchman 4/1 (QuinnBet)
Antoine Rozner has played in two Open Championships, making the cut in both, and improving greatly in his second start.
Rozner made his Open debut in 2021 and finished 59th. While this isn’t much to write home about, he made it through the cut on his first start in the event, and he was better placed after three rounds, sitting in 33rd going into Sunday, thanks to a 3rd round 67.
Two years later, Rozner made his way to Royal Liverpool, which played far more like a typical Open Championship than it did in 2021, and he impressed. He finished 20th, but that was the worst he could finish, having been in 4th place after both rounds 1 and 3, shooting rounds of 67 on Thursday and Saturday. He was very much the surprise name on the leaderboard going into Sunday, but there were some clues he could play well there.
Rozner finished 4th at the Alfred Dunhill Links in 2022 and would go on to finish 10th in 2023, after playing in the Open Championship, so he clearly has some links pedigree. A win in Mauritius, where the wind can blow, and at the Qatar Masters, where the honour roll is filled with Open Championship contenders and solid links players, are further positives, and this is all to say that maybe links golf is the right test for the Frenchman.
The other thing to consider is that he’s made 12 cuts in a row on the PGA Tour, since finishing 4th at the Qatar Masters in February, his last DP World Tour start. The fact that he is churning out decent results week after week on the PGA Tour is eye-catching, as is his Approach play in recent months. His T22 finish at the Scottish Open last week was his third top 25 in his last five starts, and something similar here would likely land him Top Frenchman honours.
Young DP World Tour star, Martin Couvra, is the favourite in this market, but this is not only his first Open Championship start, but also his first start in a major, and after finishing 73rd last week, he might have a tough time here. He looks to have potentially lost form at the wrong time, missing the cut in Germany and playing poorly last week, after coming so close to victory at the Italian Open. His countryman, Adrien Saddier, beat him in Italy and is another tough challenger for Rozner in this market, but his ball striking has been poor for a while now, even when he won in Italy, and like Couvra, he is making his major debut this week. With experience and positive experience at on Rozner’s side, I think he can beat these two runners.
It then comes down to Julien Guerrier, an out-of-form 40-year-old with two major starts back in 2006 and 2007, both of which were missed cuts, Matthieu Pavon, whose Open record reads MC-50 and is without a top 10 finish since last year’s U.S. Open, and Romain Langasque, who doesn’t particularly worry me on recent form. Langasque did make the cut here in 2019 and has finished 33rd in the Open, but Rozner is a better play than him with a better Open record, so he shouldn’t be feared.
At 4/1, I thought it was better to back Rozner in this market, where the majority of his challengers might miss the cut anyway, rather than at 13/5 for a top 40. I could see him outperforming the top 40 anyway, and if he does, he will have a good chance of landing this 4/1 bet instead.
Tony Finau to Finish Inside the Top 40 (2/1 Virgin Bet)

Tony Finau was once touted as a future major winner and while that has seemingly fallen by the wayside, he has generally been an incredible major performer throughout his career, and I think he can put a reasonable week together here.
Before missing his last two Open Championship cuts, Finau was 6/6 in the event, with two top 10s and two more top 20s. The best of those finishes was a 3rd, which came here in 2019, and that is one of the more encouraging factors in betting on him in this market.
While he might not be good enough at the moment to win this tournament, it would be no surprise to see him sail through the cut and find himself in the top 20 or so come the weekend, and then it will just be how his game holds up on moving day and the closing stages, as to whether he holds on for a good finish. I have tempered expectations by backing him for a top 40 this week, as at 2/1 I think that’s a reasonable bet, but I do believe he can far exceed this result.
His last six major starts read 3-MC-MC-19-38, and it’s the two most recent efforts that bode well. 19th at the PGA Championship and 38th at the U.S. Open, despite not being at his best are strong enough performances, and another performance like that would pay off this bet.
It’s easy to forget that Finau finished 5th at the Genesis Invitational and 15th in the Truist Championship, such is his up-and-down form this season, but it’s perhaps not as bad as many people are thinking. The iron play has been fairly promising of late, at least it was until the Travelers, and if he can find his game off the tee again, which has declined over the last three events, he could factor into the top of the leaderboard here.
We will settle for a comfortable 32nd-place finish, though, Tony…
Min Woo Lee to Miss the Cut 6/4 (Coral, Ladbrokes)

Min Woo Lee’s win at the Houston Open is papering over some severe cracks, as it’s otherwise been a terrible season from the Aussie. So much is expected of Min Woo, and sometimes I think we get carried away with his ability, but he has shown up in some big events, none more so than the U.S. Open, where he has finished 5th. A 6th place finish at the Players, 14th at the Masters, and 18th at the PGA Championship, Min Woo Lee has been a man for the big occasion, but I am not convinced by his Open Championship credentials.
Lee finished 21st in the 2022 Open Championship, but that came at St Andrews, where he has a license to bomb it off the tee, something he bases his game on. That won’t cut it here at Royal Portrush, where you need to be more precise, and his form in the Open otherwise has been patchy. 41st at Royal Liverpool was his next best effort, and he’s otherwise missed the cut in both 2021 and 2024, and I think he will stare down his third missed cut in this tournament here.
His early-season form was very good, posting five top 20s across the two tours, before his win at the Houston Open, but since then, it has been a disaster. 49th at Augusta, 61st at the Heritage, 51st at the Truist, missed cuts at both the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open, 49th at the Memorial, and 63rd at the Travelers, there really hasn’t been any positive news. That was until he finished 13th at the Rocket Classic, gaining strokes across the board for just the second time this season. I am not convinced this is a proper turnaround moment for Min Woo, though, and instead think the Rocket Classic is just a good setup for him.
I am instead going to focus on the fact he’s missed two of his four cuts in the Open Championship and three of his last four major cuts overall. It doesn’t look good for Min Woo.
First-Round Bets
Here are some bets that are focused solely on the first round of the 2025 Open Championship.
Nicolai Hojgaard to be the First Round Leader 90/1 e/w (BetMGM, Unibet 7 Places)

Nicolai Hojgaard goes out in the opening group of the 2025 Open Championship, and he might just have a chance to go low on his front nine before the worst of the wind starts to pick up.
He has experience playing well on the opening day of the Open, as he sat in 4th place after 18 holes last year, teeing off early in the morning there as well, at 7:30 am. Now he’s going off even earlier at 6:35 am, and he will play in a group that features Padraig Harrington and Tom McKibbin, two players who will garner early support and potentially spur Hojgaard himself on.
Hojgaard has led after round 1 three times in his career, but he’s also been within two shots of the opening day lead an impressive 17 times in his young career, 18 if you include his Zurich Classic run out with his brother. One of those came at The Masters in 2024, when he opened with a 67 to sit two shots back in 3rd place, and that, plus his experience on the opening day of this event last year, is very encouraging.
Now add in the fact he shot a 67 in Scotland on Saturday and 64 on Sunday, both of which were the second-best rounds of each respective day, and you have a player with plenty of momentum. This stellar weekend performance got him into this event at the last minute, and he can put his foot down and go low again on Thursday. He’s made his last three cuts in this event, and he will look to make another after a fast start on Thursday.
Kevin Yu to Beat Julien Guerrier and Mikiya Akutsu in Round 1 (10/11 General)
Backing odds-on shouts in Round 1 of the Open Championship three-balls wasn’t on my bingo card, but Julien Guerrier is an out-of-sorts 40-year-old, who’s playing in his first Open Championship since 2006, and Mikiya Akutsu is a 30-year-old who took 10 years to win for the first time on the Japan Tour and is playing in his first major.
Akutsu qualified by winning the Mizuno Open in June, but his form in Japan has suffered since, finishing 6th, 29th, and 67th, getting worse as the weeks go on. He now has to play a style of golf he can’t be too familiar with, and I don’t see how he makes an impact.
Guerrier’s form reads 40-52-MC-34-WD-MC-MC since finishing 22nd at the China Open in April, and he now plays in this major for the first time in nearly twenty years. His last major start came in 2007, so he doesn’t play these big events often, and given he’s been 143rd and 142nd after round 1 of his last two events, I think we can take him on.
Yu, on the other hand, has been 9th, 26th, 8th, and 14th after round 1 in his last four events, and he was in 7th place going into Sunday of the Scottish Open, so he’s warmed up nicely for this!
Lucas Herbert to beat Davis Riley and Darren Clarke (11/10 bet365)

Lucas Herbert qualified for the Open this year by winning the Final Qualifier at West Lancashire, and while his Open record is a bit bleak outside of a top 15 at St Andrews, I really expect him to go well in this major.
That confidence is based on a win in the Irish Open, a win in the wind at the Bermuda, a 4th at the Scottish Open, and a 7th at the Alfred Dunhill Links.
In addition to his own credentials being impressive, he is coming up against an out-of-form Davis Riley, who is 0/1 at the Open Championship, and a 56-year-old Darren Clarke, who’s missed 6 of his last 7 Open cuts. He did make the cut last year, but he did so shooting rounds of 77-71, and there’s no real reason to think he will come good here, at a course he missed the cut at in 2019.
Riley is the bigger threat, but since finishing 2nd at the PGA Championship, he has missed three cuts and finished no better than T57 in his other three events. His iron play is rapidly declining, and we should expect him to struggle on Thursday in Northern Ireland.