The Open Championship tees off in the wee hours of Thursday morning with plenty of excitement for the final major championship of 2025. Royal Portrush should be an outstanding venue for the tournament, and DraftKings Sportsbook has a wide variety of markets and options available for betting this week’s big event. In this post, we’ll look at a few of the Tournament Trios available in “3-ball” format this week. Picking a winner from these groups of three is a great way to balance risk and reward, so let’s check out a few of my golf best bets from this market this week.
Just to be sure we’re all on the same page, there are nine tournament trios in the tournament groups section of The Open Championship section of DraftKings Sportsbook. To win these trios, you select the lowest scorer for the entire tournament from the group of three available. Dead heat rules apply in the case of a tie.
With an elite field like this week, there are so many stories and storylines to consider, but in these smaller groups, it’s easier to get some clarity. Usually, all three players in the group come at plus-money odds, while some come with especially great value. Let’s pinpoint some golf best bets from the great trios this week.
Adam Scott (+165)
We’ll get to some lower odds below, but Scott stands out as a great play in his tournament trio against Maverick McNealy (+180) and Keegan Bradley (+180). Both American options are popular players, but Scott is a strong option this week due to his history of success in the Open Championship’s style of play.
While it’s held at a variety of courses, the consistent links-style format of The Open does result in correlation from one year to the next. Scott has a long history to consider, since the 44-year-old has played an impressive 97 major championships during his career. He made the cut in 73 of those 97 majors (75%), with a total of 20 top-10 finishes. Of those 20 top-10 finishes, six have been at The Open Championship. All of his success isn’t ancient history either, since he finished T10 just last year.
Scott missed the cut at the Masters earlier this year but has made the cut in seven straight tournaments since, including the other two major championships, where he finished T19 at the PGA Championship and T12 at the U.S. Open.
Last week, he tacked on a T17 at the Scottish Open, continuing his strong form. He ranks in the top 20 in the field in Strokes Gained: approach and Total Strokes Gained over the last 12 rounds.
Bradley won the Travelers Championship just under a month ago at TPC River Highlands, where he has always been a local favorite and has a great course history. He’ll probably get a much chillier reception this week in Northern Ireland, and he has struggled at The Open in his career, missing the cut in six of his 11 appearances, including in 2019 at Royal Portrush.
McNealy was just graduating from the Korn Ferry Tour back in 2019, and he has missed the cut in each of his two trips to The Open Championship. He does have some solid recent form, but his lack of track record at links setups make me feel much more comfortable backing Scott this week.
Harry Hall (+165)
After taking experience with Scott, I’m going with a newcomer to The Open and taking Hall over Jason Day (+165) and Cameron Smith (+185) in this tournament trio.
Even though this is his first Open Championship, Hall does have links experience. He qualified for the Open this year by finishing second at Burnham & Berrow Golf Club in England, which is a classic links layout along the Sea. He was born in England but made his way to the PGA TOUR via collegiate golf at UNLV and then the Korn Ferry Tour rather than via the DP World Tour and play in Europe.
He’ll be going back to his roots a little bit this week, but he comes into his Open debut with great form He has posted seven straight top-25 finishes since the start of May, including a T19 at the PGA Championship when he made his debut in that major. He also finished T17 last week in Scotland at the Genesis Scottish Open.
Hall’s heater has been fueled by his flat stick, since he leads the entire field in Strokes Gained: putting over the last 24 rounds. He also ranks fourth in Total Strokes Gained over that span, and he’ll look to continue that success at Royal Portrush.
Day is his co-favorite in this trio, and the veteran brings a wide variety of results in his career at the Open. He finished runner-up and T13 in the last two years, but he missed the cut in 2021 and in 2019, when the event last visited this course.
In his last four events overall, Day has also been boom or bust, missing the cut at the PGA Championship and the John Deere Classic but finishing T23 at the U.S. Open and T4 at the Travelers Championship. Day’s a volatile option that could win the trio for sure, but I’ll take Hall’s recent consistency instead.
The third option is Smith, who won the Open in 2022 and finished T20 at Royal Portrush in 2019. He has made the cut in five of his seven appearances at this event, but he comes in with rough recent form after missing the cut in each of his last four major championships and also posting mixed results with LIV Golf this year.
Both Smith and Day have good history at the Open, but I think Hall’s recent form will be enough to vault him past the more experienced players this week.
Sepp Straka (+180)
I usually try to close out my golf best bets from these tournament trios with one option that brings the longest odds in the group. This week, I’m playing Straka over Collin Morikawa (+170) and Robert MacIntyre (+175).
Royal Portrush’s smaller greens and challenging winds will put Strokes Gained: Approach as one of the most important metrics on the board, and Straka stands out in that category, ranking fourth in the field over the last 36 rounds while also ranking 11th in Total Strokes Gained.
It’s already been a big year for the big Austrian, who has two wins on the PGA TOUR. He won at The American Express and claimed a Signature Event win at the Truist Championship. He’s piled on a third-place finish at the Memorial and a seventh-place finish last week at the Genesis Scottish Open in his last four starts as well.
Straka missed the cut at each of the three majors this year, but he has had some success at the Open Championship in the past two years. In 2023, he finished runner-up as part of the large group well back of Brian Harman, and last year, he added a T22.
He’ll be against tough competition in Morikawa and MacIntyre. Morikawa won the Open in 2021, missed the cut the following two years but bounced back with a T16 last year. However, his recent form has been a little shaky, including a missed cut last week in Scotland.
MacIntyre made the cut in his title defense last week, but he faded to T65 after a tough weekend. The lefty from Scotland is very at home in links formats and finished T6 at Royal Portrush in 2019 in one of his two top-10 finishes at The Open. He would probably be my play here except for his disappointing showing last week in what was a very important tournament to him in Scotland.
Both Morikawa and MacIntyre have high ceilings if they’re on their games, but they’ve been off enough lately for me to include Straka as a longshot play as one of my golf best bets for this week from the tournament trios.
