My 2011 British Open picks and why I picked them

Finally I have narrowed down my 20 to a handful of potential winners.  In the end my choices were influenced by the fact that Royal St Georges quite often produces winners that were a bit of an underdog.  Hence my selection of Hunter Mahan over one of the main favourites Martin Kaymer and Bubba Watson.  Let's see how my secret formula pans out!

Here are some of the main statistics that I noticed from an analysis of the British Open winners from the last 30 years.

1.  Only Tiger Woods (2000), Tom Watson (1982), Lee Trevino (1971), Ben Hogan (1953) have won the US Open in the same year as the British.  Both of these players had won majors before.  I know a lot of people are picking Rory McIlroy to win and he is in top form but may not have the expereience to get it done.

2.  Only 2 players in the last 30 years have not won a tournament in the previous 18 months and won the British Open - recent winning expereince counts for a lot.

3.  Back to back winners are fairly rare : only Harrington, Woods and Watson have done it recently.

4.  Only 2 players did not play in the previous year at The Open and won : Ben Curtis (the only debut player to win) and Tom Lehman.

This narrowed down the field to about 20 players (see my previous post).  From here I used some other criteria which I will reveal later (need to keep some secrets!)

MY PICK FOR WINNER : Hunter Mahan (USA)

Runners up or in contention : Martin Kaymer (Germany), Bubba Watson (USA), Zach Johnson (USA)

Best chance for British Win : Darren Clarke (Northern Ireland)

Best Australian Chance (who I want to win) : Adam Scott (Australia)

Long shot to win : Alvaro Quiros (Spain) (note he doesn't conform to my analysis above but there have been winners outside those criteria before!)