Predictions: RBC Canadian Open, Evian Masters, Senior British Open

As you can tell from the title above, we’re stacking up on this week’s predictions, which in all honestly, probably means that I’ll add a few more wrong picks to my career resume. But nevertheless, since the start of the new year, we’ve focused mostly on PGA tour predictions, but now we’re gonna venture out into the LPGA and Champions realm as both tours have two big tournaments taking place this week.

Let’s get straight to predictions for these tournaments!

Senior British Open

On the senior circuit, the Senior British Open will take place at Carnoustie, where anyone could take home the victory. It’s a loaded field as usual for this event, and we’ve got the likes of Tom Watson, Tom Lehman, Corey Pavin, and defending champion Loren Roberts all taking part in this awesome event.

The Champions tour tournaments are usually the hardest to predict, as well, you don’t make it to the Champions tour by just being an average golfer. All of these players are capable of picking up the victory, and a playoff finish may be likely here for the second year in a row.

While there are a lot of good candidates, I’m going with the obvious here. Lehman is my choice to pick up the victory, as he’s already got one Champions tour major this year. And he played pretty well at St. Andrews last week, so I look for him to ride some momentum into this week and capture another big win on the season.

Evian Masters

For the ladies, it’s the Evian Masters, in which defending champion Ai Miyazato will be the clear front-runner to win this event. She’ll have plenty of competition from U.S. Open winner Cristie Kerr though, as both women are playing some excellent golf as of late, and are clearly the top two on tour right now.

Since Miyazato won this event last year, and considering that she’s already won four times on tour this year, it’s hard to pick against her this week. I loved what Kerr did at the U.S. Open, where she completely dominated the field and won by 12 strokes, but I think Miyazato is on a mission to prove herself as the best in the world at what she does.

The two ladies are neck and neck in the world rankings, and both want to be number one. I think Miyazato wins this week, and stays in the top spot.

RBC Canadian Open

Most PGA tour events after majors are a letdown to some, but the RBC Canadian Open usually offers golf fans a lot of excitement. We had an exciting finish last year that saw Nathan Green pick his first-ever PGA tour win, and I’m sure we’ll have another great story this year.

In picking the first two tournaments, I went with the player that was presumably the favorite heading into the event. I’d say that the favorite for this tournament is Paul Casey, who is coming off of a good week at St. Andrews, although he’s still probably kicking himself for a final round 75 that hurt any chance he had of catching Louis Oosthuizen.

However, I’m not gonna go with Casey this week, as I’ve got someone better in mind. He was my sleeper for the British Open, but he’s my winner this week. I’ll take Ricky Barnes to win, as he’s playing some excellent golf these days. Sure, he had a final round 77 at St. Andrews, but he played extremely well the first three days, and I think he’s due for a win.

He’s got nine Top 10’s on the year, and I believe this is the best spot for him to grab his first win of the season.

What are your predictions for this week’s events?