Scottish Open: Five sleepers who could surprise and delight

The Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open field is packed with PGA and European Tour power, beginning with Rory Mcilroy, who’s closely followed by Ricky Fowler, Henrik Stenson, Patrick Reed, and Alex Noren. But as we saw last week, the most highly ranked and the most favored by the oddsmakers isn’t guaranteed success on Sunday afternoon.

Dundonald Links is a new course, as golf courses in Scotland go. It opened in 2005 and is still maturing as a links course, but it’s situated in prime golfing country and is popular as a both a comfortable track for recreational golfers and a championship-level test for skilled players.

The Dundonald greens are big and tend to be fast even after they’ve been given a good soaking. Precision shot-making on approach will be critical. Kyle Phillips did a good job of shaping the playing ground to replicate the sand hills and rolling terrain associated with traditional and established links courses.

Scotland will be cold and the winds will be gusty, and the rain will come and go throughout the Scottish Open. It’s not the sort of weather PGA TOUR players who make their home in Florida favor or value.

That said, and knowing that there are a number of PGA TOUR players in the Scottish Open field, warming up their games for The Open, there are also several less prominent players in the field who are skilled at playing in the conditions this week at Dundonald Links will bring. Any of them has the potential to deliver a winning game this week.

Let’s take a look.