The last we saw of Rory McIlroy, he was peeling out of the parking lot of Pinehurst No. 2 after an inexplicable meltdown over the final few holes of the U.S. Open. The collapse, which allowed Bryson DeChambeau to claim the national championship was so scarring, that McIlroy declined to speak to reporters, withdrew from a PGA Tour Signature event scheduled for the following week, and has largely been out of sight ever since.

That all changes this week, when McIlroy returns to The Renaissance Club to defend his title in the Genesis Scottish Open, a joint production between the PGA Tour and European tour that allows everyone to tune up for the Open Championship. McIlroy opened as the odds favorite in the tournament, which will feature six of the top 10 players in the world rankings—though not No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who will be the most notable absence in North Berwick this week.

With Scheffler out of the picture, all wagering eyes turn to McIlroy, who hit a 2-iron for the ages last year at Renaissance to birdie the final hole and beat Robert MacIntyre by a shot. On paper, McIlroy arrives in Scotland playing excellent golf—he’s gone win, win, T12, T4, T15 and solo second over his past six starts. But after bogeying three of the final four holes to give away the U.S. Open, his mental state in Scotland will be scrutinized as much as his game.

2024 Genesis Scottish Open Odds?

Odds as of July 9

Genesis Scottish Open Best Bets

Tommy Fleetwood to Win (+1800)

Talk about a perfect confluence of time and place: Fleetwood can finally shake the yoke of never having won on the PGA Tour—in Europe! That matter aside, this week sets up very well for a player who’s been in contention regularly in the U.S. this season, with top-20 finishes in six of his last nine starts, a span that includes a T3 at the Masters. And the Englishman has thrived in the Scottish Open, going T6 and T4 in each of the past two seasons to go with a playoff loss in 2020. Plus, he has to break through eventually, right?

Rory McIlroy Top-5 Finish (+170)

Ah, Rory. Is a golf game that’s been excellent for most of this season good enough to override a potentially fragile mental state stemming from his collapse in the U.S. Open? We’d feel better about taking him to win if he’d played since Pinehurst, and gotten all the public baggage from that episode out of the way. But he hasn’t, so we’ll hedge with a top-five finish, which fits with a tournament that’s never had a repeat winner. And for all of last year’s heroics, McIlroy’s average finish in the Scottish Open is 51.8, which includes missed cuts in two of his past four appearances.

Xander Schauffele Top-10 Finish (+110)

With Scheffler taking the week off, the best player in North Berwick this week is arguably Schauffele, who’s been flat-out fantastic since February. While he doesn’t have Scheffler’s gaudy win totals, he’s made 50 straight cuts and been in contention in almost every big event—the Genesis, the Players, the Masters, the PGA Championship, the Wells Fargo, the Memorial and the U.S. Open. And the California native knows his way around links courses, having won the Scottish Open in 2022 and tied for 10th in 2021. Watch out for this guy next week at Royal Troon.

Genesis Scottish Open Betting Tips

As is the norm in Scotland, weather can dictate so much—Bernd Wiesberger won at 22-under at Renaissance Club in 2019, while Schauffele won at 7-under on the same layout three years later. Early this week, the forecast for North Berwick called for winds ranging from 10 to 13 miles per hour, although that can certainly change as the North Sea dictates.

The PGA Tour began co-sanctioning this event three years ago, and the winners since have been Schaffuele and McIlroy—which certainly suggests how seriously the top players now take this tournament, given its position on the doorstep of the Open Championship. And Renaissance Club isn’t some centuries-old Scottish layout; it only opened in 2007, and began serving as host of this event in 2019, so everyone should be on even footing as far as course knowledge.

But there are some players to watch, outside of the clear odds favorites. Englishman Aaron Rai has been playing lights-out golf on the PGA Tour the past few weeks, finishing T2 and T7 in his past two outings, and he beat Fleetwood in a playoff to win the Scottish Open in 2020—the year before the PGA Tour jumped in, flooding it with players from the U.S.

Davis Thompson won last week at the John Deere (yeah, we called it) after finishing T2 the week before, but those were target-golf birdie-fests and who knows if his form will continue in more rugged conditions across the pond.

The local favorite will be MacIntyre, who’s had a very nice summer in North America winning the Canadian Open and finishing T8 in the PGA Championship. But his runner-up finish to McIlroy last season marked his only career top-10 at Renaissance, and he’s missed the cut in two of his last three starts stateside. Another intriguing play is Tom Kim, T6 and solo third in his two career Scottish forays to this point, but also extremely hit-and-miss right now—he finished second behind Scheffler at the Travelers, only to miss the cut in Detroit the following week.