The British Open at Royal Lytham and St. Anne’s tees off Thursday morning across the Pond. That course has always favored creative shot makers, with Seve Ballesteros winning two of his Opens there, and Gary Player also winning there. In what seems like an eternity ago, David Duval won the last Open Championship played at Royal Lytham back in 2001 when he was on top of the golf world.

Meanwhile, we’ve now seen nine straight first time Major winners. There’s a pretty good chance that it will get to 10. According to the odds released by RJ Bell of pre game.com, half of the top ten favorites for The Open have never won a Major. Tiger Woods is the favorite at 8:1, ahead of Rory McIlroy. Among those who have never won, Lee Westwood (12:1), Luke Donald (15:1), Justin Rose (25:1), Sergio Garcia (30:1), and Francesco Molinari (30:1) are given the best odds.

I’ll be boring and predict that Tiger Woods wins the British Open, thus setting off a whole slew of Tiger Woods articles next week. Among those looking for their first, I’ll take Luke Donald as the one who will extend it to ten straight first-timers.

[photo via US Presswire]