US Open winner is anyone’s guess

There is a strong argument for suggesting that it is far easier to draw up a shortlist of real possibilities for tomorrow’s French Open men’s singles final at the beginning of the fortnight on the clinging clay at Roland Garros than to offer predictions on next week’s second Major, the US Open.

This year’s US Open is being played for the first time at the 7 153m Erin Hills in Wisconsin and unlike the tennis Grand Slam in Paris where the world rankings, allied to past success on clay, provide a solid basis for probable success, there are no sure things in a US Open.

Just a decade ago, few would have figured the bear-like figure of the Argentine Angel Cabrera as the eventual champion at Oakmont. Yet he won his first Major and a spot on the US Tour. It was to prove no fluke as he won again in the 2009 US Masters.

The winners of the past three tournaments – Americans Dustin Johnson, the reigning champion, and Jordan Spieth, the 2015 winner, and German Martin Kaymer, adding to his 2010 PGA title with a victory at Pinehurst in 2014, and you certainly can’t write them off.

But you have to go back to 1988 and 1989 to find a back-to-back winner, Curtis Strange coming out on top in a play-off over Nick Faldo at Brookline and winning by a shot the following year at Oak Hill Country Club.

But few would have pencilled in the name of Webb Simpson to spring a surprise at the ultra upmarket Olympic Club in 2012 yet he did, beating the 2010 winner, Ulsterman Graeme McDowell, by a shot.

Simpson is currently ranked 63rd in the world and, even though stranger things have happened, it is unlikely anyone will be reaching for a pencil to ring his name this year.

Nor, one would imagine, that of Lucas Glover, the man from South Carolina now ranked 102nd, but nevertheless the US Open champion at Beth Page in 2009, who will be teeing it up again this year with other former champions Justin Rose (2013), Rory McIlroy (2011), Jim Furyk (2003), and our own Ernie Els, champion in 1994 and 1997.

No. Any certainty on a winner at Erin Hills is arguably a little like having predicted the women’s singles finalists at Roland Garros.