The Longshot: Tyrrell Hatton has the form to win in Canada

RORY McIlroy will try to rediscover his mojo at the Canadian Open this weekend arriving as the double defending champ.

The Down man finished tied seventh after a disappointing round of 75 on Sunday at the Memorial last weekend and his latest mini-collapse prompted tournament host Jack Nicklaus to say to him: “We have to sit down and chat sometime.”

McIlroy had gone into his final round tied for the lead on six under par, but Viktor Hovland claimed his fourth PGA Tour title after a playoff win.

The Canadian event takes place a week before the US Open in Los Angeles and McIlroy will head a decent enough field for the event.

He defeated Tony Finau (who stays away this year) by two shots last year, and ran away to a seven-stroke victory in 2019, while the 2020 and 2021 editions were cancelled due to the pandemic.

This one will be at a new venue, the Oakdale Golf and Country Club in Toronto.

It’s now nine years since Rory McIlroy last won a Major when he won both the Open and US PGA Championship in 2014.

Brooks Koepka has now surged past him on to five Majors and will be considered by many as his superior on the golf course.

McIlroy is 9/2 to warm up for the third Major of the year with a win.

The only other top-ten golfer ing him in the field is US Open holder Matthew Fitzpatrick, who is 14/1, alongside the likes of Sam Burns, Cameron Young and Tyrell Hatton. Good pals Shane Lowry and Tommy Fleetwood are both 20/1.

Hatton now has Lowry’s old caddie ‘Bo’ and is due a win on tour.

He has finished tied sixth at the Phoenix Open, tied fourth at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, second at The Players Championship, tied third at the Wells Fargo and tied fifth at the Byron Nelson.

Matt Kuchar (40/1) is one of five players participating to finish in the top 20 in the last five Canadian Opens, alongside McIlroy, Lowry, home player Mackenzie Hughes and Ricky Barnes.

No Canadian has won this event since Pat Fletcher way back in 1954 but the locals often contend and one or two often finish the week in the places and 20 will tee up.

Corey Connors (18/1) finished sixth from off the pace 12 months ago, Adam Hadwin (50/1) began the final round trailing by just a stroke four years ago but faded to finish sixth, and Hughes (100/1) was 8th in 2018.

Connors is one of the most consistent performers on the PGA Tour.

He won the Texas Open this year and in 15 starts ahead of the Memorial had enjoyed nine top-25 finishes so brings plenty of form into his home Open.

Leaving Cert is not pointless but it's not the be-all and end-all

IT’S BEEN 25 years since I sat down to see how fast my biro could carry me. This week is a real throwback to a quarter of a century ago as I too battled glorious weather in the lead-up to my Leaving Cert.

I even left school a month early so I could get my head into the zone for studying but then, as now, the weather was splitting the stones and I spent a lot more time sunbathing than was exactly necessary. My exam results may not have been what I hoped for but no one has ever glowed like I did when sitting down to English Paper One.

Tomorrow promises to be a day of great tension for around 60,000 teens. As a participant in the 1998 exam (Othello, Silas Marner, plucking and abrasion, the Consumer Information Act 1978, Venn diagrams, the Gaelic League, and Yeats came up) I feel I am experienced enough to fulminate on the subject. And after furnishing readers with many winning sports tips in the past few weeks, we are probably due a shift of gear and so will offer some exam tips instead down here.

First off, don’t put too much pressure on yourself: exams are not a true test of your knowledge like the TV programme Pointless is; exams are just some stupid questions on some stupid subject.

In the real world people don’t ‘test’ you. They show you how to do something and then they say, “Now you do that” and you do it and they say something like “Good job.” 

But there you are tomorrow, sitting in the exam hall scratching your forehead away, having not done enough revision. It is time to turn over your paper. Do that. Now calmly survey the room and relax. The only head up is yours and everyone else has started writing; the invigilator is smiling at you. Don’t worry. Give them a wink, because now it’s time to get down to business.

First, circle the questions you plan on doing. Maybe you have to answer three out of eight questions. You will end up circling, say, six that you would be willing to answer. Divide that number by two and you will have the three questions you have selected.

If a question is worth 25% of the marks and the exam lasts three hours, you should spend approximately 42 minutes and 17 seconds answering it (bring a stopwatch!). If your time management doesn’t work out as well as you had planned, use the tried and tested formula of a long first answer, a short second and an even shorter third.

The first word in the question will usually be something along the lines of theorise, analyse, describe, illustrate, evaluate, discuss, hammer home, compare, contrast, criticise, assess, express as a fraction, outline, explain, consider, define, redefine. These all mean about the same thing: Don’t leave the answer blank. Write something. Something interesting that happened you while you were on holidays. Or the answer to a maths question in an English exam and they might think there was some mix-up at Education Headquarters.

Another thing you could do if you cannot think of an answer is rip the pages out of the answerbook and when the results are returned, say that it was the staples’ fault and demand you be allowed to re-sit the exam. Get another answerbook during the exam and write around a page of an answer starting mid-sentence. At the top of the page write, “Gee, this binding is a lot better than the last one”. Then cross this sentence out so it won’t seem so obvious that you want them to read it, but their subsequent investigation will turn it up.

What you learn when you get a job after the Leaving Cert is that the recalled knowledge you are tested on is useless in the real world. Over here we have AI limbering up to take over and we will soon all be breaking rocks in quarries for our robotic overlords.

If you really have done no study at all and are already planning on repeating or doing an apprenticeship, you could have a little fun. Fifteen minutes into the exam, stand up, rip up all the papers into very small pieces, throw them into the air and yell out “Merry Christmas.” Then ask for another copy of the exam. Say you lost the first one.

Or walk in, get the exam, sit down. About five minutes into it, loudly say to the invigilator: “I don’t understand ANY of this. I’ve been studying this stuff for two years! What’s the deal? And who the hell are you? Where’s the regular guy?” 

• This article was written in a tongue-in-cheek style and the author in no way recommends following its advice. He cannot be held responsible for any future loss of earning power if you do.

Frankie is a real personality

TWENTY years ago heading into the summer Clive Woodward’s England rugby side were 5/2 to win the World Cup later in the year, although they would start the tournament as 2/1 second favourites behind an odds-on All Blacks. I this because I fancied them to win it, but not at that price. So instead I backed Jonny Wilkinson to win BBC Sports Personality of the Year the following December.

He was 8/1 and I figured that he would have a decisive role in securing a win Down Under that year. I had enough on it to almost celebrate after his last minute of extra time drop goal.

Ever since I’ve taken an interest in the prize that really shouldn’t mean very much at all. Frankie Dettori added the Oaks to his 2,000 Guineas win over the weekend and although he only managed 10th on the favourite in the Derby (won at 9/2 by our tip Auguste Rodin) he has been installed as the 3/1 favourite to be awarded the BBC prize come Christmas after he has retired after the Breeders’ Cup in November. Whatever you think of the Italian you wouldn’t deny he certainly has been a personality.

A standout star at the women’s football World Cup for England is the danger (although last year’s winner Beth Mead has been ruled out of that with an injury).

Hammer blow

WEST Ham have a chance of adding a second European title to their trophy cabinet tomorrow evening when they take on Fiorentina in the Europa Conference final. They were Cup Winners Cup winners over 1860 Munich way back in 1965 (the Florence side won the first one in 1960.) A decade later the Hammers reached another final only to go down to Anderlecht.

David Moyes’ men are 10/11 to lift the trophy in what is likely to be former Ireland international Declan Rice’s last game with the club and it is even money he will move from East London to North London and Arsenal.

The Bet

ENGLISHMAN Tyrell Hatton will probably never claim a Major but is due a win on tour and we’ll take him at 14/1 to win in Canada.