Fantasy Golf: Scottish Open preview

The 2013 Today’s Golfer Fantasy Golf game stays on the European Tour this week with the Scottish Open at Castle Stuart GC, near Inverness.

The Gil Hanse-designed course only opened in 2009 but it has already won awards and was a popular addition to the European Tour schedule when it made its debut last year.

A number of players are choosing to hone their games on a true links course before the Open Championship at Muirfield next week.

At 7,193 yards off the tips, it’s not a long course and scoring is likely to be very low. Luke Donald won on -19 for 54 holes in the rain-shortened event in 2011 and Jeev Milkha Singh’s -17 was good enough last year.

Fairways are pretty generous with the wind proving to be the course’s main defence – only five players broke 70 when it blew in the final round last year. The weather is set fair for Thursday and Friday but the wind could get up over the weekend.

Here is the six-man Today’s Golfer team for the Scottish Open:

Phil Mickelson, £3.8m
Lefty followed up his runner-up finish at the US Open with a missed cut at last week’s Greenbrier Classic, but he did finish T16 here last year. His aggressive style will likely yield lots of birdies or lots of bogeys this week but the fair weather should help him.

Ernie Els, £2.4m
The current Open champion has a fantastic links record and is on a great run of form with a win, a second, a T4 and a T6 in his last six starts.

Alex Noren, £1.6m
The Swede missed the cut in France last week but had four top-sex finished in six starts prior to that. He finished T3 at Castle Stuart last year.

Thomas Bjorn, £1.6m
Bjorn has missed the cut twice here but he has a good general record in Scotland and is the form man on the European Tour. His last five starts read T4-2-2-T18-T8.

Bernd Wiesberger, £1.4m
The Austrian is another man in fine form. He’s on a consecutive cuts made streak of 19 events that includes a win in Indonesia and nothing worse than a T14 in his last six starts.

Shane Lowry, £1.4m
The Irishman is used to playing links golf and does well in windy conditions. He’s recorded three top-12s in his last five events and was 14th and 11th the last two years at Castle Stuart.

> The deadline to pick your team for the Scottish Open is 7.30am on Thursday 11th July. See a full list of the field here.