5. Justin Thomas

The incredible recent play of world No. 1 Dustin Johnson and world No. 2 Jon Rahm has people forgetting that world No. 3 Justin Thomas won three times this past season, and spent some time in the No. 1 spot himself.

A third place finish at the Tour Championship snapped a surprising T37, T49, T25 stretch; the first time since back-to-back T12s in August of 2019 that Thomas went two consecutive starts without a finish inside the top 8.

The 27-year-old Alabama product has 13 career Tour victories, something only Jack and Tiger have done quicker, but you have to wonder when he will start hearing whispers about winning “only” one major championship, if he is not victorious for a second time soon.

The 2017 PGA Championship winner was one stroke off the 54-hole lead at the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills before a final round 75 dropped him to a share of ninth, eight strokes behind winner Brooks Koepka.

4. Tyrrell Hatton

This is the time to buy-in on the 28-year-old Englishman. Hatton is as streaky as professional golfers come, and he is in the midst of one of his good streaks. He started the season with six straight finishes inside the top 14 (five of those inside the top 6), including a win at the stacked-field Arnold Palmer Invitational.

After two down weeks (T69 at WGC-FedEx St. Jude and a missed cut at the PGA Championship), he has gone T25, T16, 7 respectively in his last three starts. He has five top 10s in majors over the past four seasons, making him sufficiently battle-tested in this format.

Hatton is elite with his irons, ranking 4th on Tour in strokes gained: approach-the-green, and 13th in strokes gained: tee-to-green, making him a great fit for this event. He is also a tremendous putter, and is second on Tour this year in birdie average.

When we last saw him, he was hitting 29 of 36 greens in regulation over the weekend at East Lake, and posting the fifth best score in the field.

The biggest concern with him is his temperament: he has a proclivity for wearing his emotions on his sleeves; can he keep the negative thoughts reigned in if he gets into contention on a brutal course?

3. Jon Rahm

The 25-year-old Spaniard has two wins in his last six Tour starts and they were both doozies: he won by three at The Memorial Tournament on a week where Muirfield Village was playing especially hard, and at the BMW Championship, the second round of the FedExCup playoffs, where he beat the seemingly unbeatable Dustin Johnson by nailing a carnivalesque 66-foot putt on the first playoff hole.

It was a little disappointing to fans that a second round 74 at East Lake prevented Rahm vs DJ Part II (he finished fourth), but he still closed with weekend 66s and is undoubtedly among the favorites at Winged Foot.

If the world No. 2 is able to claim his first major championship this week – he finished T3 at this event last year – it would be his fourth consecutive year with three wins worldwide, in just 4.5 years as a professional. Heck, maybe that Rahm vs DJ Part II happens in New York.

2. Dustin Johnson

It was not long ago that we were wondering what was wrong with DJ. Now we’re wondering if he will ever lose again. The newly-minted PGA Tour Player of the Year has been absolutely unconscious as of late, and is quite possibly in the best stretch of his Hall of Fame career.

Since an uncharacteristically poor 80-80 missed cut at The Memorial, followed by an early WD at the 3M Open, the 36-year-old has produced the following results: a T12 at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational (where he shot four rounds in the 60s), a T2 at the PGA Championship, an 11-stroke obliteration of the field to win The Northern Trust, a runner-up at the BMW Championship (where he lost in a playoff after Jon Rahm somehow nailed a 66’ birdie putt), and then a victory at the Tour Championship, which won him the FedExCup and made him $15 million richer.

In that time, he has elevated himself back to No.1 in the world rankings, and for the first time in seemingly forever, a player actually has a firm grasp on that position. He is showing absolutely nothing resembling a weakness in his game.

But before you bet your house on DJ claiming victory at Winged Foot, it needs to be said again: he has struggled badly to close majors. Just one of his 23 career victories has come in a major, the 2016 U.S. Open. He has finished runner-up at least once in all four majors, and has posted ten top-5s and 18 top 10s.

Put simply, he has been a magnet for controversy on this stage, and no matter how unbeatable he looks, he cannot run from his past. There is way too much scar tissue to ignore.

1. Xander Schauffele

He IS going to win one of these, and it is probably going to be very soon. We’re not worried about having to eat crow on that.

Will it be this week? Everyone knows Xander Schauffele loves the majors, as he has six top 10s, in addition to two other top-20s, over the past three seasons. He could easily be the biggest beneficiary of Brooks Koepka’s injury.

Among the players in the field yet to win a major, he is the one who looks closest to actually slamming the door on one. In 10 starts since the COVID layoff, the 26-year-old has finished outside the top 25 just once, and most recently, he had the lowest score of anyone in the field at the Tour Championship (he officially finished second because Dustin Johnson got to start five strokes ahead of him).

Schauffele has made three career U.S. Open starts, finishing T5, T6, T3 respectively. Is that enough? Do we really need to keep going? Lets also throw out there that he finished the 2020 season second in scrambling, which could be critical at a course like Winged Foot, and three of his four Tour victories have come at events with stacked fields (Tour Championship, WGC-HSBC Champions, Sentry Tournament of Champions).

Next Five: Patrick Cantlay, Patrick Reed, Abraham Ancer, Tony Finau, Matthew Wolff