High-quality field makes the battle for Pebble Beach glory a Major attraction

I feel extremely sorry for anyone who dislikes sport and particularly for those who do not immerse themselves in the 16 days a year in which Major golf tournaments take place.

The next Major, the US Open, starts today and has the potential to be one of the best in many years, with a phenomenally high-quality field competing at one of the greatest courses, spectacular Pebble Beach.

The only downer is that the action goes on so late, with four straight 2am finishes on the cards if you want to follow as much of the action as possible.

In Wednesday’s organ Steve Palmer produced a masterful guide to the 156 competitors and named his best bets based on his endless hours of weekly study of the sport.

Here, with far less skill, is my guide to the leading 12 contenders:

Rory McIlroy
The range of possibilities with McIlroy is wider than for anyone else.

If he plays like he did in Canada over the weekend he can turn this into a procession, but he has an ability to lose his form as suddenly as people lose their car keys, which is why I have backed him at 9-2 to miss the cut this week. He’ll be devastated to hear that.

Dustin Johnson
Politicians who take cocaine just fess up and march on towards No. 10. Golfers serve bans, which is what DJ had to do a few years ago.

Like McIlroy he can be brilliant or deeply disappointing on any given week, but the experts say this week could test his accuracy to breaking point so I shall look elsewhere.

Brooks Koepka
The most under-acknowledged golfer of all time. He is gunning for a US Open hat-trick and has won four of the last nine Majors (and didn’t even compete in one of them) yet if he appeared in the Question of Sport picture round it would be 10-1 that anyone named him.

Given his ridiculous recent Majors record of 1-6-13-1-39-1-2-1 perhaps it is an act of madness to oppose him, but I will.

Tiger Woods
A golf course is a golf course to my untrained eye, but apparently the width of the fairways, thickness of the rough, size of the greens and various other factors mean certain players suit certain tracks, although it was interesting to hear McIlroy say the other day the key thing is to be playing well on any given week.

Anyway, Pebble Beach suits Tiger according to the experts and so he has a fantastic chance of nudging to within two of Jack Nicklaus’s Majors record. Not my main bet but if he wins I won’t lose.

Patrick Cantlay
Paul McGinley has a lovely broadcasting voice and I find it particularly endearing when he refers to Patrick Cant-a-lay.

This kid appears to be ready to join the elite now and must be considered a threat to all. The trouble is those pesky bookmakers are well aware of his talent and are giving nothing away.

Jordan Spieth
There was a time a couple of years ago when Spieth made golf look so easy you wondered how he could ever lose, but this sport is a brutal test of technique and temperament and his game has been out of kilter for a while.

He has started hanging around the top ten of recent tour leaderboards but is on the short side this week nonetheless.

Justin Rose
There are some people in sport who everyone regards as nice but who I know for a fact aren’t that nice when there is not a microphone or camera in front of them.

However, I refuse to believe Rose is one of them. He seems dictionary-definition nice and it is easy to be pleased for him when he succeeds. But his recent and US Open form do not suggest he is the likeliest winner.

Rickie Fowler
The best player not to win a Major used to be Colin Montgomerie.

Now it is his non-lookalike Fowler, although a record of ten top-tens in 38 Major appearances is not an especially compelling reason to back him this week.

Xander Schauffele
One of the new generation of charisma-free professionals who is so robotic you feel like tapping his chest to see if it makes a hollow metallic sound.

I’m sure he’s a perfectly good bloke but his relentless focus and painstakingly-slow swing rehearsals mean he is a big price to fill Lee Trevino’s shoes any time soon. He could easily win this though.

John Rahm
I always think he should be the unpublished verse from Snooker Loopy: “Now big Johnny Rahm, he came to 'arm, when his ball ended in the drink.” Or something.

Anyway, he’s the man to oppose in match bets this week because, for all his abundant talent, he is a right old hot head, and if he can stand this test of temperament I shall be surprised and impressed. And skint.

Justin Thomas
One of those players you often consider backing but always find yourself preferring someone else for a more explicable reason. He will add to his 2017 USPGA one day and I won’t be on.

Jason Day
I have had untold admiration for Day since reading his wonderful letter to his 12-year-old self after the death of his father, but thankfully that admiration has not led to backing him on a regular basis.

He’s the Darren Anderton of golf in that injury follows him like a stalker, and this monstrous talent rarely seems in the right shape to let his ability shine. But he is getting towards a potentially backable price.

Summary
Xander Schauffele might be the best value of the leading dozen, but I will add Francesco Molinari to the plan even though he apparently dislikes links golf, and Shane Lowry because he is in form and relishes difficult courses.

I will inevitably stumble upstairs in the early hours of Monday morning with little to show for my punting efforts but I will love it because there is nothing like a major golf tournament.

Good luck to all.

Volunteers shouldn't work for sweet FA

It has happened again. Last year this column took Burnley FC to task for appealing for volunteers to do matchday duties that they should have been paying people to do, and now a similar search is on for people to help make the 2020 European Championship finals run smoothly without getting financially rewarded for it.

Unpaid labour is not something that should be encouraged, and yet this FA-organised wheeze has been treated as the most marvellous idea in ages in some quarters.

On BBC Breakfast yesterday, for example, someone was given airtime to publicise the recruitment plan, with the presenters grinning away as if she was Willy Wonka announcing the existence of golden tickets.

Potential volunteers were even promised an Adidas outfit for their troubles, yet the usual reaction by BBC staff when someone blurts out the name of a company in such circumstances (“Er, ahem, other sportswear is available, haha”) was conspicuous by its absence this time.

Successful candidates, if being selected to work on a commercial enterprise for nothing can be regarded as one of life’s successes, were also promised other “goodies” by this person, who is presumably rewarded for her professional duties with a salary consisting of money rather than “goodies”, although she didn’t specify what they might be.

She did, however, make it clear you wouldn’t get to see any football just in case any cheeky bugger thought they might at least get the odd glimpse of a Slovenian taking a corner midway through a busy shift.

Some may say this is a good scheme in that it enables people to feel part of an amazing event and that the idea of getting people to help but not paying them worked perfectly well in the London Olympics, when hundreds of thousands of folk offered to cheerily stand at venues pointing to the nearest hotdog stand or whatever.

But this is not a school fete or an attempt to fund a wheelchair for a child in need. If everyone involved in the Olympics or Euro 2020 was offering their services for free, fine, but they are not. The last European finals generated revenue of nearly £2 billion and plenty of people will have made an absolute packet out of it.

And, besides, it is not just potentially quite rewarding tasks like smiling warmly at excited Estonia supporters that need to be carried out.

The FA site says volunteers will “assist with the delivery of the event through a wide range of important roles from Accreditation, Broadcast, Fan Zones, Logistics, Transport, Spectator Services and Workforce and more”.

I’m sure there will be no shortage of willing helpers so perhaps nobody should mind too much at the absence of something as fundamental as a wage, but the principle of unpaid work is not one that should be encouraged and the notion of volunteering ought to be preserved for more important tasks than showing people which way to turn when they arrive at Wembley Park tube station.

Giving blood, walking an elderly neighbour’s dog, sifting through donations at the charity shop and such like are what volunteering is for. Sorting out a reporter’s accreditation for Wales v Norway is not.

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