Woods missed last year’s event due to ankle sugery but is set to compete at Royal Troon in a field number 158 golfers.

Scottie Scheffler features in an all-American threeball with Jordan Spieth and Cameron Young.

Here are the tee times for rounds one and two at the Ayrshire course:

Defending champion Brian Harman believes the heckling he was subjected to during last year’s Open will prove to be “an anomaly”.

Harman received what he termed “unrepeatable” abuse during his victory at Royal Liverpool 12 months ago, but used it as motivation to claim his first major title in dominant fashion at Hoylake.

The left-hander revealed in his post-championship press conference that one incident in particular helped him get back on track following a slow start to the third round.

Justin Rose believes he still has the “horsepower” to win another major title, more than a decade after his US Open triumph.

Rose, who finished fourth as a 17-year-old amateur on his Open debut at Birkdale in 1998, was in danger of not making a 21st appearance in the year’s final major after narrowly missing out on a number of exemption categories.

However, the former Olympic champion made sure of his place in the field for Royal Troon by coming through a 36-hole final qualifier at Burnham & Berrow earlier this month and now has his sights set on contending for the Claret Jug.

The Open is the one major which Tiger Woods, who hasn’t come close to replicating his previous form, feels he can be realistically competitive. That is with the right conditions on links courses where accuracy has a premium over distance.

He said: “The older you get the less you can carry the golf ball but over here, you can run the golf ball 100 yards if you get the right wind and the right trajectory.

“I think that’s one of the reasons why you see older champions up there on the board because they’re not forced to have to carry the ball 320 yards any more.

“I’ve been training a lot better. We’ve been busting it pretty hard in the gym, which has been good. (The) body’s been feeling better to be able to do such things, and it translates on being able to hit the ball better.”

Tiger Woods has dismissed talk of imminent retirement and aimed a barbed comment at Colin Montgomerie for suggesting he should quit the game.

Woods missed the cut by two strokes at last month’s US Open and that prompted European Ryder Cup great Montgomerie, 61, to say at the weekend: “There is a time for all sportsmen to say goodbye, but it’s very difficult to tell Tiger it’s time to go. Obviously, he still feels he can win. We are more realistic.”

When asked about those comments ahead of The Open at Royal Troon, Woods replied: “Well, as a past champion, I’m exempt until I’m 60. Colin’s not.

“He’s not a past champion, so he’s not exempt, so he doesn’t get the opportunity to make that decision. I do.

“So when I get to his age, I get to still make that decision, where he doesn’t. I’ll play as long as I can play and I feel like I can still win the event.”

“I know that I’m in a good spot,” McIlroy said, “If I think about 2015 through 2020, I seldom had a realistic chance to win a major championship in that five-year period. So I’d much rather have these close calls. It means that I’m getting closer.

“I’d love to be able to get one over the line, but as soon as I do that, people are going to say, well, when are you going to win your sixth? So it’s never ending.”

Rory McIlroy insists he would rather have agonising close calls than no chance to win after quickly turning his US Open heartbreak into major motivation.

McIlroy briefly held a two-shot lead at Pinehurst with five holes to play but bogeyed three of the last four, missing very short putts on the 16th and 18th to finish a shot behind Bryson DeChambeau.

It was the 35-year-old’s best chance to win his first major since 2014 and brought back painful memories of squandering a four-shot lead in the final round of the 2011 Masters with a closing 80.

Eight years on, the world number 11 heads to Ayrshire in an infinitely better frame of mind and one of the betting favourites as he chases a first major title.

“Well I played terrible,” Fleetwood said with a smile when asked by the PA news agency for his memories of the 2016 Open. “I was really struggling with my game at the time.”

For a player who has taken notes on every shot he has hit since he was 15 years old, Matt Fitzpatrick is surprisingly at a loss to explain his poor Open record.

The 2022 US Open champion also has top-10 finishes in the Masters and US PGA Championship under his belt, but a tie for 20th at Royal Portrush in 2019 remains his best finish in his home major.

Here are the latest betting odds ahead of the start of The Open. World No.1 Scottie Scheffler is the current favourite with Rory McIlroy also backed to end his major trophy drought: