HOYLAKE, England – We’re just about ready to go at the 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, the final major of the season, and storylines abound.

The roster of superstar winners here is impressive, including but not limited to Rory McIlroy (2014), Tiger Woods (2006), Roberto de Vicenzo (1967) and Peter Thomson (1956).

U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark aims to become the first to win back-to-back majors since Jordan Spieth in 2015 (Masters, U.S. Open). Clark also has risen to the top 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time. Four others in the top 10 – Patrick Cantlay, Max Homa, Viktor Hovland and Xander Schauffele – will be trying to win their first major this week.

Here are five burning questions going into The Open.

Can Rickie atone for U.S. Open fade?

Since turning pro in 2009, Rickie Fowler has nine top-five finishes and 13 top-10s in majors, tied with Lee Westwood in both categories for most without a win. Fowler, 34, held a share of the 54-hole U.S. Open lead with eventual winner Wyndham Clark but faded to a final-round 75 (T5).

Still, this has been a sensational comeback season for one of golf’s most popular players. With eight top-10 finishes, including his first win in four and a half years at the Rocket Mortgage Classic earlier this month, he’s come back from the abyss of a swing change that didn’t work. His fans have rejoiced.

It’s not overstating it to say everybody likes Rickie. So humble and respectful is Fowler that when it was time to go back to his old coach, Butch Harmon, he set it in motion in the most Rickie way ever. He called the legendary coach late last year to say he was making a change, then asked, sincerely, if there was anyone Harmon would recommend.

“I had in mind the reason I was calling him,” Fowler said at the Genesis Scottish Open, where he suffered a rare off-week with a T42 finish. “My thought was to see how we could make it work to be back together. I was fine with it being remote – to this day I’ve still only seen him four times since then – but I asked him, ‘Hey, I’m going in a different direction; is there anyone that you would recommend?’

“I was kind of throwing that out there to see if he’d say, ‘It’s me,’” Fowler added.

Harmon did say that, and they’ve worked on his swing via video while Fowler and Craig Harmon, one of Butch’s brothers in South Florida, also helped as needed. So far it’s been a rousing success

Can Rory keep it rolling?

Rory McIlroy won four of his first 25 majors and is 0-for-33 since then. The drought has been painful of late: six top-10 finishes in his last seven major starts, the only exception being his missed cut at the Masters in April. It’s been nearly nine years since his last major win, and his fans are still recovering from recent heartbreakers.

At the 150th Open Championship at St. Andrews last summer, McIlroy’s putter went cold as he made 16 pars and shot 70 to finish second. At the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club last month, it was the same old sad story: 16 final-round pars, poor putting, 70, another runner-up finish.

According to @JustinRayGolf, in nine instances where McIlroy was within five of the lead going into the last round of a major since 2015, he has taken almost two putts more per round.

On the plus side, he won the 2014 Open Championship at Royal Liverpool. He’s also on a run of six straight top-10 finishes on the PGA TOUR, most recently his dramatic victory at the Genesis Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club on Sunday. He made over 113 feet of putts in the last round after struggling mightily in Rounds 2 and 3.

When it was over, McIlroy having made a 38-foot birdie putt at the par-3 14th before rolling in birdie putts of 4 1/2 feet and 10 1/2 feet on 17 and 18, respectively, he looked like a new man.

“Hopefully,” he said, “this breaks the seal, and we can go on from here.”

Will Spain rejoice yet again?

On Sunday, Carlos Alcaraz of Spain won Wimbledon in a five-set thriller over Novak Djokovic. Meanwhile, Jon Rahm, one of eight players from Spain in the field at The Open this week, is No. 1 in the FedExCup (albeit by just seven points over Scottie Scheffler) and will be going for win No. 5 this season.

Rahm would become the first player since Jordan Spieth in 2015 to win multiple majors in a season.

What is it about Spain that it produces such great champions? Continuity, Rahm said. Just as there might not have been a Jon Rahm without Seve Ballesteros, there might not have been an Alcaraz without Rafael Nadal.

“I think when you have the right people to look up to, it's a little bit easier to get to that,” Rahm said. “Rafa obviously had a few major tennis champions to look up to when he was coming up and he did what he did, so it's obvious for Carlos to grow up watching Rafa do what he did.

“Not that it's easier,” Rahm continued, “but it makes you want to be the next. Obviously when you're talking about football, there's a massive list of great football players that we've had in Spain, so that's obviously part of the culture. When it comes to golf, we've had incredible references, as well.”

The Rahm rampage this season started with an improbable comeback win at the Sentry Tournament of Champions and culminated with his second major title at the Masters, but he’s been quiet of late. He missed the Travelers Championship cut and finished T10 without ever contending at the U.S. Open. He also tied for 50th at the PGA Championship and has slipped to third, behind McIlroy, in the Official World Golf Ranking.

Can Scheffler change the narrative?

World No. 1 Scheffler has two victories this season, including a victory at THE PLAYERS Championship and a successful title defense at the WM Phoenix Open.

What’s more, his stats and recent results are so good as to look like a misprint.

Scheffler leads the PGA TOUR with 15 top-10 finishes, most recently a tie for third at the Genesis Scottish Open. He also has risen to the top in more than a few key statistical categories, among them Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, SG: Approach to Green, SG: Tee-to-Green and SG: Total. The lone blemish: He’s 137th in SG: Putting.

How many tournaments might he have won by now if he wasn’t struggling with his putting?

Hang on, Scheffler said Tuesday. He’s not putting that badly.

“I had back-to-back tournaments that I could have won where I putted poorly,” he said. “… The announcers, any time you step over the putt, it's like, ‘Well, this is the part of the game he struggles with.’”

Scheffler clearly dislikes this narrative; he also says he doesn’t pay attention to it.

“The things that I'm working on right now I feel very excited about,” he said. “I'm hitting a lot of good putts. Pretty soon, a lot of those good putts will start falling in the middle of the hole instead of dodging around the side of it. I have a lot of faith in what I'm working on right now, and I'm hoping to see some results soon.”

Who is being overlooked?

Tyrrell Hatton, 31, faded at the Genesis Scottish Open – 5 under for his first 12 holes in the final round, he went 4 over for the last six to finish T6 – but he’s contending most every week. Since the Wells Fargo Championship in early May, Hatton has compiled six top-15 finishes in seven starts, his only “bad” week a T27 at the U.S. Open.

Hatton also thrives in difficult conditions, his lone PGA TOUR victory coming at the brutally difficult 2020 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. He’s 14th in the FedExCup, 13th in the world.

Tommy Fleetwood, 27th in the FedExCup and 21st in the world, also had it going in Scotland last week before being blown away in the final round, signing for a 2-over 72 to tie for sixth. Still, Fleetwood has six top-10 finishes this season, including a playoff loss to Nick Taylor at the RBC Canadian Open and a tie for fifth at the U.S. Open.

Robert MacIntyre’s final-round 64 in the fierce wind at the Genesis Scottish Open was the best of the day by two, and his runner-up finish should see the Scotsman brimming with confidence coming into Royal Liverpool.

“If he can shoot 64 in a day like today, he can do anything,” McIlroy said.