You kind of cut half the field - Spieth waits on luck of the draw at Birkdale
Jordan Spieth feels The Open may be the easiest of the major championships to win, but only for those who find themselves on the right side of the draw.
Spieth - who was one stroke away from making a play-off at St Andrews in 2015 - will feature in The Open for the fifth time at Royal Birkdale this week.
In a news conference on Tuesday, the two-time major winner suggested his chances are likely to be heavily influenced by the weather conditions he faces on Thursday and Friday.
"I've kind of seen a bit of everything in four years' time," said Spieth of his previous Open experiences.
"At this tournament ... you kind of cut half the field, depending on the draw. Sometimes it's more or less. But most of the time there's at least a group that gets the worst weather. And it's almost impossible to win in that circumstance at an Open Championship.
"It may be the easiest of the majors to win, if you had to pick a major, just because the draw can take out half a field.
"I'm not saying it's easy based on competition or anything like that, I'm strictly saying that because a lot of the time some of the field is thrown out and you're actually playing against a smaller field, so your percentage chances go up.
"There's nothing you can do about it [getting on the wrong side of the draw] other than keep your head down, play as well as you can, and see what happens after two days. And then obviously the leaders have to play in the same conditions against each other."
Although he is wary about being on the wrong side of the draw, Spieth - scheduled to tee off at 9:47am local time on Thursday alongside defending Open champion Henrik Stenson and Kim Si-woo - believes the Birkdale course will provide the fairest possible test.
"They've done just a phenomenal job here," added the 23-year-old. "With the winds that we're going to have, if it's very difficult to hold a fairway, if you hit a really good shot and it creeps into the rough, there's very little rough, you're still fine.
"You get rewarded for a really good shot. And then it's graduated rough. The further off line you hit it, for the most part out here, the more trouble you're going to be in. And that's tough to do in a major because you've got so many people coming out of the trample-down areas that are far off the fairways. But they've somehow done it here it seems.
"There are a lot of risk/reward options off the tee out here, and if you choose the risky, and you still hit a good shot, it really will reward you."