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We are currently in the midst of an historic major championship streak. Dating back to the 2015 PGA Championship when Jason Day took Whistling Straits, seven straight major winners have been first-timers to the club. Danny Willettt, Dustin Johnson, Henrik Stenson, Jimmy Walker, Sergio Garcia and Brooks Koepka joined Day.

And now that streak could conceivably continue for another year or two. Who's here to say Rickie Fowler, Hideki Matsuyama, Justin Thomas, Thomas Pieters and Jon Rahm won't win the next five majors? Not me.

"I think it's a really impressive stat and it speaks to the state of the game," Jordan Spieth (who has two majors) said on Tuesday. "A lot of tremendous young players right now. And then you've got guys like Henrik and Dustin who -- in that past seven stretch, who are guys who are still young, but guys who have been around in contention many, many times, and it was sooner or later going to happen, and it did. It was just a matter of time for them.

"It could be anybody this week."

It really could. Of the top 10 favorites this week, according to Bovada, four don't have a major championship yet (Fowler, Rahm, Matsuyama and Tommy Fleetwood).

"I think there's a lot more guys who haven't won majors than guys who have that are playing," added Spieth. "So the chances are it is going to be somebody that hasn't won one. But it's very difficult to do the first time. Just mentally it's that much harder than winning a tournament in general. And those are very difficult to win."

They are, and yet so many golfers have broken through over the last couple of seasons. Guys we thought would definitely win one (Johnson and Day) and guys it felt like would never win one (Garcia). Young guys (Koepka and Willett) and older guys (Walker and Stenson). The one thing they have in common? All of them are (or were) stars.

"There's so many good players now," Koepka said. "The younger generation, you look at how many good players there are. You look at how it was at Erin Hills. Everyone up there hadn't won a major up there pretty much. Rickie, Justin, Hideki, they haven't won majors, and I think everyone in this room knows they're going to win one. It's only a question of when, not if.

"So there's so many good young players. And even in the college level, even the guys that are coming up, I mean some of them are going to win majors; you just know it. It's kind of like the Tiger effect, I guess you could say, growing up watching them."

I explored this idea after Walker's win last year and came to the conclusion that because golf has gotten so lucrative over the past two decades (thanks, Tiger), the competition has followed and is now catching up. Geoff Shackelford came to a similar conclusion when he looked at it.

The result is that we could get 10 or 13 straight first-time winners and a huge swath of good players are going to end their careers with a single major championship. And the ones that can get to four or five in this era? Well, they'll be considered some of the all-time greats of the game. 

So who wins the 2017 British Open? And what massive long shot stuns the golfing world? Visit SportsLine now to see the full British Open leaderboard from the model that nailed the Masters and find out.