The Open Championship

The Open Championship - colloquially known as the British Open outside the United Kingdom - is the oldest of the four major championships in men's golf. The event is hosted annually by one of several prestigious golf clubs in the United Kingdom and is administered by The R&A regardless of its location. It is always played on a links course. In 2006, it had a prize fund of £4 million (at the time, approximately €5.86 million or USD$7.43 million), the highest of the four majors.Other events, The Players Championship and the three individual World Golf Championship have higher prizes; However the major championships are recognized a superior status, based on tradition rather than prize money.

The Open is played on the weekend of the third Friday in July, and is the third major to take place each year following The Masters and the U.S. Open and before the PGA Championship. It has been an official event on the PGA TOUR since 1995, which means that the prize money won in the Open by PGA Tour members is included on the official money list. In addition, all Open Championships before that date have been retrospectively classified as PGA Tour wins, and the list of leading winners on the PGA Tour has been adjusted to reflect this. The European Tour has recognized The Open as an official event since its first official season in 1972.

History

The Open Championship was first played on 17 October 1860 at Prestwick Golf Club. The inaugural tournament was restricted to professionals, and attracted a field of eight, who played three rounds of Prestwick's twelve-hole course in a single day. Willie Park Senior won with a score of 174, beating the favourite, Old Tom Morris, by two strokes. The following year the tournament was opened to amateurs; eight of them joined ten professionals in the field.

Willie Park, Snr wearing the Championship Belt, the winner's prize at the Open from 1860 to 1870.

Originally, the trophy presented to the event's winner was the Champion's Belt, a red leather belt with a silver buckle. There was no prize money in the first three Opens. In 1863, a prize fund of £10 (then $50) was introduced, which was shared between the second- third- and fourth-placed professionals, with the Champion still just getting to keep the belt for a year. In 1864 Old Tom Morris won the first Champion's cash prize of £6. By 2004, the winner's cheque had increased one hundred and twenty thousand fold to £720,000, or perhaps two thousand fold after allowing for inflation. The Champions Belt was retired in 1870, when Young Tom Morris was allowed to keep it for winning the tournament three consecutive times. It was then replaced by the present trophy, The Golf Champion Trophy, better known by its popular name of The Claret Jug.

Prestwick Golf Club administered The Open from 1860 to 1870. In 1871, it agreed to organise it jointly with The Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews and The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. In 1892 the event was doubled in length from thirty six to seventy two holes, that is four rounds of what was by then the standard complement of eighteen holes. In the same year the prize fund reached £100. Due to an increasing number of entrants, a cut was introduced after two rounds in 1898. In 1920 full responsibility for The Open Championship was handed over to The Royal and Ancient Golf Club.

The early winners were all Scottish professionals, who in those days worked as greenkeepers, clubmakers, and caddies to supplement their modest winnings from championships and challenge matches. The Open has always been dominated by professionals, with only six victories by amateurs, all of which occurred between 1890 and 1930. The last of these was Bobby Jones's third Open and part of his celebrated Grand Slam. Jones was one of four Americans who won The Open between the First and Second World Wars, the first of whom had been Walter Hagen in 1922. These Americans and the French winner of the 1907 Open, Arnaud Massy, were the only winners from outside Scotland and England up to 1939.

The first post World War II winner was the American Sam Snead in 1946. In 1947 Fred Daly of Northern Ireland was victorious. While there have been many English and Scottish champions, Daly remains the only winner from either side of the Irish border, and there has never been a Welsh champion. Otherwise the early post war years The Open was dominated by golfers from the Commonwealth, with South African Bobby Locke and Australian Peter Thomson winning the Claret Jug in nine of the eleven championships from 1948 and 1958 between them.

Another South African, Gary Player was Champion in 1959. This was at the beginning of the "Big Three" era in professional golf, the three players in question being Player, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Palmer first competed in 1960, when he came second to the little known Australian Kel Nagle, but he won the two following years. While he was far from being the first American Open Champion, he was the first of their compatriots that many Americans saw win the tournament on television, and his charismatic success is often credited with persuading leading American golfers to make The Open a routine part of their schedule, rather than an optional extra. Of course, the development of trans-Atlantic air services also helped a great deal.

Nicklaus' Open Championship victories came in 1966, 1970 and 1978. This tally of three wins isn't very remarkable, and indeed he won all of the other three majors more often, but it greatly understates how prominent he was at the tournament throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He finished in the top five sixteen times, which is tied most in Open history with John Henry Taylor and easily the most in the post war era. This included seven second places. Nicklaus holds the records for most rounds under par (61) and most aggregates under par (14). At Turnberry in 1977 he was involved in one of the most celebrated contests in golf history, when his duel with Tom Watson went to the final shot before Watson emerged as the champion for the second time.

Watson won five Opens, more than anyone else has since the 1950s, but his final win in 1983 brought down the curtain on an era of U.S. domination. In the next eleven years there was only one American winner, with the others coming from Europe and the Commonwealth. The European winners of this era, Spaniard Seve Ballesteros, Sandy Lyle, who was the first Scottish winner for over half a century, and the Englishman Nick Faldo, were also leading lights among the group of players who began to get the better of the Americans in the Ryder Cup during this period.

In 1995, The Open became part of the PGA Tour's official schedule. John Daly's win in that year, which was a huge surprise even though he had won a major before, began another era of American domination. Tiger Woods has won three Championships to date, two at St Andrews in 2000 and 2005, and one at Hoylake in 2006. There was a dramatic moment at St Andrews in 2000, as the aging Jack Nicklaus waved farewell to the crowds while the young challenger to his crown as the greatest golfer of all time watched from a nearby tee; Nicklaus afterwards decided to play in the 2005 Open when the R&A moved the location to St. Andrews, and gave what will presumably be his truly final farewell to the fans. In 2002, all Open wins before 1995 were retrospectively classified as PGA Tour wins. Recent years have been notable for the number of wins by previously obscure golfers, including Paul Lawrie in 1999, Ben Curtis in 2003 and Todd Hamilton in 2004.

Host courses

From 1860 to 1870 The Open Championship was organised by and played at Prestwick Golf Club. Since it was revived in 1872 after a lapse of one year, it has always been played at a number of courses in rotation. Initially there were three courses in the rotation, namely Prestwick, St Andrews, and Musselburgh. In 1893 Royal St George's and Royal Liverpool Golf Club, Hoylake were invited to join the rotation. Since then a handful of further clubs have been added, and a few have been dropped. The common factor in the venues for The Open is that they have always been links courses. In more recent times the rotation has generally followed the pattern of being played in Scotland and England alternately. The general interruption to this pattern is the Old Course at St Andrews, which hosts the event every five years or so. There is, however, no strict rule and the host is appointed by the R&A around five years in advance. There is a map showing the locations of the venues here (there are thirteen dots for the fourteen courses; two of the courses are in the town of Sandwich).

There are nine courses in the current rota:
*St Andrews Links, Old Course: In 1873 the "Home of Golf" became the second course to host the Open. Nowadays, it does so more often than any other course.
*Muirfield: Muirfield is a private course which was built for The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, one of the trio of clubs which ran The Open in the 1870s and 1880s. It first staged The Championship in 1892, just nine months after it had been built.
*Royal St George's Golf Club: This course is in the town of Sandwich in the county of Kent in southern England. In 1894 it became the first Open venue outside Scotland.
*Royal Liverpool Golf Club: The home of the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, which is often referred to simply as "Hoylake", joined the rotation in 1897 and hosted ten Opens up to 1967. After a 39 year absence from the rotation, it hosted the 2006 Open Championship.
*Royal Troon Golf Club, Old Course: This Scottish course has been in the rotation since 1923.
*Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club: An English course which first hosted The Open in 1926, and entered the rotation in 1952.
*Carnoustie Golf Links, Championship Course: Another Scottish course, the Royal Burgh of Carnoustie first hosted The Open in 1931, and it rejoined the rotation in 1999 after being excluded for several decades.
*Royal Birkdale Golf Club: An English course which has been in the rotation since 1954.
*The Westin Turnberry Resort, Ailsa Course: A course on the west coast of Scotland which hosted The Open in 1977, 1986 and 1994 and will do so in 2009. [1]

Courses which are no longer in the rota:
*Prestwick Golf Club: The founder club was dropped from the rotation in 1925, by which time it had hosted twenty-four Opens.
*Musselburgh Links: Musselburgh is a public course which was used by the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. When that club built Muirfield, Musselburgh dropped out of the rotation.
*Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club: This course in the town of Deal in Kent, England hosted the Open in 1909 and 1920.
*Prince's Golf Club: This course is also in Sandwich, Kent. It hosted its only Open in 1932.
*Royal Portrush Golf Club: The 1951 Open was staged at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland.

Exemptions and qualifying events

The field for the Open is 156, and golfers may gain a place in three ways. Around two thirds of the field is made up of leading players who are given exemptions. The rest of the field is made up of players who were successful in "Local Qualifying" and those who came through "International Qualifying".

There are almost thirty exemption categories. Among the more significant are:
*The top 50 on the Official World Golf Rankings. This key sweep up category means that no member of the current elite of world golf will be excluded.
*The top 20 in the previous season's PGA Tour money list and European Tour Order of Merit. Most but not all of these players will also be in the World top 50.
*All previous Open Champions who will be age 65 or under on the final day of the tournament.
*All players who have won one of the other three majors in the previous five years.
*The top 10 from the previous year's Open Championship.

Among other things, the additional exemption categories ensure that all the member tours of the International Federation of PGA Tours are represented, and that there are some amateur competitors. Full details of all the exemption categories can be found here.

Local Qualifying is the traditional way for non-exempt players to win a place at The Open. It comprises sixteen 18-hole "Regional Qualifying" competitions around Britain and Ireland a week and a half before the event, with successful competitors moving on to the four 36-hole "Local Final Qualifying" tournaments a few days later. There are now twelve places available through Local Qualifying, though there used to be far more.

Local Qualifying is open to players from all over the world, and it used to attract some big names. In order to make it easier for professionals from outside Britain and Ireland to compete for a place, the R&A introduced International Qualifying in 2004. This comprises five 36-hole qualifying events, one each in Africa, Australasia, Asia, America and Europe. Only players who have a rating in the Official World Golf Rankings may enter, which is a more stringent standard than for Local Qualifying. Thirty-six places are available in International Qualifying. Eligible players may choose whether to enter local qualifying or international qualifying, but they may not enter both. For full details on qualification see here.

Tournament name

In North America, the tournament is generally called the "British Open", in part to distinguish the tournament from another of the four majors that has an 'open' format, the U.S. Open. The PGA Tour refers to the tournament as the British Open¦¦270 (-18)