Golf Tours - PGA Tour - British
Open
The Open Championship, typically, but
incorrectly, referred to in North America as the British Open, is the
oldest of the four major championships in men's golf. Each year the
event is hosted by one of several prestigious golf clubs in Britain;
however, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews (R&A) administers
The Open regardless of its site. It is always played on a links course.
The Open Championship is played in July, and is the third major to take
place each year, after The Masters Tournament and the U.S. Open, but
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 PGA European Tour has always
recognized The Open as an official event.
History
Willie Park, Snr wearing the Championship Belt, the winner's prize at
the Open from 1860 to 1870.
Enlarge
Willie Park, Snr wearing the Championship Belt, the winner's prize at
the Open from 1860 to 1870.
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.
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 winners 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, amateurs only accumulating six
wins, all of them between 1890 and 1930. The last of these was Bobby
Jones' 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 "British Open" a routine part of their schedule,
rather than an optional extra. Of course, the spread of trans-Atlantic
air travel 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 won 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 two Championships to date, both at St Andrews in 2000 and
again in 2005. 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 1860-1870, 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.
There are eight or nine courses in the current rotation:
* St Andrews: In 1872 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: This course is in the county of Kent in Southern
England. In 1894 it became the first Open venue outside Scotland.
* Royal Liverpool Golf Club, Hoylake: 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 will be hosting the 2006 Open
Championship.
* Royal Troon: This Scottish course has been in the rotation since 1923.
* Royal Lytham & St Annes: An English course which first hosted The Open
in 1926, and entered the rotation in 1952.
* Carnoustie: Another Scottish course, Carnoustie first hosted The Open
in 1931, and it rejoined the rotation in 1999 after being excluded for
several decades.
* Royal Birkdale: An English course which has been in the rotation since
1954.
* Turnberry: A course in Scotland which hosted The Open in 1977, 1986
and 1994. It will not be doing so again any earlier than 2009, so it
might be considered to have been dropped.
Courses which are no longer in the rotation:
* Prestwick Golf Club: The founder club was dropped from the rotation in
1925, by which time it had hosted twenty four Opens.
* Musselburgh: 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: This course in Kent, England hosted the Open in
1909 and 1920.
* Prince's Golf Club: This course is also in Kent. It hosted its only
Open in 1932.
* Royal Portrush: The 1951 Open was staged at Royal Portrush in Northern
Ireland, which remains the only time it has taken place outside of Great
Britain.
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 is now used by all four majors, and it means that no member of
the current elite of world golf will be excluded. Until quite recently,
this was not necessarily the case at the majors.
* The top 20 in the previous season's PGA Tour money list and PGA
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 16 eighteen hole "Regional Qualifying"
competitions around Britain and Ireland a week and a half before the
event, with successful competitors moving on to the four thirty-six 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.
Records
* Oldest winner: Tom Morris, Sr. (46 years, 99 days), 1867.
* Youngest winner: Tom Morris, Jr. (17 years, 5 months, 8 days), 1868.
* Most victories: 6, Harry Vardon (1896, 1898, 1899, 1903, 1911, 1914).
* Lowest absolute 72-hole score: 267, Greg Norman (66-68-69-64), 1993.
* Lowest 72-hole score in relation to par: -19, Tiger Woods
(67-66-67-69, 269), 2000.
o Norman's 1993 score was -17. Par at Royal St George's, the site of the
1993 Open, is 71, as opposed to the par 72 of The Old Course at St
Andrews, the 2000 site.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Championship
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