A Brief History of the British Open.

The British Golf Open, 2004 included qualifying players from Asia, Australia, Africa , America, and Europe , the best of the best who played 72 holes. But the British Open we know today is a very different championship event than the first opens.

For example, while the Golf Open of yore offered just as much recreation, challenge, and competition and held just a much prestige, it was characteristically simpler, more localized, and less publicized (of course).

In the late 1800's on a 12-hole course at Prestwick , the Earl of Eglinton and Colonel James Fairlie come up with a golf competition that will turn out to be one start to the history of the British Open. They establish the rules and solicit the Prestwick Country Club members for funds. The championship award is a red leather belt embellished by a silver buckle and adornments befitting a hero. Eight men compete that first time—in 1868.

In the next few years of the 1870's, the club members send letters to other major country clubs—The Royal and Ancient Golf Club and The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers--announcing the yearly open (that would later become a part of what is now known as the British Open) as a competition that is “open to the whole world,” and as one that will require the participating clubs to each send their three best caddies. Also asking for contributions and offering to move the Open to alternate venues, the Prestwick leaders co-stage the next golf tournaments to now award the winners a whopping £10 and a beautiful silver/claret jug.

In 1894 more clubs and more venues (outside of Scotland) are involved, and the Royal St. George's at Sandwich in Kent and the Royal Liverpool Golf Club at Hoylake in Cheshire begin to realize the “open to the whole world” invitation and blazing a British Open trail.

By 1926, Royal Lytham St. Anne's in Lancashire County (where the Royal Lytham St. Anne's Golf Club has been meeting and golfing since 1886) is hosting the club's first Open, nicknamed “The Bobby Jones Open,” after the golfer considered the world's greatest amateur. And the greatest he evidently was, for he won the championship that year and was awarded the jug as well as honored with a plaque engraved with his name, the date, and the words, “The Open Championship,”—a plaque thatis hung with his painting and the actual winning club he used in the country club members' room at Lytham St. Anne's.

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A Brief History of the British Open, to Bring us to Golf in 2004

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