^{T@£~@M@NtrY}Open Championship 2019

Posted by Tech Team on July 18th, 2019

The Open Championship, often referred to as The Open or the British Open, is an annual golf tournament conducted by The R&A. It is one of the four major championships in professional golf, and is the oldest of the four. The Open is traditionally played in mid-July; beginning in 2019, with the rescheduling of the PGA Championship to May, the tournament will be the final major of the golf season.

It was first played in 1860 at Prestwick Golf Club in Scotland. The Open is hosted in the United Kingdom and is the only major played outside the United States.

The current champion is Francesco Molinari, who won the 147th Open at Carnoustie in 2018 with a score of 276. The 2019 Open Championship will be held at Royal Portrush Golf Club in Northern Ireland. It was also held at Portrush in 1951, the first occasion that it has not been held in Scotland or England.

The first Open Championship was played on 17 October 1860 at Prestwick Golf Club in Ayrshire, Scotland, over three rounds of the twelve-hole links course.[1] In the mid-19th century golf was played mainly by well-off gentlemen, as hand-crafted clubs and balls were expensive. Professionals made a living from playing for bets, caddying, ball and club making, and instruction. Allan Robertson was the most famous of these pros, and was regarded as the undisputed best golfer between 1843 and his death in 1859.[2][1] James Ogilvie Fairlie of Prestwick Golf Club decided to form a competition in 1860, "to be played for by professional golfers",[3] and to decide who would succeed Robertson as the "Champion Golfer". Blackheath (England), Perth, Bruntsfield (Edinburgh), Musselburgh and St Andrews golf clubs were invited to send up to three of their best players known as a “respectable caddie” to represent each of the clubs.[4] The winner received the Challenge Belt, made from red leather with a silver buckle and worth £25, which came about thanks to being donated by the Earl of Eglinton, a man with a keen interest in medieval pageantry (belts were the type of trophy that might have been competed for in archery or jousting).[5][4]

The first rule of the new golf competition was “The party winning the belt shall always leave the belt with the treasurer of the club until he produces a guarantee to the satisfaction of the above committee that the belt shall be safely kept and laid on the table at the next meeting to compete for it until it becomes the property of the winner by being won three times in succession".[6] Eight golfers contested the event, with Willie Park, Sr. winning the championship by 2 shots from Old Tom Morris, and he was declared "The Champion Golfer of the Year".[7][1]