The Open Championship, often referred to as The Open or the British Open, is the oldest of the four major championships in professional golf. Held in the United Kingdom, it is administered by The R&A and is the only major outside the United States. The Open is currently the third major of the year, between the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship, and is played in mid-July.
The current champion is Henrik Stenson, who won the 145th Open at Royal Troon in 2016 with a record-breaking score of −20.
The Open was first played on 17 October 1860 at Prestwick Golf Club in Scotland. The inaugural tournament was restricted to professionals and attracted a field of eight golfers who played three rounds of Prestwick's twelve-hole course in a single day. Willie Park Sr. won with a score of 174, beating Old Tom Morris, by two strokes. The following year the tournament was opened to amateurs; eight of them joined ten professionals in the field.
James Ogilvie Fairlie was the principal organiser of the first Open Championship held at Prestwick in 1860. With the untimely death of Allan Robertson, aged 43 in 1859, Prestwick members decided to conduct a challenge the following year that would determine the land’s greatest golfer. In a proposed competition for a "Challenge Belt", Fairlie sent out a series of letters to Blackheath, Perth, Edinburgh, Musselburgh and St Andrews, inviting a player known as a "respectable caddie" to represent each of the clubs in a tournament to be held on 17 October 1860.
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