British Open Golf Tickets
The 2009 British Open is scheduled to be played at Turnberry, from Thursday 16th July to Sunday 19th July, with practice days from 12th July to 15th July.
British Open Golf Tickets
The Open Championship was first played on 17 October 1860 at Prestwick Golf Club, in Ayrshire, Scotland. The inaugural tournament was restricted to professionals, and attracted a field of eight Scottish golfers, who played three rounds of Prestwick’s 12-hole course in a single day. William Park Snr. won with a score of 174, beating the favourite, Tom Morris Snr., by two strokes. The following year the tournament was opened to amateurs, with eight joining ten professionals in the field. The original winner’s trophy was a wide red leather belt heavily decorated with silver. Under the first rules of the competition it became the property of Tom Morris Jr., when he won the title three times in a row.
No championship was held in 1871, but resumed the following year when Prestwick, the Royal and Ancient and the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers combined to provide The Golf Champion Trophy, better known by its popular name of the Claret Jug that is still awarded to the champion golfer each year.
The Open has 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. Along with French 1907 winner Arnaud Massy, they were the only winners from outside Scotland and England up to 1939.
South African Bobby Locke and Australian Peter Thomson dominated the tournament in the post-war years, winning 9 Opens between them from 1948 to 1958. Ben Hogan, the best American golfer of the period, contested only one Open Championship, winning at Carnoustie in 1953.
Gary Player’s win in 1959 saw the start of the dominance of world golf by Player, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Palmer was runner-up in 1960, but lifted the Claret Jug in 1961 and 1962. Palmer’s successes, along with improvements in transatlantic travel, saw more American players include the Open in their schedule. Nicklaus won in 1966, 1970 and 1978, but finished in the top-5 no less than 16 times, including 7 times as runner-up, including his memorable Turnberry battle with Tom Watson in 1977. Watson won a further 4 titles, but his 1983 triumph ended the period of American dominance with Mark Calcavecchia (1989, Troon) the only American winner until John Daly’s playoff win over Costantino Rocca in 1995. The intervening years saw three wins for Englishman Nick Faldo (1987, 1990 and 1992) and two for Spaniard Severiano Ballesteros (1984 and 1988), while Sandy Lyle became the first Scotsman to win the Championship for over 50 years, with his success at Royal St. George’s in 1989. The Open was again dominated by the USA with 10 wins in 12 years from 1995 to 2006, including 3 wins for Tiger Woods (200005 and 2006). European pride was restored in 2007, with Irishman Padraig Harrington beating Sergio Garcia in a playoff. Harrington retained the title at Royal Birkdale in 2008.
Tickets for the 2009 Open Golf Championship can be purchased online by clicking on one of the above links or from the official R & A website, www.randa.org, or from:
Ticket Office
The R & A
St Andrews
Fife KY16 9JD
Scotland, UK
