The Open Championship has crowned a Champion Golfer of the Year since 1860, making its winners list the oldest continuous record in major championship golf, older than the sport’s other three majors combined at the time of its founding. The names run from Old and Young Tom Morris through the Great Triumvirate, Palmer’s transatlantic revival, Watson’s duels, Tiger’s St Andrews masterclasses, and last July’s champion, Scottie Scheffler, with the 154th edition adding a new name at Royal Birkdale on July 19.
It’s a list full of stories the other majors can’t match: a six-title record that has stood for over a century, a 17-year-old champion, a 46-year-old champion, a father and son with eight titles between them, and the modern era’s great heartbreaks, Van de Velde’s Carnoustie, Watson at 59, and the 396th-ranked player in the world walking off with the jug.
The chart below covers everything: every winner from 2000 to today, the eras before, the all-time title leaders, the Birkdale honor roll ahead of next week, and the records inside the list. Take a look, then we’ll break it all down.
Contents
The oldest list in golf
When eight professionals played three loops of Prestwick in October 1860, none of the other majors existed, the US Open and PGA Championship were decades away, the Masters most of a century, and the winners list they started has run essentially unbroken since, interrupted only by a teenager keeping the trophy (1871), two World Wars, and a pandemic. The early decades belong to the Morris family of St Andrews: Old Tom, still the oldest champion ever at 46, and Young Tom, still the youngest at 17, whose four consecutive titles won the original Challenge Belt outright and forced the commissioning of the Claret Jug itself. The turn of the century produced the Great Triumvirate, Harry Vardon, James Braid, and J.H. Taylor, who won 16 of 21 Opens between 1894 and 1914, including Vardon’s six, a record now 112 years old and, with no active player past two, among the safest in the sport.
The modern roll: legends, duels, and lightning strikes
The post-war list reads like golf’s greatest-hits album with B-sides that steal the show. Peter Thomson’s five titles and Arnold Palmer’s 1961-62 wins (which single-handedly revived American participation) hand off to the Nicklaus-Watson-Trevino wars, peaking in the 1977 Duel in the Sun; Watson’s five titles closed at Birkdale in 1983, and his near-sixth, at Turnberry in 2009, aged 59, one par from the greatest sports story ever told, remains the list’s most beautiful absence. The Open’s lightning-strike tradition fills the other rows: Ben Curtis winning at 396th in the world (2003), Todd Hamilton outdueling Els (2004), Jean Van de Velde handing Paul Lawrie the 1999 jug from the Barry Burn, and John Daly at St Andrews. Then the anchors: Tiger’s three (including the 2000 St Andrews rout that completed his career slam at 24 and the tearful 2006 Hoylake win), Harrington’s back-to-back, Stenson’s 63-fueled duel with Mickelson in 2016, and the current era’s champions through Scheffler at Portrush last July.
Birkdale, and the next name
The 154th Open returns to Royal Birkdale (July 16-19), the Southport links whose honor roll may be the strongest of any rota course: Thomson twice, Palmer, Trevino, Miller, Watson, Baker-Finch, O’Meara, Harrington, and most recently Jordan Spieth in 2017, ten champions, no flukes, a course that identifies greatness. It’s also where teenage Seve Ballesteros announced himself in 1976 and where Watson’s era effectively crowned itself in ’83. The list adds its next line on Sunday the 19th, minutes after the final putt, when the engraver finishes and the new Champion Golfer of the Year lifts the jug; this page updates the same night. For everything around the list, the trophy’s strange origin, what a links course actually is, and what the champion earns, the full Open cluster is linked below.
Final Word
Open Championship winners by year: an unbroken roll from Willie Park Sr. in 1860 through Scottie Scheffler in 2025, anchored by Vardon’s untouchable six, the Morris family’s youngest-and-oldest bookends, Watson’s five, Tiger’s three, and a lightning-strike tradition no other major allows, with gaps only for a kept trophy, two wars, and a pandemic. Royal Birkdale crowns champion number 154 on July 19, and the table above gets its newest row that night.
The trophy behind the list is explained in the Claret Jug explained, the terrain every champion conquered is in what is a links course?, and what the winner banks is in Open Championship prize money by year.