Which Open Championship venue is the hardest? Measured by the most honest yardstick available — the average winning score relative to par in Opens since 1999 — the answer is Carnoustie among the regular hosts, with Turnberry’s lone modern Open technically posting a tougher number. At the other end, St Andrews, Royal Liverpool and Royal … Read more
Here’s the honest answer up front: The Open Championship has no official record for most birdies in a tournament. The R&A’s record book tracks scoring — lowest rounds, lowest totals, largest margins — but it has never published tournament-long birdie counts the way the USGA does for the U.S. Open, where Rickie Fowler’s 23 birdies … Read more
Seventy golfers and ties make the cut at The Open Championship. After 36 holes, the 156-player field is trimmed to the 70 lowest scores — plus anyone tied at that number — and everyone else goes home before the weekend. That rule is in effect right now at the 2026 Open at Royal Birkdale, where … Read more
The Open Championship is the only major without a permanent wanderlust problem: instead of a new venue every year (the U.S. Open, PGA) or one course forever (the Masters), golf’s oldest championship rotates through a closed club of links courses called “the rota” — ten venues, all seaside, all in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, … Read more
The 2026 Genesis Scottish Open is underway at The Renaissance Club (July 9-12), and the field is the strongest non-major gathering of the summer: world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, No. 2 Rory McIlroy, No. 4 Matt Fitzpatrick, LIV stars Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton via the co-sanction, and a defending champion, Chris Gotterup, who arrives … Read more
Every July, the best golfers on earth do something they almost never do the week before a major: play a full tournament. The Masters, PGA, and U.S. Open all see stars rest, scout, and arrive early; The Open Championship alone gets the opposite, a stampede into the Genesis Scottish Open, where this week the world’s … Read more
The Scottish Open winners list reads like a preview of golf history written a week early: Phil Mickelson won it in 2013 and lifted the Claret Jug seven days later; Rory McIlroy’s 2023 win came on one of the great closing shots of his career; and last year Chris Gotterup outdueled McIlroy at The Renaissance … Read more
The 2026 Genesis Scottish Open carries a $9 million purse, with $1.62 million and 500 FedExCup points going to Sunday’s winner at The Renaissance Club, plus, in the sponsor’s signature flourish, a Genesis GV60 Magma to drive home. As the co-sanctioned tune-up before next week’s Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, it’s one of the richest … Read more
If the Open Championship ends in a tie on Sunday, there’s no Monday round, no sudden-death coin flip, and no shootout at a single hole. The Open settles its ties with a format unique among golf’s majors: a four-hole aggregate playoff, played immediately, over a set stretch of the host course, lowest total score over … Read more
The winner of the 2025 Open Championship earned $3.1 million from a total purse of $17 million, numbers worth holding against the championship’s origin: the first Open, in 1860, paid its winner nothing at all. Not a reduced sum, nothing, the champion received a red leather belt to hold for a year, and when modest … Read more