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, … Read more
If The Open Championship ends in a tie after 72 holes, the Claret Jug is decided by a three-hole aggregate playoff: the tied players go back out, play three designated holes, and the lowest combined score wins. If they’re still level after those three, it goes to sudden death, hole by hole, until someone breaks … Read more
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