The 1860 Open Championship was a

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

competition held at

Prestwick Golf Club Prestwick Golf Club is a golf course in Prestwick, South Ayrshire, Scotland. It is approximately southwest of Scotland's largest city, Glasgow. Prestwick is a classic links course, built on the rolling sandy land between the beach and the hin ...

, in

Ayrshire Ayrshire ( gd, Siorrachd Inbhir Àir, ) is a historic county and registration county in south-west Scotland, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Its principal towns include Ayr, Kilmarnock and Irvine and it borders the counties of Re ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

. It is now regarded as the first

Open Championship The Open Championship, often referred to as The Open or the British Open, is the oldest golf tournament in the world, and one of the most prestigious. Founded in 1860, it was originally held annually at Prestwick Golf Club in Scotland. Later th ...

. Until his death in 1859,

Allan Robertson Allan Robertson (11 September 1815 – 1 September 1859) was considered to be one of the first professional golfers. Early years In the mid-19th century golf was played mainly by well-off gentlemen, as hand-crafted clubs and balls were e ...

was regarded as top golfer in the world. The Open Championship was created to determine his successor. Eight golfers contested the event, with

Willie Park, Sr. William Park Sr. (30 June 1833 – 25 July 1903) was a Scottish professional golfer. He was a 4-time winner of the Open Championship. Early life Park was born in Wallyford, East Lothian, Scotland. Like some of the other early professional gol ...

winning the championship by 2 shots from

Tom Morris, Sr. Thomas Mitchell Morris (16 June 1821 – 24 May 1908), otherwise known as Old Tom Morris, and The Grand Old Man of Golf, was a Scottish golfer. He was born in St Andrews, Fife, the "home of golf" and location of the St Andrews Links, and died t ...

Prestwick Golf Club organised the event, "to be played for by professional golfers". Golf clubs in Scotland and England were invited to name and send up to three of their best players to compete. The contest was over three rounds of the twelve-hole links course. The prize for winning was the

Challenge Belt The Challenge Belt was awarded to the winner of The Open Championship in golf from 1860 until 1870. It was replaced by the Claret Jug for the 1872 Open Championship which is still being used to the present day. The winner of the first Open Champi ...

; a player winning the belt three successive years would keep it. "Cawdies, i.e. Professional Players, not Keepers of Links" were eligible and had to produce a certificate of respectability from their club. George Daniel Brown was the only Englishman to play in the event.

James Ogilvie Fairlie James Ogilvie Fairlie (10 October 1809 – 5 December 1870) was a Scottish amateur golfer and landowner. Fairlie placed eighth in the 1861 Open Championship. He was a mentor to Old Tom Morris who named his son, James Ogilvie Fairlie Morris, a ...

was the principal organizer of this inaugural Open Championship. In a proposed competition for a "Challenge Belt", Fairlie sent out a series of letters to Aberdeen,

Blackheath Blackheath may refer to: Places England *Blackheath, London, England ** Blackheath railway station **Hundred of Blackheath, Kent, an ancient hundred in the north west of the county of Kent, England *Blackheath, Surrey, England ** Hundred of Blackh ...

, Bruntsfield, Carnoustie Panmure, Dirleton Castle, Innerleven, Montrose, North Berwick,

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

Musselburgh Musselburgh (; sco, Musselburrae; gd, Baile nam Feusgan) is the largest settlement in East Lothian, Scotland, on the coast of the Firth of Forth, east of Edinburgh city centre. It has a population of . History The name Musselburgh is Ol ...

and St. Andrews (as noted in Prestwick Golf Club Archive), inviting a player known as a "respectable caddie" to represent each of the clubs in a tournament to be held on 17 October 1860. The pairings were Tom Morris, Sr. (Prestwick) and Robert Andrew (Perth), Willie Park Sr. (Musselburgh) and Alexander Smith (Bruntsfield), William Steel (Bruntsfield) and

Charlie Hunter Charlie Hunter (born May 23, 1967) is an American guitarist, composer, and bandleader. First coming to prominence in the early 1990s, Hunter plays custom-made seven- and eight-string guitars on which he simultaneously plays bass lines, chords, a ...

(Prestwick St Nicholas), George Daniel Brown (Blackheath) and

Andrew Strath Andrew Anderson Strath (1 March 1837 – 23 February 1868) was a Scottish professional golfer who played in the mid-19th century. He won the 1865 Open Championship. In total, he accumulated six top-10 finishes in The Open Championship. Early l ...

(St Andrews).

Course

Final leaderboard

Source:

References

External links

Prestwick 1860 (Official site)
{{The Open Championships The Open Championship Golf tournaments in Scotland Sport in South Ayrshire History of South Ayrshire

Course

Final leaderboard

See also

References

External links