The 1861 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 ...

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 was the second

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 ...

and the first to open to amateurs as well as professionals. Ten professionals and eight amateurs contested the event, with

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 ...

winning the championship by 4 shots from

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 ...

As in 1860 the contest was held over three rounds of the twelve-hole links course. There was no prize money, the winner receiving 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 Champ ...

for the next year. Whereas the 1860 event was only open to professionals, from 1861 it was "open to all members of established golf clubs and professionals". Following the success of the first event there was a large entry of 18. The Dunn brothers travelled from London for the event while a number of gentlemen entered. The professionals played in five pairs. Park led by two at the start of the final round. However, at the 2nd hole Park attempted to "cross the Alps" in two but he landed in a

hazard A hazard is a potential source of harm Harm is a moral and legal concept. Bernard Gert construes harm as any of the following: * pain * death * disability * mortality * loss of abil ity or freedom * loss of pleasure. Joel Feinberg giv ...

and lost three strokes, who later played the same hole more conservatively. Morris increased his lead to two at the 4th hole but by the 6th they were level. Morris picked up shots on Park at the 8th, 9th and 10th holes to go three ahead and further increased the lead to four when he holed the short 11th in two strokes. Park had finished on 167 but at the last Morris's tee shot landed in some long grass at the edge of a pool of water. Rather than take a penalty drop he elected to play the ball and kept his four shot lead.

Final leaderboard

Source: Individual round scores are only known for the professionals.

References

External links

Prestwick 1861 (Official site)
{{Old and Young Tom Morris, state=collapsed The Open Championship Golf tournaments in Scotland