The 141st Open Championship will take place at Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club in Lancashire from18-22 July 2012. American David Duval was the most recent winner when the Open was staged there in 2001. Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club will be the host for this year’s Open Championship after 11 years. The Open Championships, the oldest of the four major championships in professional golf. It is the only major held outside the United States and is administered by the R&A, which is the governing body of golf outside of the US and Mexico.
Open Golf Championship kicks off on 18th July 2012
The Open Championship was first played on 17 October 1860 at Prestwick Golf Club in Scotland. The inaugural tournament was restricted to professionals and attracted a field of eight golfers, who played three rounds of Prestwick’s twelve-hole course in a single day. Originally, the trophy presented to the event’s winner was the Champion’s Belt, a red leather belt with a silver buckle. There was no prize money in the first three Opens. In 1863, a prize fund of £10 was introduced, which was shared between the second, third and fourth placed professionals, with the Champion still just getting to keep the belt for a year. The present trophy called The Golf Champion Trophy is better known by its popular name of the Claret Jug.
The Open is played on the weekend of the third Friday in July. It is the third major to take place each year, following the Masters Tournament and the US Open, and precedes the PGA Championship. The current champion is Darren Clarke who won the 2011 Open at Royal St George’s Golf Club in Sandwich, Kent. In 2012, The Open will have a prize fund of £5 million, with £900,000 going to the winner.
Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club was founded in 1886 and the present Course constructed in 1897. The Club house celebrated its Centenary in 1998. It is one of the premier links courses in the world, host to ten Open Championships, two Ryder Cups and numerous other major tournaments including the Women’s and Seniors Open Championships. The course at Royal Lytham & St Annes was built in 1897, 11 years after the club was founded. It quickly gained a reputation as one of the finest and most exacting links golf courses in Britain.
Though a relatively short course, the routing of the holes and the huge number of bunkers – some 200 in all – make it one of the most challenging of the Open venues. The design remains faithful to the layout created by George Lowe, the club’s first professional, but it was only after renowned golf course architect Harry Colt made improvements between 1919 and 1922 that the course was chosen to host The Open.
Tags: David Duval, Golf, Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club, The Open, The Open Championship
