History

Less than a year after its founding, the U. S. Golf Association conducted its first amateur and open championships during the first week of October, 1895, in Newport, Rhode Island.

That first U. S. Open was a one-day, 36-hole competition that required four rounds over the 9-hole course at Newport Golf Club. There were only 11 entrants, 10 professionals and one amateur.

Horace Rawlins, an English golfer who was the assistant professional at Newport, won with a score of 173. His prize was $150 in cash plus a $50 gold medal.

In 1898, the tournament was extended to 72 holes over a three-day period, closing with 36 holes on the final day. That remained the format until 1965, when the Open went to four 18-hole daily rounds.

If two or more players are tied, they go to an 18-hole playoff on the following day. The Open uses a sudden-death playoff only if there's still a tie after the additional 18 holes.

The tournament is open to professionals and to amateurs with a handicap of two or below. To narrow the starting field to 150, the USGA conducts local and sectional qualifying tournaments for would-be entrants. Local qualifying rounds are played in May, and the top scorers advance to sectional rounds in early June, two weeks before the Open.

Exemptions from qualifying are granted to a relatively small number of players. Among them are the winners of the five previous Opens, winners of the British Open, PGA Championship, and USGA Amateur Championships of the previous year, the top fifteen scorers, including ties, in the previous Open, and the PGA's top fifteen money-winners.

The 150 starters play the first two rounds. The top 60 scorers, plus ties, advance to the final two rounds.

The Open is played at a different course each year, though a number of courses have hosted the tournament more than once. The host course is prepared to USGA specifications designed to make it considerably more difficult than it would normally be. Fairways are generally narrower, rough is deeper, and par-5 holes are often shortened slightly to become long par-4s.

Golfers have often complained about the difficulty of the Open course. USGA executive Frank Tatum perhaps answered those complaints once and for all in 1974, when he commented, "We had no intention of confounding the best players in the world. We simply wanted to identify who they were."

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