US Open History
The US Open golf championship has a long and proud history. It has been played at the best golf courses in America and attracted the world's best golf players all keen for a slice of the significant prize money on offer every year.
The first US Open championship was held on a single day - October 4, 1985 - on a nine-hole course at Newport, Rhode Island. In this first ever US Open golf tournament, ten professionals and one amateur took part. They played 36 holes (four rounds) of the Newport course, with the winner on the day being Horace Rawlins, an English professional who was just 21-years-old.
Prize money for the inaugural US Open was $335, and Rawlins walked away with the $150 first prize. Together with the cash, he received a gold medal and took custody of the Open Championship Cup for his club for a period of one year.
For the first ten years that the US Open was held, it attracted mainly amateurs and British golf professionals who had come to the United States to play the game. Gradually, American players began to gain the upper hand in the US Open and this in turn attracted a bigger field of international contestants, drawn to the ever-increasing competitive nature of the US Open.
The US Open has mostly been won by US golfers, but players from other nations have also walked away with convincing and well-deserved wins over the years. In US Open golf tournament history the event has been won 78 times by United States golfers, 13 times by golfers from Scotland, seven times by golfers from England, five times by golfers from South Africa, six times by golfers from Australia, once by an Argentinean golfer and once by a golfer from New Zealand.
Over the years the format of the US Open has been changed a number of times. The United States Golf Association extended the tournament to 72 holes over two days (36 per day) in 1898. In 1926 it was changed to 18 holes on two days, followed by 36 on the third. Then in 1965 the format changed to its present format of four 18-hole per day rounds.
US Open history for 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004
If you're interested in the history of the US Open in more recent times, you may be interested in the following pages:
