A Truly Open Championship

by David Park, former Tour Professional and now The European Tour’s Charity Executive.

By far and away the Open Championship is the truly “Open Golf Championship of the World”. Professionals and Amateurs from around the world spend their time and money endeavoring to secure a place in the field. Whether the players are exempt from their successful play on the Golf Tours around the globe or they enter and play in the various qualifying events internationally or in the Turnberry vicinity, every golfer with a sense of the history of the game wants desperately to play in the oldest Major Championship in Golf.

Who can blame them, in my playing career I had the privilege of playing in two Opens. Both were wonderful experiences, the game of Golf started on the links courses of Scotland and there is nothing quite like Open Championship links golf. The atmosphere is electric, thousands of golf fans crowding the fairways and the greens to see golf’s modern day greats battling the elements, the course and themselves to claim the famous Claret Jug. It doesn’t get better than that.

Every player this week will be visualizing, some with an air of hope, that these famous words will be uttered before his name come Sunday afternoon “Champion Golfer and winner of the Gold Medal……”