Every Open champion, 1860–2026

Every champion, with the year kept in its setting

The Open’s roll of honour begins at Prestwick in 1860 and runs here through Ryan Fox’s victory at Royal Birkdale in 2026. The table includes every calendar year, so the championship’s interruptions remain visible alongside its winners. It brings together the champion, the organiser’s nationality classification, the host course, the winning total and the winning margin. The year links lead into the relevant course history where one is available.

A list this long works best when it is read as a sequence of different competitions rather than a single modern tournament repeated without change. The early championship, the travelling Victorian event and today’s four-round Open share a title, but their formats and circumstances differ. Use the total and margin together, then follow the course link to understand what kind of test produced the result. The longer championship history explains the development behind the numbers.

The source links beside each row let you inspect the official record and its cross-check. Where a secondary account disagrees, the official result is retained and the difference is identified below. A disagreement over a nationality label does not change the winner, and a modern description of a player’s birthplace should not silently replace the classification used in the championship’s historical results. Those distinctions become particularly important when counting wins by country.

The complete Open champions table

Why the earliest winning totals look different

In the first championship, Willie Park Senior’s winning total was 174. Old Tom Morris won the next two editions with 163, while Young Tom Morris’s four victories included a total of 149 in 1870. These figures should not be lined up against a recent 72-hole winning score as though fewer strokes automatically meant a better performance. The early Prestwick competition used three circuits of a twelve-hole course, making thirty-six holes in all.

The total is therefore a record of the event actually played, not a ready-made measure of superiority across eras. The table keeps that original number rather than manufacturing a modern equivalent. Even among later four-round Opens, the par and the course change. Henrik Stenson’s 264 at Royal Troon in 2016 and Cameron Smith’s 268 at St Andrews in 2022 were both twenty under par, illustrating why an aggregate and a relation-to-par score answer different questions.

Margins add another perspective. Old Tom Morris’s thirteen-stroke victory in 1862 remains an extraordinary result within its own championship. A play-off, by contrast, records a tie after the scheduled competition followed by a separate deciding contest. Treating a play-off as a one-stroke victory would erase that part of the story. The Open records guide separates the categories and explains the context behind the headline numbers.

The years when there was no champion

There was no Open in 1871 after Young Tom Morris won the Challenge Belt outright through three consecutive victories. The championship returned in 1872, and the table resumes with his fourth successive title. Showing the missing year matters: otherwise four consecutive wins can be mistaken for victories in four consecutive calendar years. The sequence belongs to championships played, with an interruption between the third and fourth.

The First World War stopped the championship from 1915 to 1919. A second wartime break covers 1940 to 1945. These are years without an edition, not results that have gone missing from the list. Keeping them in the same chronological table makes the length of each interruption clear and prevents readers from treating the gap as an incomplete archive.

The 2020 championship was cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic. Its absence is shown in the same way, with the reason stated. The following year’s champion belongs to 2021, rather than a retrospectively played 2020 edition. That calendar distinction is useful whenever you compare the Open’s numbered editions with years on a trophy, in a museum display or in an older championship programme.

Players who repeatedly returned to the top

Harry Vardon heads the winners’ list with six victories. James Braid, J.H. Taylor, Peter Thomson and Tom Watson each won five. Their totals come from different periods and different patterns of success: the Victorian and Edwardian rivalry of Vardon, Braid and Taylor is not the same story as Thomson’s post-war run or Watson’s later championship career. The shared count is a starting point for comparison, not the end of it.

The four-time winners include Old Tom Morris, Young Tom Morris, Willie Park Senior and Walter Hagen. Young Tom’s wins were all at Prestwick; Watson’s five titles were spread across several Scottish links. The venue column makes these differences visible without requiring you to memorise a separate list. A player’s relationship with one course can be as revealing as his total number of championships.

For a more personal route through the results, read about the Great Triumvirate or Tom Watson at The Open, then return to the table and follow their winning years. The history becomes easier to retain when each title has a setting and an opponent, rather than being reduced to another mark beside a famous name.

Wins by player and nationality

Multiple winners

Wins using the official nationality classifications

These summaries count championships won, rather than distinct champions. A five-time winner contributes five titles to the nationality total. The classifications follow the official historical record used for the main table, so they should be read with the notes below. This method keeps the arithmetic consistent from the first row to the last and avoids changing a player’s classification part-way through his career merely because another source uses a different convention.

Notes where the records differ

• The current R&A nationality feature classifies Harry Vardon and Ted Ray as Jersey, whereas the older R&A media-guide results use England. The current Jersey classification is used here. For Jim Barnes, the R&A’s British-and-Irish champions feature and media-guide results identify United States representation, while its nationality feature and FOX list England. This table uses his United States sporting representation; these labels are not a statement that birthplace and sporting representation are identical.
• FOX’s nationality for Peter Thomson in 1956 is the United States. The official record gives Australia, which is used here.
• For 1950, the official R&A/PGA media-guide margin is two strokes. Golf Compendium’s displayed leading totals imply three. The official two-stroke margin is retained.
• Several short-form official summaries differ from their detailed results or media-guide entries. The row sources identify the detailed result used rather than silently combining incompatible totals.

1950 margin: The R&A lists Bobby Locke on 279 and Roberto De Vicenzo on 281, a two-stroke win. Golf Compendium prints De Vicenzo’s total as 282, with a different opening round. The table follows the official leaderboard; compare the independent score table.

Sources and useful official links

• Confirmed: R&A results and records
• Confirmed: R&A 2024 media guide, hosted by PGA Tour
• Confirmed: FOX champions and nationalities cross-check
• Reported: ESPN biography confirms Ryan Fox’s represented country

Useful reading for your visit

• St Andrews Old Course visitor guide
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• St Andrews Accommodation: The Open 2027

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