Prestwick Golf Club

The first Open Championship was played here on 17 October 1860. Eight professionals went round the twelve-hole links three times, and Willie Park of Musselburgh returned 174 to beat Old Tom Morris by two. The prize was a red Morocco leather belt with silver clasps that the members had bought for £25. Old Tom, who had come from St Andrews in 1851 as Keeper of the Green, Ball and Club Maker, won four times; his son Tommy won three in a row and kept the belt. Twenty-four Opens were played at Prestwick in all, the last in 1925, when Jim Barnes won. A stone cairn west of the clubhouse marks where the first tee shot was struck.

Morris laid out twelve holes; the club extended them to eighteen in 1882, and six of the original greens are still in play. The club calls the seventeenth, Alps, the original second from 1851 and the oldest hole still in championship golf. It runs 394 yards. The fairway is narrow and the second shot is blind, played over a ridge. Short of the green sits the Sahara bunker. Markers on top of the Alps tell you where the flag is, and there is a bell beside the green that you ring as you walk off, to tell the group behind the way is clear.