Steeping in history, enormously popular and highly lucrative. The US Open may be only one of three major men’s championships played on American soil, but it is a hugely important event on the US sporting calendar – arguably the most eagerly anticipated sporting event of the summer. Its popularity is a reflection of golf’s vast appeal in the US at both the spectating and participatory levels. And as the only major tournament administered by the United States Golf Association (USGA), the sport’s governing body in the US, its success has allowed the USGA to prosper mightily in its wake.

The USGA and the Open came into existence within months of each other. The USGA, originally known as the Amateur Golf Association of the United States, was founded in December 1894. Several months later, the first US Open was played on a nine-hole course in Newport, Rhode Island. Eleven players competed in the one-day, 36-hole tournament, which offered $335 in total prize money. The winner that year was a transplanted English professional named Horace Rawlins. In fact, expatriate British golfers dominated the tournament for the first 16 years of its existence. It was only in 1911 that a native-born American, John J. McDermott, captured the title.