A Champion's Championship: Golf's United States Open Championship

Each year, the best golfers from all over the world compete in one of the world's oldest tournaments, the United States Open Championship.

The United States Open Championship or simply called the U.S Open is staged by the United States Golf Association. The tournament is held every year on the month of June. Venue for the tournament is changed from time to time. The U.S open is just one of the four major championships in men's golf, the other three being Master's tournament, The Open Championship, and the PGA Championship.

Winners of the tournament are endowed with a lot of priveltes. They also get a substantial amount of cash. In 2006 the purse was about $ 6,800,000.00. They are exempted from qualifying for the U.S Open itself for the next 10 years and are automatically invited to the other three major tournaments for the next 5 years. They are also invited to other near-major player's championship. The Top 15 at the U.S open is fully exempt from qualifying for next year 's U.S open.

The first U.S Open started on October 4, 1895, in Newport, Rhode Island. There were a total of ten professionals and one amateur which entered the 36 hole, one day competition. Horace Rawlins a British golfer got the honor to be named as the first champion of the U.S opens.

For several years the game was dominated mostly by British players. However in 1911, John J. McDermott changed the trend of the game and became the first native-born American winner. After McDermott's victory, it was a common sight to see American golfers win regularly in the tournament. Surprisingly until now no British golfer has ever won the tournament since Tony Jacklin of England in 1970.

For the most part of the modern history of the competition, most of the winners come from the United States. There are only four nations other than the United States since 1950 that has won the championship.

However recently particularly in 2004 to 2006, non American golfers grabbed the championship. This is the first time since 1910 that non-Americans had a streak of three consecutive wins. The three players that won during those years were -South African Retief Goosen (2004), New Zealander Michael Campbell (2005) and Australian Geoff Ogilvy (2006)

In order to join the U.S open, players must have a United States Golf Association handicap index not exceeding 1.4. This is the only formal requirement to join the game. There is no age limit as to who could join. The tournament is open to any professional or amateur who is able to achieve this requirement. A player may obtain a place by competing and successfully qualifying or by being exempt fully.

Of the 156 player field, about half of it is fully exempt from qualifying. Winners of the U.S open for the last ten years and winners from other major tournaments of the last 5 years are fully exempt from qualifying. The top 50 in the official world golf rankings as of two weeks before the tournament are also exempted. This also includes the PGA Tour money list' top 30 and The European Tour money list' top 15.

Those who must qualify must go through local qualifying which takes playing over 18 holes at 100 courses around the United States. Those successful in the local qualifying will then proceed to the Sectional qualifying stage which is played over 36 holes in one site in Europe and Japan and several sites in the United States.