2016 Open Championship


The 2016 Open Championship was a men's major golf championship and the 145th Open Championship, played from 14–17 July at Royal [Troon Golf Club] in Troon, South Ayrshire, Scotland. It was the ninth Open Championship played at the Old Course of Troon, and the fifth since gaining royal status.
Henrik Stenson shot a final round 63 for 264, a record 20-under par, three strokes ahead of runner-up Phil Mickelson, the 2013 champion. The leader after 54 holes, Stenson became the first Scandinavian man to win a major title. The duo's final-day battle, ending fourteen and eleven shots clear of third-place J. B. Holmes, was dubbed "High Noon at Troon" and compared in quality to the renowned "Duel in the Sun" of 1977.

Media

This was the first Open Championship under new television rights deals in the United Kingdom and United States. In the U.K., Sky Sports replaced the BBC, who held broadcast rights from 1955 to 2015, marking the first time that rights to the Open had been held by a subscription television service. To comply with anti-siphoning laws, rights to broadcast a nightly highlights programme on free-to-air television were sold to the BBC. The contract was to begin in 2017, but the BBC opted out of the 2016 edition.
In the U.S., television rights shifted from ESPN to NBC and sister pay-TV network Golf Channel, marking the first time that Golf Channel had coverage of a men's major championship. It also restored a major to the network for the first time since 2014; from 1995 to 2014, NBC televised the U.S. Open and other championships of the USGA, which moved to Fox Sports in 2015. Similarly to the BBC, ESPN chose to opt out of its final year of Open rights, causing NBC's rights to begin in 2016 instead.

Venue

Old Course
Lengths of the course for previous Opens:
Opens from 1962 through 1989 played the 11th hole as a par-5.

Field

Criteria and exemptions

Each player is classified according to the first category in which he qualified, but other categories are shown in parentheses.
1. The Open Champions aged 60 or under on 17 July 2016
2. The Open Champions for 2006–2015
3. First 10 and anyone tying for 10th place in the 2015 Open Championship
4. The first 50 players on the Official [World Golf Ranking] for Week 21, 2016
5. First 30 in the Race to Dubai for 2015
6. The BMW PGA Championship winners for 2014–2016
7. First 5 European Tour members and any European Tour members tying for 5th place, not otherwise exempt, in the top 20 of the Race to Dubai on completion of the 2016 BMW International Open
8. The U.S. Open Champions for 2012–2016
9. The Masters Tournament Champions for 2012–2016
10. The PGA Champions for 2011–2015
11. The Players Champions for 2014–2016
12. Top 30 players from the final 2015 FedEx Cup points list
13. First 5 PGA Tour members and any PGA Tour members tying for 5th place, not exempt in the top 20 of the PGA Tour FedEx Cup points list for 2016 on completion of the 2016 Quicken Loans National
14. Playing members of the 2015 Presidents Cup teams
15. First and anyone tying for 1st place on the Order of Merit of the Asian Tour for 2015
16. First and anyone tying for 1st place on the Order of Merit of the PGA Tour of Australasia for 2015
17. First and anyone tying for 1st place on the Order of Merit of the Southern Africa PGA Sunshine Tour for 2015
18. The Japan Open Champion for 2015
19. First 2 and anyone tying for 2nd place, not exempt, on the Official Money List of the Japan Golf Tour for 2015
20. First 2 and anyone tying for 2nd place, in a cumulative money list taken from all official 2016 Japan Golf Tour events up to and including the 2016 Japan Golf Tour Championship
21. The Senior Open Champion for 2015
22. The Amateur Championship|Amateur] Champion for 2016
23. The U.S. Amateur Champion for 2015
24. The European Amateur Champion for 2015
25. The Mark H. McCormack Medal winner for 2015

Open Qualifying Series

The Open Qualifying Series consisted of 10 events from the six major tours. Places were available to the leading players who finish in the top n and ties. In the event of ties, positions went to players ranked highest according to that week's OWGR.
LocationTournamentDateSpotsTopQualifiers
AustraliaEmirates Australian Open29 Nov310Nick Cullen, Matt Jones, Rod Pampling
ThailandThailand Golf Championship13 Dec412Jamie Donaldson, Phachara Khongwatmai, Clément Sordet, Lee Westwood
AfricaJoburg Open17 Jan310Zander Lombard, Haydn Porteous, Anthony Wall
JapanMizuno Open29 May412Kodai Ichihara, Shugo Imahira, Lee Sang-hee, Hideto Tanihara
SwedenNordea Masters5 Jun15Lasse Jensen
USAFedEx St. Jude Classic12 Jun412Brian Gay, Russell Henley, Noh Seung-yul, Steve Stricker
USAQuicken Loans National26 Jun412Jon Rahm, Vijay Singh, Harold Varner III
FranceAlstom Open de France3 Jul412Alex Norén, Callum Shinkwin, Richard Sterne, Brandon Stone
USABarracuda Championship3 Jul15Greg Chalmers
ScotlandScottish Open10 Jul412Nicolas Colsaerts, Tyrrell Hatton, Matteo Manassero, Richie Ramsay
The Greenbrier Classic was cancelled due to the damage sustained by the course in the 2016 West Virginia flood. The Open Qualifying Series event originally slated for the Greenbrier was shifted to the Barracuda Championship.

Final Qualifying

The Final Qualifying events were played on 28 June at four courses covering Scotland and the North-West, Central and South-coast regions of England. Three qualifying places were available at each location. None of the twelve qualifiers had played in Regional Qualifying on 20 June: each was exempted by virtue of holding an Official World Golf Ranking.
LocationQualifiers
Gailes LinksOskar Arvidsson, Scott Fernández, Colin Montgomerie
HillsideDave Coupland, Paul Howard, Jack Senior
Royal Cinque PortsSteven Alker, James Heath, Matthew Southgate
WoburnPaul Dunne, Ryan Evans, Robert Rock

Alternates

To make up the full field of 156, additional places were allocated in ranking order from the Official World Golf Ranking at the time that these places were made available by the Championship Committee.
From the Week 26 Official World Golf Ranking:
From the Week 27 Official World Golf Ranking:

Round summaries

First round

Thursday, 14 July 2016
Phil Mickelson shot an 8-under-par 63 to take a three-shot lead over Martin Kaymer and Patrick Reed. His 63 tied him with 27 others for the lowest round in a major championship. Mickelson had a 16-foot putt at the 18th to become the first player to score 62 at a major championship, but the putt lipped out of the hole.
PlacePlayerScoreTo par
1

Second round

Friday, 15 July 2016
Phil Mickelson maintained his lead at the halfway point at 132, a stroke ahead of Henrik Stenson, whose 65 moved him into solo second place. The cut was at 146, allowing previous major champions Jordan Spieth, Danny Willett, and Bubba Watson to continue onto the third day. Billy Horschel started in joint fourth place, but had a dismal 85 to miss the cut by six strokes.
PlacePlayerScoreTo par
1

Third round

Saturday, 16 July 2016
Henrik Stenson overtook Phil Mickelson in the third round, taking a single-shot lead into the final round, with Mickelson five shots clear of the field.
PlacePlayerScoreTo par
1

Final round

Sunday, 17 July 2016
In what earned instant acclaim as one of the greatest final-round duels in major championship history, Henrik Stenson broke the aggregate scoring record for all majors while establishing a new Open Championship record on his way to his first career major win. In the final pairing with Phil Mickelson, Stenson began the round with a one-shot advantage. Mickelson quickly jumped into the lead with a birdie at the first while Stenson three-putted for bogey. Stenson rebounded with five birdies on the front nine while Mickelson recorded a birdie and an eagle at the par-5 fourth, giving Stenson back a one-shot lead at the turn.
Both birdied the tenth, then Stenson made bogey at the eleventh and they were tied again. Both parred the next two holes, then Stenson recorded three consecutive birdies, including a putt from off the green on the 15th to open up a two-shot lead. Mickelson narrowly missed an eagle putt on the 16th while Stenson got up and down from the greenside rough for a birdie to maintain the advantage. With another birdie at the 18th, Stenson tied the major championship scoring record at 63. Runner-up Mickelson shot 267 to equal the previous Open record set by Greg Norman in 1993. Eleven strokes behind Mickelson in solo third was J. B. Holmes at 278.

Final leaderboard

PlacePlayerScoreTo parMoney
1

Scorecard

Cumulative tournament scores, relative to par
EagleBirdieBogeyDouble bogey

Source:

Records

  • Stenson became the second to finish 20-under-par in a major championship, tying Jason Day's record from the PGA Championship in 2015.
  • Stenson was the first to finish 20-under at the Open Championship, beating Tiger Woods' record of 19-under in 2000.
  • Stenson's 264 set a new major championship record, beating David Toms' 265 in the PGA Championship in 2001.
  • Stenson broke the previous Open Championship record by three shots, formerly 267, set by Greg Norman in 1993.
  • Stenson's 63 and Mickelson's tied the major record for a round. It was the 28th and 29th time this score had been achieved, and Stenson was the 27th different player to do so. Stenson and Johnny Miller are the only players to shoot 63 in the final round of a major and win.
  • Mickelson, age 46, became the oldest player to shoot a round of 63 in an Open Championship and also the second-oldest player to shoot 63 in any major championship; Gary Player shot 63 in the second round of the PGA Championship in 1984 at age 48.
  • The 11-shot difference between 2nd and 3rd place was the largest in history.