American championship golf reached a defining early milestone on October 4, 1895, when Newport Golf Club—now Newport Country Club—in Rhode Island hosted the first U.S. Open Championship. Organized by the recently formed United States Golf Association, the event followed the inaugural U.S. Amateur Championship by one day on the same course and was initially treated as a comparatively modest companion event.
Eleven players—10 professionals and one amateur—started the one-day, 36-hole competition. They played four times around Newport’s nine-hole course, with strong coastal winds adding to the challenge. The inaugural title went to Horace Rawlins, a 21-year-old Englishman and assistant professional at the host club. Rawlins posted scores of 91 and 82 for a total of 173, defeating runner-up Willie Dunn by two strokes.
Rawlins earned $150 from a total purse of $335, as well as a gold medal and custody of the U.S. Open Trophy for one year. The modest scale of that first championship stands in sharp contrast to the multimillion-dollar purses of the modern major championships—and marks the beginning of a tournament that would become one of golf’s most important global events.
Image credit: Architectural drawing of the Newport Country Club clubhouse, 1893, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
