Golf Compendium

The U.S. Junior Amateur Championship is the top tournament for junior boy golfers. Some great names in golf history have won the tournament, including the only two golfers who've won it more than once: Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth.

If you get to write down a "1" on your scorecard, you've achieved one of the biggest thrills in golf: making a hole-in-one. A score of 1 on any golf hole is called a hole-in-one, or, alternatively, an ace.

How many golfer have won both the U.S. Women's Amateur and the British Women's Amateur championships? Not many! Those two tournaments, the pre-eminent events for amateur women golfers, both date to the 1890s. And in that very long history, only 11 golfers so far have captured both trophies. But no golfer has done it since 1996.

There must have been generally accepted practices known to and followed by golfers dating back close to the origins of the game. Otherwise, how could players have met in competition? But those very first glimmers of a golf rule book are lost to history — at least until the mid-18th century.

Do you know what a "hangman" is in golf? A hangman is always something you want to avoid, and it's no different in golf: Hangman is a slang term some golfers use for a score of 9 on a single golf hole.

The Senior LPGA Championship was created in 2017 as the first "senior major" in women's professional golf. (It pre-dated the launch of the U.S. Senior Women's Open by one year.)

Pat O'Sullivan was a major championship winner — as an amateur — in the first few years of the LPGA Tour's existence. She also won numerous amateur championships in the 1950s and 1960s, and played for Team USA in the Curtis Cup.

In golf, the honor, or "having the honor," refers to who tees off first on a hole. If you are the golfer in a match, in a competition or just among your group of buddies who, on a given hole, gets to hit the first drive, you "have the honor" or "have the honors" on that hole.

The Old Course at St. Andrews isn't known as "the home of golf" for nothing — golf has been played there since the 1400s. Many of the traditions and rules of golf originated there (such as 18 holes being standard for golf courses). The Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews is based there, and the R&A was the original "governing body" of the game.

The name of the game is "Par or Out," and the gist of it is right there in the title: In this game, you have to keep making pars (or net pars, if handicaps are being used) or better to stay in the game. The winner is the golfer who goes the longest without making worse than a par.

Bob Shearer was an Australian golfer who won on the European Tour in the 1970s and the PGA Tour in the 1980s. And he won a lot on the Australasian Tour in both decades. Later in his career, he had a handful of senior tournament victories and developed a golf course design business.

The 2025 British Open will be the 153rd time the tournament is played. The Open Championship, one of the four professional major championships in men's golf, dates to 1860 and is the oldest golf tournament existing.

Knockout Stroke Play is the name of a golf tournament format that at first glance combines elements of both stroke play and match play. But this format is played entirely under the rules for stroke play.

The Piccadilly Medal Tournament was a stroke-play tournament that pre-dated the European Tour, but that was also part of the European Tour schedule in that tour's first four years of existence. The event had multiple names and formats over its history.

What is the lowest, 18-hole score ever recorded in the British Open? That record is 62, and it was scored during the 2017 Open. It lowered by one stroke the previous record of 63, a score that had been first recorded in The Open in 1977.

Hole location (singular) is exactly what it sounds like: The location of the hole on a putting green (front, middle or back; left, center or right). But "hole locations" plural is typically used in one of two ways:

On a golf course, the "championship tees" are the set of tees on the teeing ground that are the farthest from the green. Playing a golf course from the championship tees means playing the course at its greatest length, its most-challenging distances.

Willie Auchterlonie was a British Open champion in the 19th century, and to the present time only one golfer younger than him has won the Open. But he had one of the briefer competitive resumés among all Open champions. A native St. Andrean, he had a long association with the R&A, and the clubmaking shop he long ran still exists today.

In the golf game named "Second Chance," each golfer plays two balls on every hole, and his better ball — the one with which he makes the lower score — is the one that counts for that hole. As an example, if on the first hole Golfer A makes a 4 with one of his golf balls and a 5 with his second ball, then his score on Hole 1 is 4.

The 3M Championship was a golf tournament on the Champions Tour, the premiere professional golf tour for 50-and-over golfers, for around 25 years. It always took place in Minnesota. It was a 54-hole tournament, and some fans might also remember it under the name Burnet Senior Classic.

The Claret Jug is the trophy presented to winners of the British Open golf tournament. It is one of the most famous trophies in all of sports, a silver vessel with handle and pouring spout, sitting atop a banded base. And on those bands are etched the names of all the previous Open Championship winners .

The British Open was first played in 1860, and for more than 60 years there were no American golfers among its winners. Then, in the early 1920s, two golfers won the tournament who both have a claim to the title of "first American winner." Let's explain:

Hugh Kirkaldy was one of three golfing brothers from St. Andrews, but he was the only one of the three who won the British Open. He also held the scoring record on The Old Course two different times. But he died young, before reaching the age of 30.

Of the four major championships of men's professional golf, the British Open is the one Jack Nicklaus won the least — "only" three times. He won the U.S. Open four times, the PGA Championship five times and The Masters six times. But his record in this major is spectacular nonetheless.

Here at GolfCompendium.com, we don't just write for serious golfers and golf history buffs. We also write for beginners and those who are new to golf fandom. And two words that newbies are going to hear a lot are "birdie" and "eagle." These are golf scoring terms, and they are both good: Golfers want lots of birdies and eagles. But what is the difference between the two?