The Claret Jug

Lore & Background

The Open Championship has been contested since 1860, but the Claret Jug as we know it arrived in 1873, replacing earlier prizes and giving the tournament a tangible, heirloom-quality symbol that players and fans could rally around. From that moment, the trophy became inseparable from the event's identity. Generations of champions—Harry Vardon, Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Seve Ballesteros, Tiger Woods, and countless others—have held it aloft on the 18th green, their faces broadcast to millions and their names etched into the tournament's roll of honor.

The tradition surrounding the Claret Jug is layered with ritual. The winner addresses the crowd, often with a speech that ranges from gracious to hilariously incoherent, before the trophy is lowered into a velvet-lined case. For the following year, a full-size replica sits in the winner's home, a quiet reminder of the week that defined their career. Meanwhile, the original returns to St Andrews, where it rests in the R&A's collection until the next summer calls it back to the course.

For fans, the Claret Jug transcends a simple prize. It is the visual shorthand for The Open itself: the claret-colored gleam, the fluted body, the handle that grips a champion's fist. In golf's pantheon of trophies—the U.S. Open's silver, the Masters' green jacket, the PGA's silver eagle—none carries quite the same romantic, almost medieval weight. It feels less like a corporate award and more like a relic passed from one era to the next.

Reader's Guide

You don't just see the Claret Jug. You smell it first—the cut grass of the back nine, the diesel from the maintenance buggies idling nearby, the faint brine that never quite leaves the air on a British seaside course. Then the sound: a murmur that builds, builds, until it becomes a wall of noise pressing against your eardrums as the winner is led out.

The presentation is unhurried, almost liturgical. The R&A president speaks. The winner shakes hands. The trophy is lowered into a case lined in deep green velvet, and the crowd exhales all at once. If you're lucky, you're close enough to see the light catch the fluting on the body, that warm claret-gold sheen that gives the whole affair its name.

Caddies have their own lore. A new caddie's first Open is a rite of passage; veterans will tap the trophy case glass with one knuckle on the drive back to the clubhouse, a quiet benediction. Fans who've attended multiple Opens will tell you the real ritual isn't the ceremony at all—it's the walk to the 18th green, boots squelching in the rough, the crowd parting like a tide, and the knowledge that somewhere in that sea of faces, someone is holding a silver jug that's older than their great-grandfather.

That's the inside joke, the belonging: you don't need to win. You just need to be there when the sun hits it.