The Women's Open Explained: Britain's Biggest Women's Major

Fulford, on the southern edge of York, is a parkland course that most English golfers associate with men's tour events and a famously good set of greens. In 1976 it staged something else entirely: the first Women's British Open, won by Jenny Lee Smith of Northumberland. There was no American television, no major status, and no guarantee the championship would be played again the following year. Half a century on it is run by the same organisation that runs The Open, played over the same kind of courses, and counted among the majors on the LPGA Tour.

That journey — from a fixture with an uncertain future to a championship the world's best players build their August around — is the interesting part. It explains why the event looks the way it does now, why the venue list reads like a roll call of English and Scottish championship links, and why a British amateur can still play her way in from a 36-hole qualifier.

From a York parkland course to a recognised major

The championship's first two decades were spent proving it deserved to exist. It moved between courses that were not always of championship standard, the prize fund was modest, and the field was drawn mostly from Britain, Ireland and continental Europe. What it had from the beginning was the backing of the Ladies' Golf Union, which had governed the women's amateur game in Britain and Ireland since 1893 and which had the standing to stage a national open championship on the right courses.

Two things changed how it was regarded. The first was the arrival of a generation of British players good enough to win anywhere — Laura Davies above all — which gave the championship a domestic story worth following and, more importantly, gave it results the American press had to notice. The second was commercial. Long-term title sponsorship, first from Weetabix and later from Ricoh, gave the organisers the money to take the championship to Royal Birkdale and Royal Lytham and St Annes rather than to whichever club would have it.

The Ladies European Tour and its predecessor treated the event as their flagship for years before anyone in the United States called it a major. American recognition arrived in 2001, when the LPGA Tour designated the Women's British Open one of its majors in place of the du Maurier Classic, which had lost its Canadian tobacco sponsorship. That was a scheduling decision as much as a sporting one, but its effect was immediate. The world's best players now had to cross the Atlantic in late summer, and the championship stopped being an event Americans played if it happened to suit them.

What major status actually changed

Major status is not a trophy, it is a set of consequences. It reordered the exemption list, because finishing high in a major buys a place in the next one. It changed the broadcast deal, because a major has a guaranteed American window. It raised the standard of the venues, because a major cannot be played on a course that will not hold up under scrutiny. And it changed what winning meant for a career: a major victory moves a player into long-term exempt categories, into the reckoning for team selection, and into a bracket of endorsement value that an ordinary tour win does not reach.

What changed when the R&A took the championship over

The Ladies' Golf Union merged into the R&A, and from 2017 the R&A has staged the championship. The merger was part of a wider tidying of golf's governance in Britain and Ireland; the same period saw the R&A take on the women's amateur championships and responsibility for the women's game at every level from handicapping upwards. If you want the detail of how that sits alongside the domestic bodies, the structure of English golf's governing organisations is a subject in its own right.

The practical differences showed up quickly. The R&A already had a championship operation built for The Open: grandstand contractors, agronomy staff who know how to prepare a links for one specific week, a broadcast compound, a ticketing system, a hospitality business and, not least, standing relationships with every championship club in Britain. All of that could be pointed at a second event without being rebuilt from nothing.

Course preparation is where a spectator notices it most. The R&A's approach to setting up a links — firm surfaces, mown-out run-offs, hay rather than lush rough where the land allows it, hole locations that use the contour instead of fighting it — is now applied to the women's championship as well. The result is a test that asks the same questions the men's Open asks, scaled to the distances the field actually hits the ball. That is a more honest form of parity than moving the tees forward and hoping.

The name changed too. AIG replaced Ricoh as title sponsor and the championship dropped "British" from its title to become the AIG Women's Open, deliberately mirroring The Open, which has never officially been the British Open either. Older results tables still carry the longer name, which is worth knowing when you are looking up past winners.

The venue pool and the English courses that have hosted

There is no fixed rota in the sense of a published list of ten courses in strict rotation. There is a pool of British championship venues, most of which also appear on the men's Open rota or have done, and the R&A announces hosts a few years ahead. The pool has widened rather than narrowed under the R&A, taking in courses the men's championship cannot use because they lack room for the infrastructure a quarter-of-a-million-spectator week demands.

England has provided the bulk of the stagings. The links of the north-west coast have carried the most: Royal Birkdale and Royal Lytham and St Annes between them account for a long list of editions, and Royal Liverpool at Hoylake joined them in 2012, when Jiyai Shin won in weather that reduced the course to a survival exercise. Inland, Sunningdale in Berkshire and Walton Heath in Surrey have both staged it, which makes the women's championship the only major regularly played on the English heathland — a distinct kind of golf that repays its own explanation, covered in the guide to England's heathland courses.

Course	County	Type	Notes
Fulford	Yorkshire	Parkland	Staged the first championship in 1976
Royal Birkdale	Merseyside	Links	Laura Davies won here in 1986; Mo Martin in 2014
Royal Lytham & St Annes	Lancashire	Links	Catriona Matthew in 2009; Georgia Hall in 2018
Royal Liverpool	Merseyside	Links	Staged in 2012
Sunningdale	Berkshire	Heathland	Karen Stupples in 2004; returned in 2008
Woburn	Buckinghamshire	Inland, wooded	A regular host in the 1990s; returned in 2016 and 2019
Walton Heath	Surrey	Heathland	Staged in 2023

Beyond England the championship has played the Old Course at St Andrews, first in 2007 and since returned to; Carnoustie in 2011; Royal Troon in 2020, in the strange spectator-free conditions of that summer; and Muirfield in 2022, five years after the club voted to admit women members, which gave that particular week a weight nothing on the scorecard could match. Royal Porthcawl took it to Wales in 2021.

Why the venue list is not simply the men's rota

Two constraints separate the lists. The first is space. The Open needs somewhere to put tented villages, car parks for tens of thousands and grandstands on a scale that rules out clubs hemmed in by housing or served by a single lane. The women's championship draws a smaller crowd and can therefore go to Walton Heath or Sunningdale, where The Open cannot. The second is length. A modern men's Open venue has to be stretched past 7,000 yards; the women's championship does not, which puts back into play courses the men's rota has outgrown. Neither constraint has anything to do with quality, and the argument that the women play easier venues collapses the moment a wind gets up at Lytham.

Format, field size and how the cut works

The championship is 72 holes of stroke play over four days, Thursday to Sunday, lowest aggregate wins. There is no match play stage and no further reduction of the field beyond the halfway cut. If two or more players finish level the championship goes to a play-off, and the R&A has favoured a short aggregate play-off over a set number of holes rather than sudden death from the first extra hole, though the exact number is set in the conditions of competition each year rather than fixed forever.

The field is 144 players, against 156 for the men's Open. That difference is not arbitrary. It is what the daylight allows when you send players out in threes from two tees on a British links in early August and still want everyone in before the light goes.

After 36 holes the field is cut. In recent editions the cut has fallen to the leading 65 players and ties, and anyone below the line plays no further part. The precise figure, and any provision for a secondary cut, is published in the conditions of the competition; it is worth reading rather than assuming, because the numbers have been adjusted more than once across the championship's history.

Element	The Open	AIG Women's Open
Organiser	The R&A	The R&A
Format	72 holes, stroke play	72 holes, stroke play
Field	156	144
Halfway cut	Leading 70 and ties	Leading 65 and ties
Route in for non-exempt players	Regional then Final Qualifying	Final Qualifying
Leading amateur award	Silver Medal	Smyth Salver

The leading amateur who completes 72 holes receives the Smyth Salver, the women's equivalent of the Silver Medal awarded at The Open. It is a genuinely coveted prize in the British amateur game and a line on a record that helps a player attract support when she turns professional.

When the weather intervenes

A championship played on the British coast in August cannot assume four clean days, and the conditions of competition carry the machinery for what happens when it does not get them. Play can be suspended for a dangerous situation, which on a links usually means lightning or standing water on greens, and for darkness. Suspensions are signalled by siren, and the rules distinguish between a suspension for a dangerous situation, where players must stop immediately, and a normal suspension, where a group may finish the hole it is playing.

If rounds cannot be completed the committee has the power to extend the championship into an additional day, to reduce it, or in extreme cases to declare a result over fewer than 72 holes. The R&A's strong preference is to play the full distance and add a day rather than shorten the championship, and the flexibility of a Monday finish is one of the reasons the tented village contracts run past Sunday. None of this is unique to the women's championship — it is the same set of provisions that governs The Open — but it is more likely to be needed at an event played a fortnight later in the year, when the first autumn systems are already coming in off the Irish Sea.

Getting in: exemption categories and Final Qualifying

Entry works the way every R&A championship works. A published list of exemption categories fills most of the field automatically, and whatever is left is contested through qualifying.

The categories change in their detail from year to year, but their shape is stable. Past champions hold an exemption, in most versions of the list until a stated age. Recent winners of the other majors are in. So are players inside a specified position on the women's world ranking at a stated cut-off date, leaders of the LPGA and Ladies European Tour money or points lists, winners of designated tour events inside a qualifying window, and the champion of the Women's Amateur Championship along with one or two other leading amateur titles. Between them these account for the great majority of the 144 places.

Final Qualifying and the British route

Everyone else plays Final Qualifying: a small number of 36-hole events staged at courses within reach of the championship venue, each sending an agreed number of players forward. Ties for the last place are settled by play-off on the day. It is open to professionals and to amateurs with a low enough handicap index, which is what makes it a real route rather than a formality. A club professional or a county amateur can enter, and occasionally one gets through.

For British players the qualifying pathway matters because it is the only part of the entry system that does not require a tour card. A player working her way up through the developmental circuit, or an English international still in the amateur game, has a defined week where the door is open. If you want to see how the same mechanism works on the men's side, where an extra regional stage sits in front of the final one, the regional qualifying route for The Open sets it out.

British and English champions, and the days that turned

Laura Davies won in 1986 at Royal Birkdale, before major status, and it remains one of the most consequential results in the history of British women's golf. She went to America on the back of it, won the US Women's Open the following year, and demonstrated that a player developed entirely inside the English club system could beat anybody. Alison Nicholas won the following year. Those two victories, back to back, did more for the championship's standing at home than any amount of promotion could have.

Karen Stupples's win at Sunningdale in 2004 is the one people describe rather than merely record. She began the final round with an eagle at the first and an albatross at the second — three shots gained on the card before most of the field had left the range — and never handed the lead back. It happened in front of a large Sunday crowd on a course an hour from London. That is the kind of golf that recruits people to a sport.

Catriona Matthew's win at Royal Lytham in 2009 belongs to Scotland rather than England, but it was played on an English links and it is impossible to leave out. She won weeks after giving birth to her second daughter, which reframed for a great many people what a professional career could be made to accommodate.

Georgia Hall won at Royal Lytham in 2018 with her father on the bag. She was the first English winner since Stupples, she did it on the coast where she had spent much of her amateur career playing links golf in bad weather, and she did it in a final-round duel rather than a procession. For a championship that spends a good deal of effort arguing it belongs in the front rank of British sporting occasions, a home win on a home links with a family caddie was about as good as the script gets.

Prize money and how the structure has moved

The purse is distributed across the players who make the cut in decreasing percentages, with the champion taking the largest single share and everyone who completes 72 holes earning something. That is the standard stroke-play model and it has not changed. What has changed, sharply, is the size of the pot.

For most of the championship's life the prize fund was small enough that flying from the United States to play it was a marginal financial decision for a mid-ranked player. The Ricoh years lifted it. The AIG era lifted it considerably further, in a run of increases the R&A announced deliberately and publicly as a statement about where the women's game ought to sit. The championship has moved from the lower reaches of the women's major purses towards the top of them.

Two structural points are worth understanding rather than memorising a figure that will be out of date within a year. Amateurs cannot accept prize money, so an amateur who finishes high has her notional share redistributed among the professionals below her — one reason a low amateur finish quietly improves several other players' weeks. And the money earned counts towards the money or points list of whichever tours the player belongs to, which means a good week here can secure a card, change a Solheim Cup qualifying position and alter exemption status all at once. The cheque is only part of what is at stake.

How the staging compares with the men's Open

Both championships are run by the same organisation from the same playbook, and the closer you look at the operational detail the more alike they are. Setup philosophy, hole location policy, the way rough is managed in the months beforehand, referees' procedures, the same Rules of Golf and the same links local rules — all shared.

The differences are of scale and of history. The Open draws a crowd measured in the hundreds of thousands across the week; the Women's Open draws tens of thousands. The Open sells hospitality on an industrial scale and runs a merchandise operation that amounts to a department store in a tent. The women's championship runs a smaller version of each. The men's event needs a Regional Qualifying stage because so many people enter; the women's does not.

There is a difference in the shape of the week, too. The Open's practice days are themselves a major spectator occasion. At the Women's Open the practice days are quieter, closer and far more rewarding if you actually want to watch how a professional prepares — you can stand a few yards behind a player on a range bay in a way that is impossible at the men's championship. For a comparison of the men's machinery, the guide to how The Open's format works covers the equivalent ground on that side.

Tickets, junior entry and what a spectator day is like

Tickets are sold directly by the R&A, usually going on sale months in advance, and are priced by day, with the weekend rounds dearest and the practice days cheapest. Unlike The Open, which has run a public ballot for its most sought-after days, the Women's Open has generally been available to buy outright — a reflection of demand not yet outstripping the capacity of the venues.

Free or heavily discounted entry for children has been a central plank of the R&A's promotion of the event. The usual arrangement has been that under-16s go free when accompanied by a ticketed adult, with the child's ticket registered in advance rather than collected at the gate, and a limit on how many juniors one adult may bring. The details — the age threshold, the deadline, the ratio — have moved between editions, so treat any figure you read anywhere, including here, as needing confirmation on the official ticketing page before you commit to a trip.

Practical notes for the day

Championship links are large, exposed and almost entirely unshaded. Waterproofs are not optional in August on the Lancashire coast, and neither is footwear you can walk eight miles in over soft ground. Grandstands at the closing holes and around the loudest short holes fill early and empty slowly. If you want to see the leaders on Sunday and also see the course, walk the outward nine with an early group and take a grandstand seat for the run-in.

Transport is what first-time visitors most often get wrong. The English host venues are nearly all reachable by train — Lytham and Birkdale in particular sit within walking distance of stations on the lines out of Preston and Liverpool — and where driving is possible it is usually park-and-ride only, booked in advance. The spectator guide to attending a championship at an English links goes into the logistics in more depth, and most of it applies here unchanged.

What the championship does for the game in England

The argument for staging a major is never only about the week itself. England Golf, the county unions and the host clubs all treat the championship as a recruitment event, and the mechanisms are specific rather than vague.

Free junior entry puts children on a championship course watching elite golf at close range, which is about the cheapest way there is to create a golfer. Host clubs run open days and taster sessions in the months either side. The R&A uses the week as a focal point for funding announcements and for coaching initiatives aimed at girls, who leave the sport at a markedly higher rate in their teens than boys do — a long-documented problem in the English club system rather than a claim invented for a press release.

There is also a straightforward effect on the host region. A championship week fills hotels along a stretch of coast in what is otherwise the tail of the holiday season, and clubs in the surrounding area take visitor bookings from people who came to watch and stayed to play. Whether that converts into lasting membership is much harder to measure, and anyone who offers you a firm number for it is guessing.

The deeper contribution is visibility on courses people can name. When the championship is played at Walton Heath or Sunningdale, an English golfer watching at home is looking at a course she could conceivably arrange to play, which is a different relationship from watching a major staged five thousand miles away. That familiarity is part of why the amateur side of the women's game in Britain — the Curtis Cup and the leading amateur championships — has stayed comparatively strong.

Where it sits in the LPGA and Ladies European Tour seasons

The championship is co-sanctioned, which means it counts for both the LPGA Tour and the Ladies European Tour. Prize money and points accrue on both tours for members of both, and the field is drawn from the exemption categories of each. That dual status is what makes it genuinely international rather than an LPGA event that happens to be held abroad.

In the LPGA's calendar it sits in the late-summer stretch of majors, and for several years it has been the last of them, which gives it the character of a season-defining week: player-of-the-year races, team qualification and money-list positions can all turn on it. The order of the majors has been rearranged more than once, though, so it is safer to say the championship falls in the closing part of the major season than to fix its position permanently.

For the Ladies European Tour it is unambiguously the biggest week of the year — the largest purse, the strongest field, and the event a European player's whole season is arranged around. Winning it, or even contending, changes an LET member's status on both sides of the Atlantic at once.

The scheduling around it matters as much as the date itself. The championship usually sits close to the Scottish women's open, giving American-based players a two-week European block rather than a transatlantic trip for a single event. That piece of calendar diplomacy between the tours has done more to strengthen the field than any amount of prize money on its own, and it is the same logic the men's tours apply either side of The Open. The result is that the fortnight in which this championship falls has become the one stretch of the year when the best women golfers in the world are reliably all in Britain at once. For a wider picture of where the professional game touches England, see the DP World Tour's English events and the golf section; the England hub collects the rest of these guides.