1980 Open Championship 1980 Open Championship The 1980 Open Championship was a men's major golf championship and the 109th Open Championship, held from 17–20 July at Muirfield Golf Links in Gullane, Scotland. Tom Watson won his third Open Championship, four strokes ahead of runner-up Lee Trevino. It was the fourth of Watson's eight major titles; he won two additional Opens in 1982 and 1983. It was Watson's first win in a major in three years. Trevino, 40, had won the last Open played at Muirfield in 1972, successfully defending his 1971 title and ending the grand slam bid of Jack Nicklaus. Nicklaus, also
The Open Championship early postwar years The Open was dominated by golfers from the Commonwealth, with South African Bobby Locke and Australian Peter Thomson winning the Claret Jug in eight of the 11 championships from 1948 and 1958 between them. During this period, The Open often had a schedule conflict with the match-play PGA Championship, which meant that Ben Hogan, the best American golfer at this time, competed in The Open just once, in 1953 at Carnoustie, a tournament he won. Another South African, Gary Player was Champion in 1959. This was at the beginning of the "Big Three" era in professional golf,