You could imagine Old Tom Morris spinning in his grave at the very idea of it - cash rewards for the most British of golfing events being paid in dollars.

But that's the way money will be disbursed into various accounts when rewards are sorted out from the Open Championship today.

There will be $1.845 million for the winner; $1.067 million for the runner-up while at the bottom of the finishing order will come the considerable compensation of $24,000.

But whatever happened to sterling? The answer came from Martin Slumbers, chief executive of the Royal and Ancient.

"We want to make sure the prize money for the Open Championship is commensurate with its status in the world of golf," he said. "Last year, there was a very significant change in the sterling-dollar exchange rate that caused an anomaly." That was when Henrik Stenson's winning prize of £1.175 million, fell significantly below $2 million in the wake the Brexit vote.

Slumbers went on: "So we had to take a decision. Do we adopt a policy to adjust the sterling pool or move to dollars? On balance, we decided that in this global business that is golf, dollars is the main currency." Could you ever have imagined such an acknowledgement coming from an R and A official?

It got me thinking about the likely reaction from two old codgers I observed at one of my first Opens at Muirfield. On the eve of battle, they stood behind the 18th green, looking up at a formidable array of scaffolding for the spectator stand.

"Good God, Henry," one of them exclaimed. "They've turned our golf course into a damned shipyard."

In the modern game, it's obviously important that the Open prize fund keeps pace with the Major championships on the other side of the pond, if only for the fact that it wasn't always that way. One could imagine how it rankled at St Andrews when Sam Snead talked dismissively of his winner's cheque for £150 in 1946.

"What do I want with prestige," said Snead. "The British Open used to pay the winner about 600 bucks. Heck, at that rate I would have needed to play until I was 200 before I could retire."

That was a time, incidentally, when Snead and Ben Hogan could command up to $5,000 for exhibition matches in the US.

It was also a time when Ireland's only Major winner in the 20th century, Fred Daly, received £150 for his triumph at Hoylake in 1947. According to Harry Bradshaw, who shared a boarding-house room with Daly on that occasion, he and other Irish professionals probably earned more than the Portrush man, by backing him to win the title.

Christy O'Connor Snr once told me that players of his era considered winning the Open as a sort of pension. Still, with the modest endorsements available at that time, there was no real chance of making a financial killing from it.

Himself and The Brad probably wouldn't have cared if the reward happened to have come in dollars. Still, for a championship having its 146th staging, it remains decidedly odd.

Online Editors